Mining For Hidden Gems

In 1976, I was an eighth grader living in Tehran, Iran.  The previous year, the Shah, the King of Iran, had put in place a universal mid-morning snack program, where milk, juice and cake or cookies were given out to children at 10:00 a.m. every morning in every school in the country.  I guess it was his way of sharing the oil wealth with the masses.  My affluent classmates, however, having had a full breakfast, sometimes found other uses for the snack items.  Once when a policeman was hit by a milk carton thrown from a second story window, our new assistant principal, Mrs. Momeni came in to give our class a lecture.  She was new to our school and we had not quite figured her out yet.  She didn't shout or insult.  She just told us about the school where she had come from.  It was one in the south part of the city, the poor side, where if a child was absent, his mother would come to collect his snack because that was his only meal for the day. ...