So, I was in 4th or 5th grade around 1975. Yes, I'm aging, thank you. I attended a Catholic school in Palmdale, California on the Mojave Desert. If anyone is interested it was St. Mary's Catholic School, and it's still going at the same place. It was taught almost entirely by nuns and was quite a different school from the other surrounding public schools. No need to go into the uniqueness here, enough to say that I always felt I was in a different country when I arrived on campus.
Be that as it may, at one point we were given an "opportunity" to go out and sell chocolate-covered, candy-coated peanuts to people in our neighborhoods, and then to return all the money we gathered back to the school to be used for expenses on campus. This was better than increasing tuition, according to my parents, so they backed up my selling of the product in the neighborhood.
I had a Shetland pony named Misty at the time, so I rode Misty up and down the dirt streets that surrounded our turkey ranch in Littlerock, California. A little-known place even now. I was able to sell a few boxes of candy, I don't remember the asking price but it couldn't have been much more than a dollar or possibly two. My earnings were slim, however, compared to my fellow students who lived in the "metropolitan" area of Palmdale. Metropolitan is in quotes because at the time, only about 10,000 people lived in Palmdale, but that was over double the population of Littlerock where I lived, about 10 or 15 miles away.
My mom was involved with the school and the money-gathering process. Toward the end of the sale, she came up to me and said, "Kent, it's Friday. I'm going to call in and say that you're not going to be at school today, and we'll go up to Larry's Farmer's Market and sell your candy there. We should be able to increase your sales percentage!"
All I heard was that I wasn't going to school that day and my heart flew out of my chest. We packed up the car, (my mom had picked up a bunch more boxes of the candied peanuts), and headed up to the Farmer's Market in Littlerock. It was a place owned by a man named Larry Scattaglia, hence the "Larry's Farmer's Market" mentioned by my mom. They had a table and a couple of chairs we could set up, and so we did. Mom also brought a change box that held cash and coins, so we set up and sat back waiting for customers.
Quite a few people came up and paid the one or two dollars for the boxes of delicious-looking peanuts, so things were going great. Around an hour or two after we had set up, a man walked up to the table and picked up a box of peanuts, and gave it a look. My mom looked up from the book she was reading and immediately put the book down on the table and stood up. "Why hello Mr. Rogers, how are you today?" she asked.
He responded with something nice, and then my mom looked down at me and said, "Kent, stand up and shake hands with Roy Rogers!"
My jaw kind of dropped because I didn't recognize him. He'd aged a bit since he was in his show with Trigger, but then it became apparent to me who he was. He extended his hand and said, "Good to meet you, Kent!" I shook his hand and was at a loss for words, but then he asked me about the school, (the school's name was printed on the boxes), so I told him about it and how weird it was for me, and he smiled and laughed. He bought about 10 or 20 boxes of peanuts, and I helped him out to his car with them. He was driving his old Pontiac Bonneville convertible with the silver dollar coins and saddle making up the covering of the gear, transmission, and drive train hump between the front seats. It was a beautiful car. He got in, shut the door, stuck his hand out to shake mine, and said "Thanks very much, Kent. I'm going to enjoy these peanuts!" He started the car, backed up, and drove off toward where he lived in Victorville, about 40 miles to the east.
What a fantastic meeting that was. I haven't thought of it in decades, but it just occurred to me so I thought I'd write it down.