More important than restaurants

In my 51 years, I’ve squirreled away a few items as touchstones for important moments in history.

I have a notice that was mass-mailed to parents around 1960, letting them when and where they could get free polio vaccines for their kids.

There’s a Kennedy silver dollar, given to me by a family friend as a reminder of how our hopes soared and crashed.

I kept my draft card, along with the Marine Corps collar insignias a former brother-in-law wore in Vietnam. There’s a cassette recording of Nixon’s resignation speech, captured on an old Panasonic. And I have the explanatory pamphlet that was sent to every American home in the 1980s to calm fears and raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic. It’s nestled in the wire copy announcing the start of the first Gulf War, under a copy of The New York Times of Sept. 12, 2001.

Today I added a new piece to the collection, the print-out of a news alert from cnn.com. It reads in its entirety, “Barack Obama has been sworn in as the nation's 44th president.”

Sorry to veer off-topic, but today is an extraordinary day. Back to LTOs, dayparts and bankruptcies tomorrow.