The school cafeteria for the Sycamore Grammar School was located in the basement. Lunch cost 25 cents and a girl in the upper grades would collect your money or a lunch token before you picked up a metal tray, eating utensils and proceeded to a counter where the ladies that did the cooking served you. There were gray wooden tables to eat on with wooden benches. The weekly menu was always the same--hot dogs on Monday, chili beans on Wednesday, fish sticks on Friday and always a small carton of milk. Don't remember what there was on Tuesday or Thursdays, do remember sloppy joes sometimes. Side dishes were canned fruit, canned vegetables, a chunk of cheese and some kind of dessert, such as cookies or a fruit crisp of some kind.
When the lunch bell rang there was a mad rush to get in the line and beat the crowd. Depending on where your classroom was determined your place in line. Some kids would cut in line and cause a fight. One of the girls collecting the lunch money would let me keep my quarter as I think she had a crush on me, but looking back I think she did that to some of the other boys too.
The school had grades 4th through the 8th. Many of the farm kids brought their own lunches, since many lived on dairy farms and had been up early milking cows and did not want to wait in line or could not afford the 25 cents. Sometimes kids would trade food with those that had box lunches, the Hostess Cupcakes were popular as a trading item.
I do remember a food fight once. Some kid started throwing something, then everybody was throwing food until the school janitor ran everybody outside. It was not a pretty scene.
The teachers ate in the teacher's lounge where there was a glass window on the door, but the cigarette smoke clouded up the window so bad nobody could look in.
After lunch we would retreat outside for noon recess or go use the restrooms, which were a disaster as some kids never flushed the toilets or there was a mess on the floor from plugged toilets. It was better to use the restrooms after lunch then before not to spoil your appetite. The poor school janitor could not keep up with it all.
Where we were when ... When we three children were in school, in the late '60 - 70's, we would have loved to have purchased school lunches. Instead, we had to make our own peanut butter and jam sandwiches, along with carrots an apple, and maybe a few home-made oatmeal cookies. Now, it sounds like school lunches are the norm; it's unusual if children bring their own lunch.
ReplyDelete25 cents would barely buy a french fry today. Do remember the fish sticks on Friday as the cafeteria would place two on a plate, side by side with corn or beans. Loved the slab of vanilla ice-cream served between two tissue papers, but maybe that was at the pheasant festival at the parish hall near the church.
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