Redartz: One of everyone's favorite hours at school was, of course, lunch hour. A chance to refresh, visit with friends, trade ballcards, discuss television shows, and so much more. Today let's remember what made those hours (or half hours, if such was the case) so memorable.
I never ate the 'school lunch', my mom always packed mine. And it always included some favorites, such as pbj (peanut butter and jelly, for those unfamiliar), Indian Corn Chips, a Pop-Tart, a cookie or any number of other treats. One particular favorite was "Space Food Sticks", a snack from Pillsbury advertised as astronaut fare. I don't know if the Apollo crews ever ate them, but I sure did.
Martinex1: Hi Red. I just had to jump in on this topic. My school did not have a cafeteria, so we always had to bag it. Typically, I had a lunchmeat sandwich and an apple or banana. Once in a while, my mom would pop popcorn and put it in my lunch. I could trade that popcorn for almost anything... it was lunchtime gold!
That is pretty cool. My lunchbox looked like something Ralph Kramden from "The Honeymooners" would carry. Just a metal box with a curved top. I envied all of the Six Million Dollar Man, Emergency!, and Scooby-Doo boxes others had. I always wanted a thermos too.
Our elementary school lunches were held in what they called the "multipurpose room" , a combination gym, lunchroom and auditorium. It was usually packed with kids, at least for the first fifteen minutes. I, like many others, tried to hurry through the eating part in order to have some free time outside (the school playground was just outside the door). It was easy to burn off some energy on the swings or monkey bars...
We had to eat at our desks. They would bring in little cartons of milk to go with our lunch. Every so often there was a mix-up and we would get chocolate milk. The way we reacted you would think we won the lottery. When I was in first grade, a kid broke his arm in the playground so they dismantled all of the park equipment. Back then, there were just swings, slides, and dangerous metal spinning things on a concrete lot - not a good recipe for the modern safety conscious crowd.
I just remembered that once per semester, we would have "Hot Dog Day" and the school would prepare hot dogs, a bag of Jays potato chips, and some kind of Hostess cake. That was like a gift from the gods after weeks of bologna and chicken loaf!
Okay, we've spilled the contents of our bags. What were your lunchbox contents? Did you have the 'hot lunch', or brown bag it? How else did you spend your recess time? Pull up a seat and share!
9 comments:
Wow... We could reminisce for days on this one!
Red - Your situation was the same as mine when I went to public school in Gary, IN grades K - 4. We lunchboxers felt really sorry for the kids who had to buy their hot lunch b/c their moms didn't love them enough to bag them one, LOL. (It's true!)
Marti - Your situation was the same as mine when I went to Catholic School grades 5 -6.
I only recall one lunchbox of the ones I had: Land of the Giants. I have to call my brother to see if he recalls!
Lunches: sandwiches, a chip, apple, milk... maybe a ho-ho or zinger or...?
The two lunch time conversations I really recall: Who will win Frazier or Ali (Fight #1)and the big brother of a girl I liked (Audrey) offering to let me speak to his sister if I gave him my ho-ho in the 4th grade. (W.t.h.???)
Anyhow, growing up in Gary gave me a Hobbesian outlook on the world, lol.
I went to a parochial (Catholic) elementary school, grades 1-8, in really small town, so yeah, no cafeteria. My lunchbox usually contained some kind of sandwich, fruit (an orange, apple, etc.) and either a little bag of potato chips (BBQ was my favorite) or a Hostess snack. At our school, little cartons of milk or orange juice were distributed to the kids (which our parents paid for in advance at the beginning of the school year). I always got OJ. And yeah, we ate at our desks in the classrooms.
About once a month, we had a hot lunch that was served to the whole student body in the school gym. I think this was organized by the local chapter of the Knights of Columbus; I remember that usually a few of the moms of kids at school prepared and served the food. All of us kids considered this a big treat, even though the fare was often stuff like sloppy joes, mac & cheese or spaghetti.
Lunch boxes: I went through a few of them, but the one I remember best featured Emergency, which was my favorite show when I was in first grade. I remember that a few other kids had the Six Million Dollar Man. By about grade 4, though, lunch boxes were no longer cool, and pretty much all of the kids carried their lunches in ordinary brown paper bags.
I always ate the school lunches (we called them school dinners) and I enjoyed them but one thing annoyed me - the cooks always put a blob of jam (jelly) in the rice-pudding and semolina.
Two lunchtime memories:
1) At our school Christmas lunch in 1976 (when I was 10) all the cooks came out of the kitchen, stood in a row and sang "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" to us kids.
2) In my secondary/high school whenever somebody accidentally dropped a plate and it smashed on the floor there was always a huge cheer from the assembled diners. It happened every time.
Oh, yeah, I should note: my mom was a pretty good cook, and also often baked bread (and also pastries, pies, etc.), and, practical and frugal immigrant that she was, would have been more than happy to pack leftovers from the previous evening's meal as lunch for my older sister, brother and me the next day. However, we would have been mortified if our lunch looked any different from what our peers were eating - so she had to make sandwiches with baloney and American cheese or PB&J between two slices of spongy Wonder (or Franz) bread and, as I said, a Hostess snack or something similar that was definitely NOT home-made. Later, when I was in high school (where I usually ate lunch in the cafeteria) I remember her mentioning once that she was so glad she no longer had to buy that (truly awful) sliced bread in plastic bags.
As the memory machine churns...
I preferred the Hostess pies for dessert since they were the biggest and more filling than a ho-ho.
Also, did you guys play that game with the "Budgles" chips by putting them on the ends of your fingers like claws and eating them one by one?
Also, remember every lunch standing in line to buy your government subsidized half-pint of milk for $.02, then $.04, then a nickel...
And, at the public school where there was a cafeteria you could buy a left-over cinnamon role for $.07 instead of the whole lunch, after lunch was finished. I did it once, standing there with $.06, instead of the $.07, due to a misunderstanding. The kindly lunch matron "read me the riot act" because I was missing $.01 and told me get out of line and took the cinnamon role back. Yep - love and compassion could be in scarce supply in Gary, IN, LOL.
Well, there was no cafeteria at our school either, so I would've had to brown bag ... except I was a town kid (in a very small town) so I usually just went home for lunch.
I had a Garfield lunchbox and a Six Million Dollar Man one ... both plastic, not metal. They're probably both still lying around someplace.
Charlie- amazing that you can recall those lunchtime conversations! I know there were many. But the only one I can specifically remember is when a friend taught me the "Jingle Bells,Batman Smells" rhyme. You know, the important stuff you learn about in school...
Edo- your Mom sounds incredible; home baked breads? Wish I'd lived in your neighborhood!
And yes, there was a point in time when lunchboxes became 'out' and plain brown bags were 'in'. Don't recall exactly when that was, middle school perhaps?
Colin- fun story about the singing cooks! I can picture that in my mind; wonderful. Oh, and the cheers accompanying any dropped tray? That happened at our high school too. Could be a near-universal phenomenon...
Mike W.- going home for lunch; presumably it was a pretty short walk? How long was your lunch period? I always wondered (because kids near our school would do the same thing) if you had to rush your noon meal to get back in time...
Redartz: We got an hour for lunch and my house was about two-and-a=half blocks away (like I said, it's a VERY small town). Plus, my dad worked at the school, so in the winters I would just get a ride home (and back) with him.
I was like you Mike, except only a block away. As a matter of fact I would sometimes walk to the drug store (2 blocks away} get a comic book and bring it back to school.
Lunch, I think, was 40 minutes long from bell to bell.
I fondly remember walking home and watching Underdog many a time.
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