Title: NEW AND DIFFERENT
Tags: school, bus, bench, lunch room,green beans, yukky
Blog Entry: I started to school in 1950 at Altus Denning Grade School. Things started changing fast once we got off the dead end road and started to school. Things just were not as simple anymore. Mama and Daddy were not around to get us out of messes we may get ourselves in to. We were not used to this. Teachers didn't seem to be worth a darn to me. Useless! If I wanted a peanut butter sandwich at 10 AM they wouldn't get it for me. Out for first recess I could smell things cooking next door in the Lunch Room. The lunch room was a little house that had been converted. Kitchen in one end on one side of the room. The rest of the room had long tables with benches to sit on. It was right beside the Grade school building so we didn't have far to go to eat. If you couldn't get an end seat you had to climb over the bench to sit down. There was an area at the entrance where you could pay your dime to eat then stand in line till you got up to the area where the two cooks dipped up your plate and handed it to you. No choice, you took what they gave you just like at home. Only difference was that my Mama cooked things I liked and those durned cooks didn't. How the heck would they know I don't like green beans unless I told them. Well I tried to tell the durned fools and they wouldn't listen to me. Mama said she wouldn't go tell them either cause that was their job and they couldn't fix what all of us wanted. One day I decided that I just wasn't a gonna take those green beans on my plate. Heck fire Miss Sullivan made us clean our plate before we could leave and I wanted to eat what I wanted so I could get out on the playground. She caught me one day throwing the beans under the table and made me pick them up and tell the cooks I was sorry. Shoot, I wasn't a bit sorry and hated that. From then on Miss Sullivan watched under the table and I wasn't the only one doing it. To get us to stop she made the whole bunch on that table clean it up. Sometimes I would wear my coat in the Lunch Room so I could put things in my pocket then throw them on the play ground. Got in trouble at home for that one. Mama didn't know what I had put in my pocket but she found the mess. Just couldn't win on this one. At home if you took it on your plate you had to eat it, but you were not forced to take anything you didn't like as much as I didn't like green beans. Daddy would have put a stop to the green beans in school if I had told him. But I didn't tell him. To Daddy is was wrong to force anyone to eat something and that would have been that. In the lunch room when we were in grade school there was no talking. We had to sit there like little proper ladies and gentlemen, even though we were not. One day I just decided I'd had enough of this silence and I just upped and screamed, then cackled like a chicken. To that everyone in the room got to giggling. “Clydene, come with me”, Miss Sullivan said. Now how in the heck did that ol' woman know it was me? I got paddled and had to stay in at recess the rest of the day but by golly I didn't clean my plate that day! HEHE. Then there were days we had an apple or an orange on our lunch tray. I wanted to take mine home with me but no way. Couldn't take that dad burned thing outta' the lunch room either. Good Grief. One day I laid my orange down on the table and it went rolling down the middle of the table with everyone grabbing at it. One of the boys got my orange and started peeling it to eat it. I climbed out and went down there and just thumped him on the head. Got in trouble again at school and then at home but it was worth it. I still will not eat green beans and I never ate them in school either by golly. When suddenly the Teacher stopped making us clean our plate that was over. I had found a way every time they were on my tray before to not eat them. Why did Miss Sullivan stop making us clean our plates? Don't rightly know. But I suspect some brave kids told their Mama and she was made to stop. Whatever happened the green bean eating thing was over. I realize now how good we had it. We had a home cooked, from scratch even, well balanced meal for 10 cents. Man were those Chocolate cakes delicious just like home. We just don't appreciate what we have until we don't have it any more. Isn't that the way it is with everything?
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