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Posted On 02/23/2015 12:54:53 by Notgrnyyet

  



 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?

Tags: School Bus Bench Lunch Roomgreen Beans Yukky



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Viewing 1 - 3 out of 3 Comments

05/15/2015 19:53:28

Sounds a lot like the school cafeteria I had in grade school.  Lunch  cost use 10 cents a day too  but we had to pay a week in advance.  Students were expected to help in the cafeteria that was built in the basement of the building - next to the bathrooms. We also sat at long benches to eat and when finished we had to put our plates on a special table to be scraped clean of any uneaten food.  Some kids took great delight in just dumping their garbage on the table.  My nightmare lunch was on the second and fourth  Monday of the month when lunch was  a half-cup of boiled spinach  and  a hard-boiled egg - I hated it, but the alternative was to go hungry.   Any student who had broken the school rules was assigned to sit at the teacher's table and then do do garbage detail by scraping the uneaten food off the student's plates into big barrels that were hauled off to a local pig farm.  Looking back sure makes me appreciate what we have today.



02/24/2015 18:24:17

My mom packed my lunch every day.  During the winter there was a thermos of tea, but on warmer days she would have me purchase milk which was four cents.  When I was in high school, I still brought my lunch every day, except Wednesday which was hot dogs w/sauerkraut, mashed potatoes w/gravy and kernel corn.  Lunch was 35 cents.  However, I loved those hot dogs and the combo of potatoes, gravy and corn, so Mom took the day off and let me have a school lunch.



02/23/2015 18:45:35

Spinach was my kryptonite. Hated it and we also had cafeteria nazis as we liked to whisper when they were not able to see our lips moving. I remember being forced to finish my spinach before I was allowed dessert. I would go without dessert just to make my point. 

I think they figured out quickly through experience with upper classmen that forcing them to remain in the cafeteria until they finished the foods they despised was not necessarily a punishment when math class was scheduled after lunch!
At some point, state and federal subsidies for low income students would be taken away at the whim of our political system and my parents would revert to making us carry the standard bologna and cheese sandwich, an apple , banana or orange and two oatmeal cookies. I never let on that I hated there was no variety in our sack lunches because we were poor as dirt and it would make my mother cry and my dad to spank me for being a selfish brat making my mother cry. During these austere times, all us poor  farm kids would exercise free market bartering by trading our various lunch items from our homes. Kept the peace at home and provided variety while driving us poor kids closer together.

Fun blog. Brings back memories I never thought I would call fond, but somehow now, I smile when I remember the hard times!
 





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