Chocolate milk on Friday…
originally posted by Jean April 24, 2009
When I was in grade school, we had one choice for
our beverage during lunch. Milk.
White milk in a glass bottle with a cardboard disk
pressed into the neck of the bottle to seal it.
The seal had a half-moon perforation that had to be
pried up in order to insert the paper straw in the bottle.
When I was in first grade the milk cost 2 cents a day.
A dime for the week.
By the time I got to eighth grade (this was before Junior High
and Middle School were invented) the milk cost 5 cents a day.
Highway robbery, wouldn’t you say?
Friday lunch was always special because we had two choices
that day. Plain old white milk or CHOCOLATE milk.
Need I say which one was the choice for most of us?
The food they served in the cafeteria on Friday was different, too.
This was a public school but, they didn’t serve meat on Friday.
This made Mom happy because she raised us Catholic and, back
then, Catholics didn’t eat meat on Friday. Ever.
So, one Friday we might get a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl
of tomato soup. Another Friday might be tuna casserole or a
tuna salad sandwich. Dessert was usually fruit or pudding.
To this day, if I get a craving for any of those foods listed above,
I automatically think of chocolate milk.
Today, in the grocery store, I decided I wanted the fixins for a
good tuna salad tomorrow. Friday. I also made sure to grab a
bottle of chocolate milk. Plastic bottle, unfortunately. Oh, well.
I think I remember Thursday was spaghetti day.
Public school southern IL mid 60’s Fridays
Fish sticks and a roll and milk and (ugh!) spinach that looked like it had made a trip through a Hereford.
Every week without fail……………..
We musta went to the same school, except for the catholic part. Milk in little glass bottles – and nobody got killed! I don’t recall us ever having chocolate milk. Nor did we pay for it separately. It was included with the lunch that cost 25 cents a day and on Mon I took $1.25 to school for the lunch that week.
Early on in 1st grade, me and a friend named Monty Wood were eating spaghetti in the cafeteria and there was a large bank of windows on the other side of the table we sat at. We figured out we could suck sketty strands up the paper straw then blow them back out and stick them to the windows. That was the first time the principal Mr Karlovich called my mother. He soon put her on speed dial….
Anybody else remember their principal and elementary school teachers names? How about your childhood phone number (exchange) and area code? Party line anyone? lol
The elementary school I attended from K-6 was outside Carlisle, PA and was originally named North Middleton Township Elementary School but at about 4th grade they changed it to, and it is still to this day, Crestview Elementary School.
My first grade teacher was named Miss Schilacci. Early 20s, I would say, slender, dark brown hair, very pretty. She had a glass eye; a jar her mother was canning exploded when she was a child. She told the story one day, very matter of factly, when one of the kids asked. She had a fiance, a tall handsome guy who visited the classroom a couple times. You could tell they liked each other.
I don’t remember any of my principles names though I had more than one occasion to be spoken to by more than one of them.
Party lines? I wasn’t allowed to use the phone as a child; Ma Bell charged by the minute. Back then words actually weren’t cheap. I had a dime in my pocket right next to my pocket knife just in case I had to use a payphone for an emergency. Remember those? I remember my parents talking to the switchboard operator like she was a friend and after the pleasantries telling her who they really wanted to talk to and then waiting to be connected. The party line phone in our house came a couple years after that. We didn’t have a private line until I was well into my teens. I remember getting the belt for trying to eavesdrop on the party line once. Once. Manners were strictly enforced at my parents’ house.
the belt lol
My dad could snatch it off, double it, and start wailing a hiney in 1/2 second flat.
I think that process was made criminal in the late 70’s and we’re all worse off for it now.
Hah! My dad did it slooowly. For emphasis. Give you time to think about the event that was about to unfold. “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it’s gonna hurt you.” (I don’t think so Dad. I don’t see how that can be possible. You outweigh me by like about 200 pounds.) Just thought that, never had the courage to say it out loud. One time I thought I could use the interlude to make an escape. Found out he could run a whole lot faster than my stubby little 7 year old legs could carry me, and that the extra unexpected exercise made him a lot grumpier about the whole thing, which really surprised me. About doubled my sentence. Never made that mistake again.
School lunches…..
Like ghost, I remember that on Monday’s, Mom would send me to school with a week’s worth of cash in a little envelope to cover my lunches for the week. If I forgot or lost my envelope, I’d have to tell the Lunch Lady that I didn’t have my lunch money and she’d make sure that I got something.
I’m sure that in my day there were families for whom that $1.25 per week was a struggle. There have always been “The Poors”. And poor or not, making sure that every kid can eat a lunch is just the right thing to do.
But there was a shame at being that kid who didn’t have his lunch money. Somewhere along the line, the exceptions to the rule that the system would feed your kids became the rule itself. And so to eliminate that shame, they now feed every kid. And not just lunch….they offer breakfasts to every kid too.
But I got a kick out of the marketing for Washington state’s new income tax. Incredibly, they’re telling their Useful Idiots that the breakfasts and lunches they’re bringing to kids K-12 are going to be “free”.
Somewhere, Michelle Obama smiles* and Milton Friedman shakes his head.
* And as we all know, she doesn’t smile often.
Did you know “modern” schools do not have kitchens as we remember them as kids? Nope. In the mid 80’s I designed the state of the art Sugarloaf Elementary School in the FL Keys (rather than build a school that resists hurricane force winds, create a series of “vane” walls and roofs that allow the wind to just pass right through and continue on it’s merry way) there is no means of cooking food in it. I designed several other new schools and the renovations on about 4-5 more. No cooking facilities.
The school lunches are contracted out to outside contractors. Catering services and such. Delivered everyday, all packaged up nicely and der kleine kinder think they are royalty opening all the little surprise compartments and such. Course, now as then, “school lunches blow, man” and most of it lands in the can. Which means trash disposal costs have tripled because of all the daily packaging. And of course the costs of the lunches soared too.
About 6 years ago our son and wife were considering entering their daughter into 1st grade at a public school close to them and they found out that school lunches now (then) cost $31 a week. (if they are a poc fambly of 4 that earns less than $60k a year they get free lunches, breakfasts, snacks, the whole 9 yards.) They chose to homeschool our grand daughter, you know, teach her how to learn on her own.
This is probably a better link to the marketing which amused me so much.
At my grade school the cafeteria was in the basement of the newer part of the building. After school was out you could go to the cooks and buy an ice cream bar for 6 cent. Fudgesicle was my favorite. I usually took a lunch to school, I had a lunch pail that was painted to look like a barn. Just before I started first grade I went with my dad to a farm where he was demonstrating a new hay baler. Still remember sitting under a tree with dad eating baloney sandwiches for lunch out of my brand new lunch pail. Yes I do remember my teacher’s names and my old phone number.
Jean, I did not picture you as being older than dirt.
Were you the girl with cooties (I know, redundant) in front of that brown ponytail that kept swishing back and forth across the front of my desk?
I was too scared of girls back then to ask for a name. After that one time that I did…well let’s just say that I’m not making that mistake again anytime in the near future.
I grew up, my carefree early years anyway, in a dairy region where most families were Catholic. Mine was too. So there was no meat on Fridays. This was long before that one Pope Whatzizname decided that it wasn’t so sinful after all to eat a little bit of meat on Fridays. I guess my folks didn’t see the point in paying someone else to feed me lunch when I had a perfectly good mother at home who could make one for me to bring to school in a painted tin box. Apparently all of my friends did too, at least that’s how I remember it. I guess we could afford that box, though. I was really partial to the one with Rin Tin Tin on it.
Usually lunch was a slice of baloney with a slice of cheese and mayonnaise between two slabs of manna just like God intended made by the Wonder Bread Company, wrapped in a neatly folded sheet of waxed paper. And a cored and quartered apple also neatly wrapped in a piece of waxed paper. And maybe a homemade cookie or two. Thanks Mom!
On Fridays, if Dad was feeling particularly wealthy the night before, I would find two soggy pieces of Wonder Bread with delicious tuna in the middle. A welcome respite. Otherwise the same baloney sandwich without the baloney. Or maybe peanut butter and jelly.
The lid of the lunch pail held a small thermos filled with milk and not that skimmed stuff they have today, I don’t think that had been invented yet, at least not in the dairy country that my parents called home. In fact I can’t even say that the milk I drank was pasteurized. I do remember that it tasted really good not like the chalky water you buy at the grocery store these days. And I know what milk should taste like: I was a kid in dairy country and was persuaded more than once to try it straight from its source.
Remember Ovaltine when it came in the rectangular tin with the metal cap on top that you had to pry off with a spoon? My mom would put one spoonful of that into my thermos before she closed the lid of my lunch box. The thermos was held fast to the lid by a wire snap. I had to remember to shake it up before I unscrewed the cap at lunchtime. I also had to remember not to drop the whole shebang while using both hands to climb the tall steps into the schoolbus. Otherwise, I and my companions would hear the heartbreaking sound of slush when I shook the thermos to activate the ovaltine. Then suffer the sting of ridicule the next day when I brought a thermos that did not match the rest of my outfit. By November all of the teasing would stop because by then we all had outfits that did not match…
Ah, the rush of the memories …
Well, lookit all you folks reminiscing right along with me. 🙂
Makes my heart glad when readers relate so much to something I wrote.
I remember Miss Earlywine-1st grade teacher, Mrs. McDowell(McDonald?)-2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Pontius-3rd grade teacher.
No idea about principal name. We didn’t go to kindergarten. Dad said it wasn’t necessary. Said we didn’t need to learn how to play or take naps and that was all they did in kindergarten.
Gray Dog- I was born in 1951 so, yes, I guess that makes me older than dirt.
But, it’s a funny thing…I don’t feel old. I’m certainly not jogging around the block every day but I don’t rightly know just what old is supposed to feel like.
We all had cooties back then but, no, I didn’t have a brown ponytail. My hair was (and still is, thank you Lady Clairol, my BFF) blonde and cut in a sort of page-boy.
Thank you all, for sharing your memories.
DT, what about you? Hope you’re not getting blizzarded on.
A squall blew through here the other day and snow stayed on the mountaintops into the next day (not on us though). First time that’s happened since last winter. Gone now and back to 70s. Warmest winter and least snow since 1875 … and who knows before that? Got the makings to be a significant fire season.
Miss Bryant and Principal St Amand’s office – 1st grade. Good memories of Miss Bryant. A large redheaded woman. Someplace I have a picture of the 1st grade class … including the first guy I got in fight with over a girl (and I believe the last. Scott White. The girl tells me I won. Won what? Not the girl even though I still know her).
Principal St Amand’s office, 2nd and 3rd grade. Had teachers but don’t recall their names … but I DO remember St Amand and his office.
Family moved after my 3rd grade.
“1st grade teacher”
Mrs Roediger. A huge proponent of phonics.
I can still hear her saying “sound it out like I taught you !”
She instilled a LOVE of reading into us. And it showed, all the way through High School, we were reading 3-4 grade levels ahead of everyone else.
And our HS Math teacher…who managed to convince ‘the administration’ to let her teach the seniors in 67-68 what would today be called an Advance Placement Calculus class, in a small rural IL HS.
Man, I want me some school chocolate milk!