Wrinkly Bits
A Blog by Gail Cushman
Originally posted 10/19/25
During my extended time with the various school systems, I had the opportunity to eat a lot of school lunches. I was a student for 12 years or 2160 days. I taught for 19 years or 3420 days and I was an administrator for 7 years, or 1260 days for a grand total of 6840 days of school lunch opportunity. I’m not counting my time as a prison-school marm because I really didn’t want to eat at the prison. My passion for school lunches ended when I learned about the prison special, Nutraloaf. I didn’t always eat school lunches but had a good sampling through the years.
School lunches have changed over the years. In my first grade, I attended Longfellow School in Emmett, Idaho, set aside for first graders. It had no lunch room, so I walked home for lunch. It was almost a mile, but I was six, almost grown up, so I was allowed to walk home for potato soup. Other neighbor kids and my older brother joined me sometimes. As a mature seven-year-old in second grade, I went to Wardwell Elementary School where they had a school cafeteria. It was in the basement, and we would be served a main dish, carrot and celery sticks, a cookie and a carton of whole milk Monday through Thursday with chocolate milk on Friday.
I learned to say, “Yes, please” and “Thank you, Ma’am” and ate every bite on my tray, no matter what. The trays were aluminum. Dented, but clean, with a stainless-steel fork and one paper napkin. The cost was 25 cents, which meant my parents paid 75 cents for my brothers and me to have lunch. More than once, my mother said, “Where are you eating? The Waldorf?” As far as I know, no free or reduced lunches were served, although I doubt anyone left the cafeteria hungry. Many kids brown-bagged lunch, but my mother preferred that we come home for a “hot meal” albeit the same potato soup nearly every day.
Fifth grade meant Middle School, and by then we had moved to town and lived directly across the street from Parkview Junior High School and, of course, the soup routine continued, occasionally changing to homemade vegetable-beef soup. Other kids brown-bagged it or ate at a little hamburger stand called Mickie’s Fountain which sat about a block from the junior high school. Hamburgers were a quarter, and cokes were a nickel, so the cost wasn’t much different from the cost of school lunches, which had increased to 35 cents. The school lunches were a little better at Parkview. I remember chili, meatballs with gravy, and ham and lima beans.
Those ladies made wonderful, cinnamon rolls on Fridays, so I often finagled school lunches on Fridays. Chili, cinnamon rolls, chocolate milk. How carb-heavy was that? And we said, “Thank you, Ma’am,” as we had been taught.
High school was a whole new world. The kids from the country schools came to high school in town, so we had a lot more students. We had clubs and sports with lunchtime meetings, although I didn’t do any sports. I was a girl and girls didn’t do sports. Zero. I ate school lunch most days. But then, my parents purchased Mickie’s Fountain, across the street from the Junior High School, and I started helping my mom during lunch time. School lunch was about 50 cents, and my mother kept pace with the cost, so hamburgers jumped to 35 cents, fries 15 cents and a dime for a coke. I helped Mom at Mickie’s at lunch and then worked at Sanders Fountain after school, getting full training for being a waitress in my adulthood. My dad was so happy. He planned for me to stay in Emmett, get married and wait tables. Good money, he said. Bad idea, I said.
That didn’t work out so well, and went to Texas for college, became a Marine, then a teacher…more school lunches. It was 1977 and school lunches cost about s dollar, but I was a teacher, so paid a buck fifty. By then, things had changed, and the delicious home-made lunches, raw veggies and wonderful desserts were no longer. School lunch subsidies had taken hold, and the lunch ladies ordered ready-made meals, often frozen. They reheated and served them. They were okay, filled your stomach, but were not as tasty as before. Free and reduced lunches were available. Many students left the high school campus and drove to town for a burger and fries, which would run about $2.00, while the subsidized school lunches remained lower. Kids didn’t like the pre-made school lunches and one day I witnessed a group of students order and pay for double lunches at the counter, go directly to the garbage can and dump both. It was their way of telling the lunch ladies to do something different. I don’t recall that anything changed.
I don’t claim to be a school lunch expert, but I’ve eaten plenty, and observed the changes through the years. I think they are healthier now. The lunchroom ladies do a good job, so with this blog, I want to say, “Thank you, Ladies, you do a good job.” I hope the students say it, too.
