Cookies & Lunch Boxes

I just enjoyed a chocolate sandwich cookie as an afternoon snack. I had a flashback moment to early elementary school and taking a little waxed-paper packet of sandwich cookies to school for morning recess snack...........I also had memories of sneaking bites of those cookies during class! Sometimes there were perks to having two grades in a classroom. When the teacher was focused on the other grade level, you could occasionally sneak something by.

For reasons I never quite understood, for all 12 years of my school career the high school and junior high kids had lunch before the elementary kids. I always figured the younger kids had smaller tummies and should eat first. But I always enjoyed those recess cookies.

During my mid-elementary years, I took my lunch occasionally. I can't remember why, but I would imagine it was my decision. There was a green tin lunchbox in our smokehouse (our term for that catch-all shed in the back yard) with a pop-off lid. I don't remember what I took for lunch, but it was probably a baloney or peanut butter & jelly sandwich......wrapped in waxed paper. It cost a few pennies, maybe a nickel, to buy a carton of milk from the lunchroom to go with lunch.

When we brought our lunch, we weren't allowed in the lunchroom except to buy our milk. That was another “school rule” I never understood. When we brought our lunch, we had to settle ourselves on the gym bleachers to eat lunch – the girls on one side, the boys on the other. The reason it never made sense to me was that there wasn't anyone keeping an eye on the kids in the bleachers. I don't remember there ever being any problems, but it just seemed odd.

While I don't remember what I took for my lunch, I have vivid memories of some of the others who did. There were siblings who seemed to always take their lunch. And I remember them having fried egg sandwiches in their lunch boxes. I have absolutely nothing against a good fried egg sandwich – but I want it hot, fresh off the stove, if you don't mind! A cold egg sandwich just didn't do anything for me.

In retrospect, I would imagine the brief times I took my lunch to school were the result of my finding the idea to be cool. We never knew ahead of time what we were having for school lunch. With our lunchroom in the same building as the gym, and the gym was the before-school gathering spot, we would occasionally get a whiff of lunchroom smells before school began. But normally, we wouldn't know what our lunch would be until we walked into the building at lunchtime. It was rarely disappointing.

I've mentioned before how yummy our school lunches were overall. There were very few things they served that I didn't care for – spinach, salad (the lettuce was fine, but I didn't really like the dressing), navy beans because they weren't really seasoned, and the school's chili. They always had an alternative choice of hot dogs on chili day.

The one thing that was done at school that most everyone loved was the apple butter. We were served most of our meal as we went through lunch line. But on the tables there would be bread, butter, peanut butter, and apple butter. On days where lunch wasn't quite to our liking, we could always fill up with bread, butter and applebutter. And if lunch was good – well, then, the bread, butter and apple butter made a terrific dessert!

I still have times when I crave apple butter. I haven't had any for awhile, but the fall weather is making me hungry for apple butter.