Hot Lunch!

Remember hot lunch?

Seriously, late 70s, early 80s public school hot lunch. You know the menu was approved by some DC bureaucrat appointed by Jimmy Carter. Because when Reagan came, every Friday became "hamburger day." By the time I was in high school, Costco had been born in the Pacific Northwest, and we were eating unfrozen burritos, unfrozen pizzas, and pre-formed unfrozen hamburger pucks.

But before that was the golden age of bureaucratic rubber-stamped public school cafeteria food.

• Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Tomato Soup
• Turkey and Gravy over Mashed Potatoes
• Po' boy and Tater Tots
  
• Chili and Cinnamon Roll
• Spaghetti Casserole (with rosemary)

How funny. And then came those hamburgers and chicken patties.

For a while, my grade school was test-marketing plastic bags of milk. That's right. Instead of the cartons, they gave us these sealed clear baggies which we would stab with pointy straws, an then crush as we drank them. They were the same straws as capri sun straws, but the baggies themselves looked like breast implants.

We didn't explode too many baggies, but somehow the technology captured our imaginations as dangerous, somehow more dangerous than cartons. 20+ years later, I realize now the potential for mischief is the same whether it's baggies or cartons, but somehow the administrators went back to the old-fashioned carton technology for everybody's safety and to everybody's relief.

I'm going to K-Mart now to get some flannel pants.