The "Creamed Peas & Eggs On Toast: School Lunches!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  My wife, Carol, was sitting across from me in our "Beach House" with her grocery shopping list and asked what I could eat for meals next week.  I told her I would love some of the old foods that we used to eat for lunches at Brecht Elementary School.  "I'm not making that creamed peas and eggs stuff again!" she told me.  So, where did that ever come from in the first place.  Well, it was back in the early 1950s that I entered Brecht Elementary School in Lancaster County.  I was a shy, skinny little kid, much like today.  The schools were beginning to feed the baby boomers and had to ramp up production in a big way.  In addition to traditional hot lunches, they began to serve cold lunches which might have included a variety of sandwiches, cottage cheese, pork and apple salads and ice cream.  By 1952 school lunches had become a $415 million business.  In some school districts, private companies began contracting with schools to supply them with school lunches.  But, in the Manheim Township School District, of which Brecht Elementary was a part of, they designed all the schools with a cafeteria that had a kitchen for food preparation.  

A lunchbox and canteen similar to the one I had as a child.

It was about this time that metal school lunchboxes with western themes, cartoon characters and even Barbie dolls painted on the outside were popular.  I remember having a Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox with a canteen inside of it to hold my drink.  If you were a "packer", you would bring your lunch to school so you didn't have to stand in line for your lunch.  Back then school lunches for children were rich protein heavy dishes like cheese meatloaf, sausage shortcake, ham and bean scallop and creamed peas and eggs on toast.  

Another, older style type of lunchbox.

It is during these years that I developed a craving for certain school lunches and during the summer months my mom would make a few of them to keep me in the same mindset as if I were eating in the school cafeteria.  Then along came the late 1950s and early 1960's and high school meals began to become ethnic with foods such as pizza, enchiladas and chili con carne.  Our high school cafeteria was a neat, almost square space with a glass see-through room in one corner where the faculty ate.  There were two lunch lines to speed up the food service.  Some kids brought their lunch in a brown bag, but most "bought" their lunch.  Some of my favorites were meatloaf and mashed potatoes and fish sticks with tartar sauce.  And, to my disappointment, the creamed peas and eggs on toast were cut from the menu.  Perhaps too much protein in that meal.  There were a multitude of cooks, or at least it seemed that way.  And, it seemed all they did was make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which were one of the most popular lunchroom meals.  After I graduated in 1962, schools began to add fast food chain type meals such as fried chicken and hamburgers and fries.  In the late 1960's I returned to the Manheim Township High School as a teacher and ate in the same cafeteria for a few years before another new building was constructed and along with that a modern new cafeteria.  In the 1980s the federal lunch program was the big deal with nutritional guidelines that classified ketchup as a vegetable.  

Many of today's schools are filled with vending machines that
carry fast-foods as well as carbonated drinks.

Processed food creations seemed to rule the cafeteria with chicken nuggets, cheese- burgers and rectangular pizza slices on the menu daily.  Also remember chocolate pudding, Jell-0 and sliced fruit drenched in syrup on the daily lunch line.  Some children still brought their lunch, just like I did years before.  Those that brought their lunch had items such as Hand-Snacks, Fruit Roll-Ups and pouches of Capri Sun to drink.  Some kids even had Lunchables which were the thing to eat at lunch.  In the 1990s many schools allowed McDonald's, Little Caesar's, Chick-fil-A and others to set up shop at schools in return for lunch-room funding.  Those that still brought their lunch had items such as Dunkaroos, Gushers, Eddy Grahams and bottles of Squeeze-It.  Much the same as before, but with differnent names to the products.  Most were barely healthy foods.  At the start of the 2000s half of all U.S. schools offered fast food in their cafeterias and children bought sodas from vending machines in the cafeteria.  It has reinforced the obesity rate from the late 1990s.  In the past 10 years the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act was signed by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama made kids' nutrition and fitness a priority with her Let's Move campaign.  Healthy eating gained cultural momentum.  

Schools from K-12 now have salad bars for lunch.

Some schools, such as Manheim Township's K-12 schools, began to feed students with meals that would have seemed downright strange two decades before.  Salad bars fill even the elementary schools of many school districts.  But, there are still those that refuse to buy school lunches and carry their lunch to school with them.  This year, with the COVID virus still a huge concern, my graandson, who is in 10th grade, carries his lunch to school and eats with a few friends on the bleachers in the gym in order to distance himself from the cafeteria crowd.  Actually the cafeteria is rather bare since every open area of the school is used for eating lunch.  Perhaps the lunchbox might come back into existence once again.  Hey, I wish I still have my Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox. I just might have sold it to the highest bidder. Just maybe!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.