School Lunches

At Ivanhoe Elementary School everyone brought lunch from home. We did not have a cafeteria. Your lunch and what it contained and how it was transported were matters of great importance.

I vacillated between the generic brown bags and the metal lunch box that included a Thermos. The lunch boxes ranged from The Lone Ranger to Barbie to Superman.  It was important to have the right celebrity for each year.  No one wanted to be carrying a Davy Crockett one when they were in the sixth grade. I can still remember the smell of sour milk that could never quite be removed from those Thermoses.

My gastronomic fare in those days ran a fairly routine gamut, but one of my favorite lunch additions was a wax paper bag of cherry tomatoes with a miniature Morton salt container.  I loved those shakers because I always wondered about the little girl with the umbrella on the label and, more so, because I loved pouring the salt into my hand and just eating it.  My mother, who seemingly was unaware of how much salt those baby shakers held would have been appalled.  One container probably equaled the recommended sodium intake for five heavily sweating long distance runners.

For some reason, the PB and J phenomenon was not part of my upbringing. If we had peanut butter sandwiches that was what they were. Peanut butter. With lettuce.  Rarely was there jelly or jam.  The bread was always whole wheat.  Tuna sandwiches were a mainstay, as well as left over chicken, roast lamb or turkey. Sometimes we’d get cold meatloaf sandwiches with yellow mustard.  Those were a favorite.

One day our neighbor from across the street brought over some fresh venison that he’d shot.  My parents informed us, as they served it up for dinner, that we were eating deer. They both seemed quite excited about having this rare treat. BAMBI was the first film I had ever seen and the prospect of eating her did not sit well.  The next day in my school lunch was a sandwich that had dubiously dark meat.   Racked with quilt about all the starving children in China, I chucked it into the garbage bin. My mother later told me that the sandwich was turkey.

As I reached the fifth grade a new invention began to grace our lunches.  Kraft Cheese “N Crackers.  I always felt like a bit of a big shot when I’d pull one out, tear back the plastic and watch the other kids look enviously while I spread the plasticy orange substance onto the crackers.

Every now and then, the PTA mom’s would have “hot dog day” and we could buy a dog and potato chips for 25 cents. The entire school would smell of boiling Oscar Meyer franks. I quickly learned not to call them “weenies” as we did at home.

Going off to junior high school was a frightening experience, especially since I was the family pioneer.  My fears were slightly offset by the fact that Thomas Starr Jr. High had a real cafeteria where students could make their own food selections.

The cafeteria was manned by the ubiquitous lunch ladies in hairnets who stood behind glass and over steaming trays of the day’s entrée.  My favorite was shepherd’s pie. Sometimes I would just buy a couple of bowls of canned spinach.  The Jell-O was topped with spray whipped cream that seduced me into the occasional purchase. Fruit cocktail was another staple of the dessert section. It was in the cafeteria that I discovered roast beef could contain gristle and something that looked like little tubes of vein. These never, ever, showed up when my mother made a roast for Sunday dinner.

By the time I moved on to John Marshall High, a cafeteria didn’t hold the same allure. It was a noisy room with a long line at lunch and would be transformed into a table less floor space for evening dances. I cannot remember one meal that I ate there.  I do remember the big, doughy cinnamon rolls that were sold for “nutrition” break.  There was a little campus store that sold school supplies; pencils, folders, paper and Luden’s Cherry Cough Drops.  I could down a box in one class period with no cough symptoms to be had.

Confessions from the Closet

I have a confession to make.  I have kept something in the closet for quite a while and I am ready to let it out.  I have always wanted to be a cowboy.

 

CowGIRL never quite cut the mustard.  Fringed skirts and white holsters were not my to my liking.  I wanted the real thing.  As a child I was satisfied with a couple of hours with Roy Rogers.  But no one, meaning me, ever wanted to be Dale Evans. Many years later, after Roy was long gone and Trigger was stuffed in a museum, she became an evangelist and I felt vindicated.

I wanted the smell of leather, horseshit and gunpowder.  I wanted to hear the creak of the saddle, the taste of dust in my mouth and the vista of Monument Valley. My fingers ached for the reins and the saddle horn. But I was in Silverlake.

 I’d never get a pony, a horse or even an old nag.  My best hope was one of those life-sized plastic horses that stood outside of camping stores. I knew nothing of guns, but, to me, the smell of caps exploding was like a connoisseur wafting the finest brandy in front of his nose.

When I was 15 and spending the summer in Mesa, Arizona with relatives while my parents went to Europe, I bought my first pair of cowboy boots. I think at J.C.Penney’s.  I kept those boots for years and actually rode a few horses wearing them—albeit in Griffith Park..

 As for the de rigueur belt with the large silver buckle, I was set.  When I was in the sixth grade my father went on a business trip. Where or why, I do not know.  But when he returned, he brought me a tooled leather belt with a large “silver” buckle with boots on it.  I remember it was size 28.  That meant I could use it until I was in my mid twenties.

So with the boots and the belt—holsters were no longer a viable possibility—I had half the kit.

Hats ran the gamut from the red ones with the white stitching around the sides—which—even as I child I disliked for their inauthenticity--to the stiff pressed felt of the “real” thing. One summer when I was in college, my mother sent me a Fourth of July gift.  Besides the See’s suckers in a firecracker, there was a check.  I used that money to buy a cowboy hat.

To be continued.

Winter Sports a la Silverlake

Growing up in Silverlake, within view of the Hollywood sign, did not offer a lot of winter sport experience.  I think the coldest it ever got was around 40 degrees and the big thrill was being able to see your breath….but not smell it.

There WAS the one time that it hailed and I ran down to the garage to find a pair of wooden skis that my father must have used in Alaska before he met my mother.  By the time I ran back up to the ice covered lawn and put on the ill-fitting skis, my “powder snow” looked like a melting lemonade slushy.  So it was on Saturday afternoons spent watching ABC’s WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS that I became an aficionado of ski racing. 

At that time in the sport, the French were dominant.  This coincided with my French 3 class taught by a very cranky Czech with a thick accent that resembled nothing one would hear in Paris.  He kept a stack of Paris Match magazines on a table conveniently located behind my desk.  Mr. L. was obviously bored stiff and teaching until his Social Security would kick in.  Kids cheated like mad, passed notes and had appalling pronunciations. He didn’t seem to care.  I spent the time in class “reading” Match.  I was proficient enough to get the gist of the captions.

The oversized magazines were filled with stories and large glossy pictures of Jean Claude Killy, who was movie star handsome.  And with whom I was madly in love.  There were also articles about sister racers Marielle and Christine Goitschel. Between WIDE WORLD OF SPORTSS and the Match magazines, I became quite the expert on the French ski team.  I could pronounce their names with nasal accuracy, knew who was fastest, and learned about ski wax.  Of course, some of this valuable knowledge was gained while ignoring the drone of Mr. L’s Czech accent trying to get verb conjugations into our adolescent brains. I paid the price. 

I don’t want to sound like a goody goody, but I was one of the few who didn’t cheat in the class.  Trust me, Mr. L was either ignorant or apathetic to notes written on hands, papers and desks.  Cheating wasn’t a challenge and it just wasn’t for me.  I preferred my covert sessions with the Match magazines.  That Mr. L even noticed that I reading these rather than listening to his diabolically boring lessons on how to say what we had eaten for breakfast, is something I greatly doubt.  He didn’t want to be in the class any more than any of us did.

In later years, when I had a slightly wider view of the world, I thought of Mr. L and wondered if he had fled the Nazis or survived war horrors that were beyond our 9^th grade ken. He may have experienced a hell that none of us baby boomers would ever be able to comprehend. For this, his reward was teaching a bunch of kids who thought he was a boring old fool. 

I got a D in French 3, had to go to summer school, but still remember with fondness those wonderful foreign magazines that took me to a different place.

The last time I was in Paris, on three different occasions, I was stopped by a French person asking me for directions.  I was able to help---in hopefully non Czech-accented French.

Field Trip to the Tuna Factory

Field trips were a big deal that spanned several weeks.  Not the actual field trip, but the preparation.  First, there was anticipation of a day out in the real world.  Then came the parent permission form to be taken home, signed and the date added to the family calendar.  Then my mother would buy special blue lunch bags—not the regular brown ones, but a cool blue-green color that matched the bottom of most of the swimming pools I’d seen.

On the appointed day of the educational experience that was to rouse us from the comfort of Ivanhoe Elementary School, my mother would pack a special lunch for me.  It would contain a love note wishing me well.  The outside of the bag would be decorated with her simple drawings of sailboats or something related to the trip.  This trip was to the tuna factory in Long Beach.

I boarded the big yellow bus with my classmates and we each clutched our brown bag lunches—though, of course, mine was in an ocean blue bag.  We were driven through and over the freeways of Los Angeles that still amaze me, and down the coast.  At a large park we exited the bus and ate on dirty public picnic tables.  Soon after we re-boarded the bus and headed for the tuna factory.

I don’t remember what the special lunch was, nor the love note.  I only remember throwing up on the bus and suddenly becoming a pariah. My classmates screamed with revulsion.  I was immediately given a seat up in the front with the teachers.  And was told that I was “bus sick” and needed, from there and then on, to sit at the front of the bus.  If only Rosa Parks had had such a teacher.

The field trip was ruined for me.  I was humiliated, ashamed and embarrassed. Frankly, I did not care about the cans of tuna I saw going down steaming conveyor lines.  Now, in retrospect, I wonder what the heck Mrs. Berkheiser was thinking.  How was this to enlighten the children of Silverlake.  Maybe, forty years later, they would choose a healthy brand of dolphin free tuna.  But back in those days the only dolphin we knew of was Flipper—and the ones we saw at Sea World.  Tuna was a mayonnaisey staple that turned my stomach more than once. Had I even known about the dolphin connection, things would have been much different.

School buses became synonymous with barf and field trips lost their appeal.  To this day I wonder why school buses are the only form of public transport that don’t require seatbelts.  Now, as a teacher, I avoid field trips like the plague.

Charmed, I'm Sure

My mother was obsessed with appearances.  I think it was because she had been a fat kid.  In her later years I used to see if I could get through one phone conversation with her that someone’s “looks” weren’t mentioned. But I’ll hand it to her, she always looked good.

By the time I entered high school, this obsession was directed at me. Apparently, I needed a bit of refining and thus started our weekly treks to the Sunset Strip charm school of Mary Webb Davis.  I wasn’t a fat kid, I was a tomboy and I didn’t fit the acceptable mold.

My mother would pick me up after school --and after she had taught all day-- and drive me down Hollywood Boulevard to the Sunset Strip.  She must have really thought I needed improving.

Sometimes these drives were not happy. I’m not a big talker; I’m comfortable with silence.  My mother was not.  I think she found my silence rude and one day, as we drove by Hollywood High School, she lost her temper at my quietness and forced me to “make conversation.”

I suppose today Mary Webb Davis and her crew would be called “life coaches.” The teachers were conventionally beautiful, pointy breasted, well-groomed, stiff haired blonds and apparent experts of everything I didn’t know that I needed to know. I am in no doubt that many brain cells were sacrificed by theses women from decades of breathing in hair spray, polish remover and eyelash glue.  I doubt a single one could name the capital of Canada.  Can you?

I learned valuable skills like how to accept a compliment (not a skill that I have much need for), how to walk down stairs gracefully and, most importantly, how to apply false eyelashes. I learned to drink a large glass of water with freshly squeezed lemon juice first thing in the morning—a sure cure for bad skin and the evils of the world. I mastered the art of using an emery board;  only sand in one direction. This was long before botox—I can only imagine what they might have suggested to a 16 year old—and liposuction.  Breast implants were unheard of. 

Sure enough, I looked better for a while. I wore false eyelashes to school, got a boyfriend and used peroxide to highlight my “dishwater blonde” hair which was in the de rigueur style.  And I’m certain my mother thought she was providing me with a wonderful experience.  I’ve just always wondered why my sister never got the same wonderful experience. 

Ivanhoe Teachers: Part Two

Mr. L, my sixth grade teacher, was rather intimidating.  He was a tall, Asian man who was basically the only source of testosterone in the school.  I have based my teaching—for I am a teacher-- on how to not be like him.

He was well respected by the powers that be—Mrs. Joyner, the principal with her sleeve always stuffed with Kleenex.  We had a  “student teacher” who was a menopausal nun and about as exciting as eating cornflakes without milk.  Between the two of them, my last semester of sixth grade was not a fun one.

Mr. L loved to assign projects that were due the day after a holiday vacation.  That Christmas, my family drove to Yosemite.  On the drive there, before my father put on the chains—a skill that always amazed me—we were almost killed.  We hit a patch of ice on a mountain bend.  My mother summed it all up:  God!  Oh God…Oh, my God—an adjective added as the car slid out of control and neared a cliff.  And when the car stopped just at the edge of the road I think I was probably thinking that death would have been a welcome relief from Mr. L’s looming due date.

Safely ensconced in a cabin in the valley under Half Dome, just below where the “firefall” used to be, I tried to enjoy my Christmas vacation. I skied at Badger’s Pass, skated on an outdoor rink in a Norwegian sweater and ate meals at the festively decorated lodge---all the while worrying about that damned paper I was supposed to write about Rio de Janeiro.  My stomach churned.  And then I realized that I had the stomach flu, and so did my entire family.

Mr. L did something that, to this day, still irks me.  Every Friday he and the student teacher nun would give a math test.  I never finished in the allotted time.  And every Friday he would mark my unfinished questions as wrong.  I never have understood how something not done can be “wrong.”  Then, every Monday, he would divide the class into two halves.  The nun would take one half and he the other. It didn’t take too much to realize that the class was separated into the smart and dumb groups.  I only had to look around and I did not appreciate where I had been placed.

One of the oddest days in Mr. L’s class was the one when all the girls were sent to the auditorium.  There, innocent of what was to come and curious as to why the boys had to stay in class, we were shown a movie in black and white with a pompous British narration that proclaimed we were about to become women.  I was mortified that Mr. L would need to know this, and slightly appalled with the sudden realization that Mr. L. had a penis.

Politics: Part One

Politics were not something that my family engaged in.  We talked about school and friends and the news.  I remember sitting at the breakfast table and my mother telling us that a great lady had “passed away”—Eleanor Roosevelt. My mother could never say, “died.”  She was the queen of euphemisms.  And I remember her pain when she explained to us about the bombing of the little girls in a church in Birmingham.  But politics never entered the conversation.

My very first glimpse at “politics” was when I walked by the kindergarten enclosure at Ivanhoe Elementary School.  One of the kids was wearing a large button that said “Elect Pat Brown for Governor” It may have even said “re-e-elect.”   His father was a judge who would go on to mentor another judge who would come to national attention with the O.J. Simpson case.

The next time I became aware of politics was when I was in the fifth grade and in Mr. C’s class.  One of the students was wearing a large VOTE FOR KENNEDY button and it fell off.  Mr. C said  “That’s where he belongs…. on the floor.”   He also told us that in our lifetime a man would walk on the moon.  I thought he was nuts.  And, besides, my parents were voting for Nixon.

Shortly before President Kennedy was assassinated, I asked my mother who she would vote for in the next election.  She was no longer a Nixon fan.

Another political memory were bumper stickers that said “IMPEACH EARL WARREN.”  I thought he must be a very bad person.  And I learned what “impeach,” meant.

I don’t think there is a descriptive title for the group of people who were just a tad bit later than the beatniks and just a tiny bit earlier than the hippies.  But my friend’s parents were in this category.  They slept on a mattress on the floor, dogs were everywhere and the walls were black. Instead of putting butter on their corn they rolled the cobs in the stick of butter.  And they served me ox-tail soup for dinner.  Our families were quite different.

My friend’s cousin had a VW Beetle with a sunroof and we were allowed to stand up in the car and stick our heads through the roof while he drove on the freeway. I never told my mother about this. From this girl I learned the words “atheist” and “agnostic.”   I think we were twelve.

 Later, the cousin and the family acquired a Chinese junk that was berthed in Long Beach.  On a weekend visit, we went to the Pike and took in the rides, cotton candy and oddness—all barefoot.  My mother would have been appalled.  And after, with very filthy feet, lying in the upper bunk on the junk, I listened to Petula Clark singing “I Know A Place” on the radio while the waves rocked me to sleep, This was despite my fear of having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night on a strange junk. 

This friend was the one who informed me about a “proposition.”  It was to make sure that landlords didn’t discriminate against potential renters because of their color.  There was a rally in my junior high auditorium and my parents came.  Things were starting to change.