Sunday, January 30, 2011

Chapter 13 - Lunch at the Clinton Inn

1950 - 1951




The Eagle Tavern in 2014

     You wouldn't have wanted to sit at my table in the lunchroom during my years at Greenfield Village. It worked like this: We were assigned seats at tables of varying sizes, seating perhaps six or eight students, for a week at a time. The teachers sat at a separate table in the corner right next to the door.



     After arriving at our assigned tables, an older student would tap each table that sat quietly hands folded in our laps to join the single-file lunch line. Until your table was “ready,” the student wasn’t allowed to tap that table. As you can imagine some children had a hard time being quiet waiting for the tap, which made them rather unpopular as lunch companions, though not as unpopular as I.

     Going through the lunch line was probably a happy occasion for most children but for me it was a cause for great anxiety. It took a true dedication of spirit to perfect the role of Fussy-Eater and I had developed it to a new art form. My scent-hound keenly-honed nose could catch a whiff of an Excruciating Entrée, Soppy Side Dish or Disgusting Dessert from twenty paces and I would happily have skipped the meal altogether on such a day -- not an option.

     We weren’t given a choice; just forced to take whatever lumps we were given. My mother’s repertoire at home was limited to meat-and-canned vegetables so any form of casserole or anything ground-up other than hamburger was suspect. If it smelled like fish (my mother never cooked fish in her life), I wouldn’t touch it. If the vegetables were foreign like Brussels sprouts or domestic like spinach, broccoli and asparagus, they were cut up and left on the plate. I remember tapioca pudding with horror. Oh, and corn fritters, sticky with oozing maple syrup, aieee…I still shudder. (Andy says that’s why she doesn’t like syrup to this day; and Lucy’s mouth still waters when she thinks of them and she says “Weren’t they great!”)

     Early in my Fussy-Eater career, I learned that no amount of wheedling, whining, cajoling or threatening behavior could move the hearts of the lunch ladies to withhold the horror(s)-of-the-day. Thus with trays full of whatever we were doled out, we obediently made our ways back to our assigned seats and enjoyed or suffered through our meals, depending on your point of view. How I loved the rare good day when every item on the tray was edible! O Happy Day!

     Up to this point the system worked pretty well. At the end of the meal those older students were once again assigned to tap the tables, this time signifying that the meals were eaten, that the students could take their trays to the kitchen and walk (not run) to the outside to play using their free time to enjoy all kinds of fun activities until their respective hand bells were rung indicating school was back in session.

     How the free time was enjoyed between table-tapping and bell-ringing is pure speculation on my part since I remained at my table inside Clinton Inn. Here’s how it worked: the table-tapping student would walk by and all the students at my table except me would be finished with their food, quietly sitting with their hands neatly folded in their laps. The student table-tapper would see that I wasn’t done so they would move along to the next table, tap them and those children would happily depart. All the students at my table would, in varying degrees and in sometimes creative ways, urge me to eat up so that they could play. Soon our table would be the only table left in the entire dining room except for the teachers’ table.


     Then a teacher would feel sorry for the table-tapper and my tablemates and excuse everyone but me. I would sit there, bored and lonely, wishing I were outside and watching the teachers file out except for the last one who then with a great sigh of exasperation would release me just in time to hear my teacher’s bell signifying the end of free time. Yes, it took true dedication to stick to the Path-of-Most-Resistance but I was a true Fussy-Eater. When on a particularly bad day I would weaken to the point of tasting a tiny tidbit of the “horror-of-the-day”, I’d gag or even vomit a little, which still didn’t get me excused.

     No, you wouldn’t have wanted to sit at my table in the lunchroom during my years at Greenfield Village.

     I shouldn’t leave this section without mentioning the 4-5 month-long respite from this ordeal which occurred during one of our early elementary years. The lunch ladies went on strike (YOU GO, GIRLS!) and my mother was forced to make box lunches. That was a wonderful time. Best of all, we carried tin Lone Ranger or Howdy Doody lunchboxes although they became pretty disgusting with rust over time. It didn’t matter. The only item we were required to add to our lunch at the Clinton Inn was a milk carton. I liked milk. Yes, that was a really great period of time in the annals of my Lunchroom Log.

     By the way, I don’t think I was directly responsible for the strike (it needs to be said). Although my father was a labor negotiator at the time, I believe he was prevented from involvement in that particular union-management conflict by home biases -- my mother wanted the strike settled so she wouldn’t have to continue making her children’s lunches; I wanted the strike to continue for obvious reasons.



     I have two other memories of lunch in the Clinton Inn, both of me approaching the teachers’ table and having gained the attention of all those adult listeners, being laughed at. One time I remember telling them that I thought Mrs. Tennant, about age 30 at the time, had to be older than Mrs. Doremus, over age 50, because she was so much taller. I can’t imagine why I felt the need to share that piece of wisdom.
The second time was when I felt sick and said “I think it’s Bladder.” Until that particular day at the teachers’ table I thought the name of this disorder was simply “Bladder.”

2 comments:

  1. One of our classmates, who didn't like salad, found a way around having to eat it. He put it in his pockets and brought it to school the next day and stuffed it under the cushions in Chapel!

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