It's Manager's Special in the Cafeteria

Public school is starting soon, and I keep thinking back to the food or what passed as food being served on those plastic, rectangular, partitioned lunch trays at my elementary school.  Every now and again, there'd be styrofoam trays; I never undestood that.  That's a digression though.  Cafeteria food is the purpose of this post.

The food was usually beige.  There were no naturally colorful foods like fresh fruits and vegetables.  The only colorful food items were ketchup and mustard, and there seemed to always be a piece of yellow cake on holidays with artificially colored icing.

Each month, I'd get a calendar with the foods listed for each day of that month.  If you went to public school, you did too, probably. The foods I remember most are tacos, tater tots, french fries, vegetable soup with gritty ground beef in it, chicken tenders, fried chicken, baked chicken, corn dog, mac n' cheese, rectanglur sliced pizza, whole milk, chocolate milk, fruit punch for an extra 25 cents, sloppy joe's, syrupy fruit cocktail, icy birds (a freeze pop), ice cream cups, country fried steak, soybean hamburgers or cheeseburgers, and I'll never forget my favorite, Manager's Special!  That was usually cobbled together left-overs.  Oh, and there was always a choice 1 or 2 entree for that day, and you told your teacher that morning what you choice was.  You knew better to ask for the other choice when you got to the lunchroom, because of the Cafeteria Manager.

I was frightened of our Cafeteria Manager, Mrs. Hatchell.  She had a glass eye, and, no, I'm not making this up.  Sounds like the makings of a replacement for Chef on South Park, but this is no joke.  There was the milky blue, glass eye, the stout figure, steel wool hair, stained apron paired with sensible crepe-soled shoes, husky voice, and a roughness toward kids. God knows, I'm glad she  slinged that roughness around.  Kids can be assholes about things like glass eyes, but her rough ways scared everyone.  There were circulating rumors that if you pissed her off she'd take out her eye and shove it in your mouth.

Mrs. Hatchell was the keeper of the fruit punch for an extra 25 cents, and you had to ask her for a fruit punch, tell her what flavor of fruit punch (orange or purple), and hand her your 25 cents.  I always had 25 cents, because I always wanted the fruit punch, but a lot of days I was scared to ask, so I saved the 25 cents and got chocolate milk.

I wouldn't mind having a elementary public school lunch today, as an adult, to see whether the fare has changed or has remained the same.