What's for Lunch?

by John B. Anderson

Lunches during my career at Lakeside were pretty uneventful for the most part. My mom was at home then, so I always got a good meal at noon. I remember a couple of walking home to lunch incidents that were adventuresome. When my family lived on Manistique Avenue, we had to walk down Oak Street and down the hill to get home. We kids had to walk past old lady Heron's house everyday. She was cranky. On day, she yelled, “You kids stay off my lawn!” Then she picked up some dog turds and threw them at us. We told our parents what had happened. It wasn't long after that we heard that old lady Herr on was vacationing at the Newberry Funny Farm.

My family moved to Arbutus Avenue, so I went home to lunch another way. One day, Pat Boynton showed me his middle finger and asked, “Do you know what this means?” I answered in the negative. He said, “It Means, 'Suck the Bag'!”. I filed this information away for possible future use.

Bill was a late comer to Lakeside School. On Bill's first day, Ron explained to Bill who was King of the Playground. To reinforce that assertion, Ron said that he would explain it further on the way home to lunch. I said, “Bill, I know a short cut. We sneaked through Curley's back yard from Oak Street to Manistique Avenue, then through Cowman's back yard to Michigan Avenue – Bill's house. After all of that sneaking, Ron was waiting for us at Bill's house. Bill acknowledged who was King of the Playground. Bill and Ron became life-long friends at that point.

Lunches at junior high and high school provided many options. Lunch hour was 11:30 to 12:45, so we could hike the mile to home, eat lunch, and hike the mile back to school. (This is the part where my boys would say, “...and it was uphill both ways, right Dad?”). The first option was when Bill and I rode our bikes to school. I had to cook my own lunch, which amounted to rotating a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli, a can of Beanie Weenies, of a can of roast beef hash. After consuming these culinary delights, Bill and I would rush off to school, trying to get there early enough for a little pool hall time.

Another good option was to eat lunch at the drug store. Inez Coffee would fix me an egg salad sandwich with lettuce. Super good. I, then, would read all of the comics that the drug store offered. I loved Inez when she told me that I looked, “intellectual,” when I wore my glasses. I even ate hot lunch with Cerona and Larry sometimes. I remember being bored in college prep English, when we could clearly hear the garbage truck outside. We softly said, “Hot lunch is being delivered.”

One of the best options for lunch, was to take a bag lunch. This might consist of a big bologna sandwich with lettuce, (really wilted by lunchtime,) and mayo. Liver sausage was another favorite, but the go to lunch was peanut butter and jelly. These were accompanied by a fruit of some kind. We would consume our lunches on the bleachers in the old gym, then Dick Berger would break out the basketballs. These pickup games were rough. The country kids didn't understand about fouls, so, when anyone went up for a shot, he might have two opposing players hanging on him. It was good practice for us in a real game. I have to say, at this point, that the master of making a bucket with two people hanging on him was Phil Carlson. Phil was bleeding profusely, when he scored a bucket against Munising.

The long lunch period provided an ample opportunity to catch up on things at the pool hall. I didn't smoke at that time, as I was playing sport, but there was plenty of second hand smoke to go around. As we got older, we graduated to the other side of LaFoilles, so we could talk to the girls.