The Cafeteria: A Memoir of School Lunch

And a baseball career on the brink

Inside a cafeteria lives a cabbage smell. Not long ago, I toured my junior high school, George J. West, and knew when I was close to the cafeteria.

George J. West Jr. High

You can read more of my days at the school in my book, My Story Continues: From Neighborhood to Junior High School.

The musty, steamy, stale smells hovering along the low ceilings conjured up recollections of lunch hour.

The cafeteria was in a basement that also housed the art metal and woodworking shops. The sounds of band saws mixed with the clatter of trays in that subterranean haven.

The “caf” housed rows of tables interspersed among metal poles. The low ceilings accommodated fluorescent lights that gave the crowd a waxy paste or a pasty wax; maybe both.

At the bell, we rushed from classrooms, raced to lockers, grabbed our lunches, scurried down the stairs and tumbled into place, boys to one side, girls to the other by nature, not design. It was noisy and hectic.

We tossed lunch bags on the tables and jockeyed into the food line for a carton of milk. Or on pizza day, a slice.

Those with trays stood in line along a steel rail that defined the kitchen where pinkish-clad ladies served lunch. At the beginning of the line was a stack of trays adjacent to the steaming bins of food.

Behind the bins were the busy, paper-hatted women. Behind the servers was the kitchen where the smells originated.

At the end of the parade was another hatted-pinkie sitting at a cash register.

I carried my lunch except on pizza days.

Mom made me a baloney sandwich with French’s mustard on Tip-Top

or Wonder Bread,

wrapped in wax paper and nestled it in a huge Kraft brown bag. The tangy mustard gave the bland baloney a kick. The snack was the highlight. Hostess Twinkies or a Devil Dog.

As we ate, we chatted about the Red Sox, Yankees, pro football, Otto Graham, Y. A. Tittle, Dante Lavelle, Jim Brown, radio shows like Boston Blackie, The Phantom or The Shadow.

On Wednesdays, we repeated Milton Berle’s jokes from his Tuesday night show. On Fridays, it was Hopalong Cassidy.

We looked to the other side of the room to see if the girls were watching. They never were. There was Maryann flipping her ponytail as she chatted.

I played a kissing game with her once, but she had to teach me.

I imagined her walking over to say, “Hi” in front of the other boys, but that never happened. In fact, nothing like that ever happened.

“Do you think Maryann likes me?”

“How should we know?”

“She asked me to go to the movies.”

“Do ya think that’s a clue. Did you say yes?”

I opened my mouth. “I don’t know.” Milk from the straw snapped out and strafed Steve.

“How can you not know if you said yes or not?”

“I don’t know.”

After lunch we stampeded to the excitement of fist baseball in the schoolyard, a blacktopped area where we used our fists for a bat.

But it was a Spaldeen, not a hardball

The rules were the same, except there was no pitcher and no one struck out. Why? Because we lobbed a Spaldeen and struck it with a closed fist, trying to hit the wall.

The bigger kids tossed the ball straight up and took a roundhouse overhand swing to launch the missile. Home runs were rare as a hard-hit ball off the wall might ricochet to the second baseman in the small yard.

A littleguy, I never hit the wall. I threw the ball sideways, swinging horizontally to sneak a grounder between the fielders. One day, I shuffled to the plate, tossed the Spaldeen, hit it and reach first base, a rarity.

My goof . . .

As the next batter came to the plate, I leaned for a lead, and the first baseman tagged me. I got picked off by the hidden ball trick. Stunned, I stood motionless, red-faced, as embarrassed as if my pants had fallen. “Damn it,” some big yelled.

With tears welling, I took off and headed to the cafeteria. It was now dark, empty. I sat in the corner and rested my elbows on the table with my head between my hands. A pinkie appeared. “Anything wrong, son?” I was surprised by her soft voice. “We’ll be closing the doors shortly.”

“I’m fine.” I was comforted by the solace of the cafeteria. From chaos to cool, dark and alone was good.

The day I took the tour, I noticed that neither the lighting nor the smells had changed, the food line was the same, and the tables were in place.

I pictured the teachers, heard the clang of dishes, the rings of the cash register, the tapping shoes, tumbling chairs and the din of kids talking, shouting, whistling and laughing. I wished I had a carton of milk, a Devil Dog and a gaze the girls.

There I was sitting in that corner.

It was the time when the sandwich and a hopeful “Hi” from a girl was the most important part of my life.

And maybe erasing the pickoff.

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