Wax Paper and Warm Milk

I had to stay at school to eat my lunch. I couldn't go home because the walk was too far and my mother didn't drive. Those of us who had to stay were consigned to a room in the basement of the school building; 10 or 15 wretched souls condemned to the purgatory of the lunchroom. When the noon bell rang most of our classmates got to run home where they could eat in the comfort of their kitchens, or in the living room where they could watch TV.The older kids, the Seventh and Eighth graders who had money were lucky enough to go to D'Arpino's Luncheonette for a submarine sandwich and a Coke, and a chance to just "hang out".
The lunchroom was small and without windows. They kept the milk there in those wax-coated paper cartons, and it always seemed a bit warm. That was white milk anyway, and I didn't drink white milk. I had to have chocolate milk. Chocolate or nothing, so I always had a lunch box with a thermos full of the brown elixir. Nestle's Quick or Hershey or Cocoa Marsh syrup was the only way I could get the juice of the cow down. Some kids only had the brown bag, so they were forced to drink their milk straight, warm and vile from the carton. Every now and then my mom would fill my thermos with soup, so I'd have to buy a carton of white milk and endure the horrid stuff if I wanted something to drink. Most of the time I'd pocket the nickel and get a big drink of water at the fountain after eating. White milk was for suckers. White milk was only good for cereal and nothing else, except making ice cream and cheese.
I usually had a cowboy lunch box,Gunsmoke or The Lone Ranger or Bonanza. Later on I'd have The Flintstones and The Jetsons. The 3D lunch box was my favorite kind, with the images popping off the sides of the box so you could trace them with your fingers. The thermos bottle was cool to look at too, more scenes of your favorite characters in action.
Lunch would be a sandwich of some kind, on white bread and wrapped in wax paper. Whatever I had it had to have mustard on it. None of that mayo stuff for me. Warm milk and warm mayonnaise for lunch? No way, you've got to be kidding. Along with my sandwich maybe some cookies or a Tastykake and always a piece of fruit. Usually an apple or a banana, and of course my chocolate milk.
Some kind of chemical reaction would take place inside your lunch box from the time your mother closed it up until the time you opened it. The odors from the lunch meat and the mustard and the fruit and the cookies would blend together with the metallic smell of the lunch box to create this bizarre funk that permeated the lunchroom. The brown baggers had a smell too, but without the added zing of the metal.
No vending machines, no candy or potato chips or sodas, just lunch from your mom.
We had half an hour to eat, and then it was out to the playground for 30 minutes of daylight and freedom. In the winter, or whenever the weather was bad, you were forced to endure yet another half hour in that dreary little room.
If you had some money and were really fast, you could run down to the Pioneer Store and get some candy or a Popsicle; a quick sugar fix to get you through the afternoon.
When I reached the Fifth Grade I could ride my bike more often in the warmer weather, so I could go home and escape from the limbo of the lunchroom.
Mom would learn to drive in 1963, but school was almost over,so I'd have to endure.
In 1964 the school was being remodeled, so we were sent to use the Catholic school rooms at St. Margaret's, which was farther away, so I carried my lunch once more.
Gateway Regional High School would be built right behind my house, just yards away, and I rejoiced,I'd come home for lunch at last!
But it was not to be. School policy mandated that all students had to stay in the building during lunch period, and I was condemned to lunch room purgatory, to my wax paper hell.