One of the “experiences” of high school life was eating in “Gerty’s Cafeteria”. Gerty was the name of the lady who managed the cafeteria where most of the students ate lunch each day. Most of the students traveled to school by bus and instead of carrying a lunch, we ate a hot meal prepared by Gerty and her helpers in the cafeteria. The helper ladies would put a helping of each food item on a tray. You couldn’t pick and choose. Everyone got exactly the same thing.
As I recall, the cost for lunch was thirty-five cents. If we wanted an extra carton of milk, it cost five cents extra. We could either pay by the month (which my parents did most of the time) or we could pay each day. One of the ladies who worked for Gerty kept track of who had paid and who ate lunch each day. She knew us all by name by about the second week of school. She would mark off one of the days on a card until you had eaten thirty times, then we had to bring her another check for the next month or pay as we came through the line. More than once I had to borrow money from Terry to pay for my lunch.
Gerty’s reputation reached my tender ears when my brothers were in high school. Both Ted and Terry attended Snowflake Union High School before me, but any high school student could relate “ tales of horror” about the cafeteria. Gerty had been the “cafeteria lady” for at least a hundred years by the time I got there. Gerty was known for a “no-nonsense approach” to feeding a bunch of students. Cutting into line was not allowed. If caught, you either went to the back of the line or didn’t eat. No one got extra food until everyone had eaten. You’d better not be critical of Gerty’s food where she could hear you, or you might end up in tomorrow’s meatloaf. Gerty ruled the kitchen with an iron fist and the cafeteria helpers knew it.
Gerty’s food ranged from “really good” to “pretty awful”. Probably the best thing she cooked was her dinner rolls. Her rolls were “really good.” She would paint the tops of the rolls with melted butter so they were served pre buttered. We usually got two rolls with our lunch. A couple of other things she cooked that were pretty good was a sort of tamale pie served with shredded lettuce on top, and she also made a fried bread similar to a sopapilla that most people liked. They were hollow and we could eat them with honey. The only problem with “Gerty’s Cafeteria” was that you never knew what she was serving until you got down to the cafeteria. Most of us didn’t have much time to eat or much choice about whether to eat in the cafeteria or not, especially when we were poor freshmen and sophomores. We just had to eat whatever she served. Most of it was probably nutritious but it wasn’t much for taste. I don’t remember anyone dying from eating the food, but I know there were some upset stomachs from time to time.
By the time we were juniors and seniors, we had learned how to get a little more of the “good stuff” from the workers and Gerty. A little flattery went a long way. If you bragged something up, she would sometimes give you a little more of it or an extra piece.
Thinking back, I suppose Gerty was unnecessarily maligned. She was really a pretty nice lady when you got to know her a little bit and if you obeyed her rules. She had to put up with feeding about three hundred hungry and grumpy kids each day and she had to do it in an hour and a half. She probably really did a good job feeding us with a balanced, if not tasty, diet for a minimum cost. We would never have admitted that at the time. When I smell freshly baked rolls, even today, I think of “Gerty’s Cafeteria.”