Oklahoma Dreaming: The Cafeteria Ladies
by Donna Schoenkopf
I was told when I first began substitute teaching at my favorite school that I would get free breakfasts and lunches. And (it turns out) coffee and snacks during the day.
When the office manager first told me this, a little smile played across her face.
Her words didn’t register in my thick brain until I actually partook of lunch.
Yeah. It’s that good. (Not that the crappy poem I’ve just written does the cafeteria food justice ... it’s just that it INSPIRES poetry.) I’ve said before that it was the best restaurant in town and I wasn’t kidding.
Let’s begin with breakfast, shall we?
Want a continental breakfast?
Fresh perked coffee, some kind of light, sugary, blueberry scone or coffeecake loaded with nuts and raisins or maybe pumpkin bread—with nuts! (where do they GET those nuts??)—or something new and warm and yummy good. Great big hunks of it.
Or would you like something hearty? Some pancakes? Something healthy? The yogurt with granola and fruit! Perhaps some fresh cooked oatmeal?
And some days they have that old Oklahoma standby, biscuits and gravy.
All homemade.
At recess time and you can drop by the cafeteria for another cup of perfect coffee and maybe some more of that coffee cake.
Lunch time!
Did you want the baked potato (as big as a football) with butter and sour cream and bacon bits and chives and salsa?
OR do you want the homemade spaghetti?
And why not top it off with a lovely salad, freshly made, from the salad bar with ALL the fixings ... extras like sliced hard boiled egg, spinach, cottage cheese and pineapple, olives, beets, little baby carrots, pickles, okra (ugh), shredded cheese, six kinds of salad dressing and on and on and on ...
And the kicker? I swear to God, HOMEMADE croutons. Homemade. Crispy and seasoned with the hand of an artist. Everyone eats them. By the pile.
It’s like this every day.
Something else is wonderful in the cafeteria. There is no Styrofoam waste. Not a shred. Meals are served on colorful WASHABLE plastic trays. Forks and spoons are metal, coffee is in CERAMIC mugs, and iced tea in real plastic glasses. (What has this world come to when you say, “real plastic”?)
(For almost twenty years I ate in public schools in Los Angeles. The mounds of Styrofoam ate at my conscience. I brought my own plate and silverware and cup for years. Finally, one day (I hate to say this), I gave up.
I never got over the guilt of eating off those damn trays. But the guilt weighed less than the yearly hauling of my utensils, day in, day out, only to see no change at all. Anywhere. I should have made a stink at the board meetings, but, again, so busy, working so hard, worried about kids, tired, tired, tired.
I ate off the Styrofoam tray, threw away the plastic eating utensils and drank from the plastic coke bottle from the vending machine.
No wonder I gained 40 pounds.
God punished me.
THAT’S how much I hate Styrofoam waste.
But I digress.
Back to the business at hand.
The Cafeteria Ladies
There are four of them.
Happy Manager always has a big smile on her friendly face. She is tall and big. Her hair is pulled back tight and wears (yes) a hairnet. But the hairnet is practically invisible. I had to really look to see it.
The three other women are tall too, all with their invisible hairnets and scrubs-style uniforms. They are handsome women, lankier and not as gregarious as Happy Manager, but nice and sweet.
Those three appear to be Native.
(The term Native is used by the kids at school and the school has a high percentage of Natives. It is a new term I’ve never heard before. The school kids have reinvented themselves. They don’t call themselves Indian. They don’t call themselves Native American. They are Native. How cool is THAT?)
I told the Cafeteria Ladies after my first meal there that they have a truly great cafeteria. They smiled broadly. Happy Manager says that she got into trouble at her last school for making special treats for the teachers and that she loves it at this school because she’s SUPPOSED to give teachers special treats.
And, she says, it’s in the teachers’ contracts that they get free lunch.
One day the Ladies told me that they were regular customers over at Homeland Foods and that there was a cashier there who looked just like me. My twin worked at checkout stand #1. And she was mean. Not nice like I was.
The very day they told me that, we (daughter Rebecca, grandson Jimmy—both here to visit—and I) all went to Homeland Foods and up to checkout stand #1, and there she was!
I thought she did look like me.
Becca said no.
Jimmy said yeah, sort of.
And then I told the mean checkout lady, and she was mean ... actually curt, which translates to mean in this Land of Nice ... the whole story. In a nutshell, of course.
This made Bec and Jimmy almost faint with embarrassment.
But I enjoy that sort of thing ... saying things people don’t expect. It gave my twin something to think about. A gift from me to her. Made her smile.
But I (everybody ...) DIGRESS!
They (THE CAFETERIA LADIES) all really like each other. I’ve NEVER seen one cranky or bothered. They pass the food out to the little kids with good humor and ease. No one ever barks or snarls. When I come to claim my own meal, they always ask if I want something special on my tray. No, it’s great, I say.
I decided to write about the Cafeteria Ladies last week.
I had some time to spare before my class started. I walked into the cafeteria. Breakfast was over. Everything was shiny clean, scrubbed. The Cafeteria Ladies were sitting at a lunch table having their coffee. I joined them. We all sat around talking. They love the school. They love what they do.
And one tall, beautiful Native woman says, “And we all love the Lord.”
Oklahoma.
Ya gotta love it.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
Great story! My oldest granddaughter went to pre-K and kindergarten at this same school and I think they gave her the best start she could’ve had. And yes, she’s Native.
2009-05-05 by Nancy Reese Barrett