If you are too young to remember the “school field trip” then this doesn’t apply to you. Or you might not remember that you went to school at all, if that is the case, I know of a couple of facilities that will take good care of you which you might want to consider. You have to have a certain frame of reference that gives you an appreciation of what it really meant to have a field trip and to have a super covetous, yummy sack lunch to go along with seeing the world’s largest ball of yarn, or the zoo, or any number of events that you school deemed important in order to have well-adjusted children.
The school field trips were always an event that was looked forward too with great anticipation. The event, yes, was for “getting out of school” to be sure. But mostly it was an event that centered around the sack lunch. Kind of like the Kentucky Derby is kind of about horses but it is mostly about how to showcase the types and styles of hats that women will wear with all the fashion that surrounds it for the year. It seems that all children see themselves as being starved and never having enough food- which in my case was true. Normally we didn’t get a sack lunch, or for that matter lunch at all. We might get a crust of bread or the left-over oatmeal—there was always left-over oatmeal. But on those rare occasions when we did get the sack lunch for the field trip, I think my mom made some effort to make it worthwhile (at least in her eyes). Unfortunately, the competition was fierce and she just wasn’t prepared for the pro level. I mean it wasn’t like there were other kids to take care of or a house to maintain—those pesky details.
There was a certain protocol in the trading of items within the sack lunch caste kingdom. If one kid had pudding, and another had a drink then it could be traded for each other or to someone with somewhat equal items. But the brazen and uneducated slouch might ask to trade his bag of carrots for a fruit pie or Ding Dongs—which is not even a close trade. That would be like trying to trade a Chrysler Minivan for a high-performance Ferrari. Hostess products were the gold standard of the sack lunch kingdoms. The barter system was a complex mixture of Class Warfare with appropriate pecking orders, Keynesian Supply Chain Economics all centered around the slick-oily-bravado of a used car salesman plied together at the picnic tables. Those with nothing to lose sometimes came out on top where as the kid that had it all just didn’t know that everyone else didn’t have it all—it showcased the classic attempt of the redistribution of wealth. Some are just destined to be poor sack-lunchers for the rest of their lives.
Keep in mind these were the days before the advent of the “Lunchables” which are seen on the store shelves today. The marketers of today were the poor sack lunch tribes of yesterday—they fixed a terrible wrong of youth, but then they created a time-space continuum and black-hole of “its not good enough” from the next generational eyes. They created a paradox—you just can’t win the perceived injustices of the lunch kingdom. It seems that there were five social strata levels—ones with hard sided lunch boxes (the apex predators), ones with appropriately sized lunch sacks, ones that had the full sized paper grocery bags that were used to haul ore from the salt mines—you basically announced that you were carrying your lunch in a burlap gunny sack. Next the coat pocket lunchers and finally the ones that didn’t have lunches at all (these were the most dangerous)—they had nothing to lose.
The vehicle of the lunch was only part of the cool quotient, it was the treasure inside that was the denomination of cool. Let’s start with the sandwich, it was super cool to have your cotto salami or bologna sandwich inside of individualized plastic sandwich bag with lettuce, Miracle Whip, mustard all on white Wonder Bread. Next was a package of chips or if not a package, then another baggie of chips, again individualized- they weren’t just tossed into the lunch bag and crushed to death with the rolling can of soda. Next came either a piece of fruit or carrot slices or some finger food veggies (again, in another zip lock bag). Then the piece de resistance, a Hostess Pie, Ding-Dongs or Twinkies. And if your moms loved you enough you got an apple juice. The lunch box was made for that cacophony of goodness and the second tier was the “lunch sized” brown bag, everything else you might as well have, “born and raised with wolves” tattooed on your forehead which was then wrapped in an old burlap bag.
I, of course loved the field trips but the lunch portion was a slight embarrassment for me… this of course meant my parents didn’t love me. What I usually got was a sandwich made of homemade whole wheat bread that basically crumbled when sunlight hit it. It was always wrapped in wax paper and never in the very cool and convenient individually wrapped sandwich baggie. I probably got a half a cabbage or a full ear of uncooked corn to go with it and maybe a hunk of homemade cheese or homemade apricot fruit leather. Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing better that fresh whole wheat bread out of the oven with butter and honey or jam, but I just couldn’t haul around an oven to the field trip very effectively, else I would have.
The sandwich slices were larger than normal- sometimes approaching 1-1/2 inches thick because you needed that width to overcome the internal turgor pressure to hold the slices together, it must have been immense. Part of the reason the slices were usually cut an angle was because the knife “walks out” when cutting such large slices on a high wheat density bread, so in effect you could get a wide piece on top and a narrow piece at the base which means a complete breakdown in the morphology of the bread – I think it had something to do with covalent bonding of wheat, or the Coriolis effect on the spin of the earth. Whatever the real reason was, the perfect white Wonder Bread, it was like the Sistine Chapel in comparison to the peasant hovel with a thatched roof and dirt floor. Wonder Bread was the epitome of cool… so you can see, we never got that at home- my mom was trying to “take care of us” and “save us from” unhealthy foods…. I think she forgot that all kids live forever and there was no reason for concern. She also bought me Toughskin Jeans, with 1/8 steel mesh knees for reinforcements but that’s another story…
Now the bread or base of the lunch was only a part of the story, I think we only got peanut butter and honey… and that’s not a bad thing but envision this, you have, what amounts to bleu cheese consistent bread, crumbling in the presence of atmosphere and a peanut butter being spread on top of it. The brand of peanut butter of course was the Adams Brand—if you are familiar with Adams Brand, this is the peanut butter that doesn’t spread, it has a gravel type consistency that tears bread apart, they use Adams Brand peanut butter to sand the Space Shuttle motor housings—nothing smooth. Then the oily mess that sits on top of the gel doesn’t get mixed in very well either—there is no effective way to get a smooth buttery spread with Adams- it just isn’t possible. Like I said it has a smoothness of road base and I have heard that they use Adams brand peanut butter as the binder for wood chip pellets. Apparently, my mother was into health and nutrition so white bread and Jif or Skippy peanut butters were swear-words. There was on more than one occasion which we got a bread, butter and sugar sandwich—just let that sink in as to the oddity.
Not that all was the slog of indentured servitude was bad—there was one occasion that I did get a Cotto Salami Sandwich with chips, a drink and a Hostess pie in a proper sized lunch bag. That was when I knew that my mom loved me. It also happened around the same time as when ¾ of the kids were gone from our house, and that there was no more cabbage and all the leftover oatmeal was gone. Who knew?