“I wish I could go eat at the old school cafeteria there on Main St.,” a Hennessey grad said. “But it was torn down.”

He said that after I’d told him about the story I was writing on the old “lunch room” at the Lacy School (1924-68).

Now, all I can think about is our school cafeteria during my junior high years in the late 1950s in Oklahoma City at Classen High School (7-12).

That was also when I noticed all the strange stuff that my classmates did with their food.

I can still remember Linda, one of the red-headed twins. She scooped all of her mashed potatoes onto to some corn, stirred it all up, then ate it with a spoon. It almost looked worse than the baby food in a jar that Momma fed the babies at the church nursery.

A big change from grade school was that there was a fast lunch line, and a long lunch line (but maybe they called it a hot lunch line).

The fast line was sandwiches and chips, as I recall, and the other one was food on a plate, and milk (which probably wasn’t optional).

Another girl, whose name I can’t remember, and don’t know if we had any classes together, but she brought her lunch and sat right across from me. She was precise about how she arranged her food before she ate it, and I thought that was strange.

But then again, Donna, my best friend since the second grade, and I, were both East side transfers to North side Classen High School. So we didn’t know any other kids there other than Jerry from church, and he was a boy!

Then we found out that kids from three other elementary schools were in our school, and they were missing their elementary school friends, too.

Soon I had a friend who wore a retainer in her mouth just like Donna’s, and Donna had a friend who wore glasses, but they weren’t as thick as mine.

Us seventh graders were all Greenhorns, or that’s what the eighth graders called us.

Those kids already knew where their lockers were, remembered their combination so they could get their books, and knew the closest stairway to get from their first floor class to the third floor.

Soon we were the eighth graders, then the ninth, and those freshman years were the best times.

By then we were true blue Classen Comets, and eligible to join a pep club. But, not the same one due to a name-drawing process. Donna was in the Comes, and I was a Classette.

However, we got to be together after the games for school mixers (dances). During our first one everyone did their versions of The Twist, and each of us thought we were the best. I can just see all of us dancing like there was no tomorrow.

And, guess what: the mixer was in our school cafeteria!

All of our required standardized tests, SAT and ACT tests for college were also taken in our cafeteria.

And, just as it is in schools now, during our third or fourth hour classes we could smell those hot rolls all the way from the first floor cafeteria to our third floor math classroom.