Cole Elementary School Cafeteria

On school days, between the years 1977 and 1982, you could find me dining my lunch hours away in the assembly room-​cum-​cafeteria at Cole Elementary, home of the Bulldogs. (RIP, 1981, mascot «K.C.». The sure-​footed English bulldog strutted the school’s halls for many years with his adoptive owner, School Principal Mr. McTeer, who, unfortunately, may also require an RIP.)
Excluding holidays and sick days, that’s about 196 days of patronage so the 1 star rating is not prematurely appointed.
Indeed I gave Café Le Bulldog many chances to tidy up their Sloppy Joes — and their service.
Although a fan of the tater tots, spaghetti with garlic bread, and chocolate cake, I received more than one too many overcooked vegetable and one too many spoiled or leaking half pints of Vitamin D milk. The cole slaw (potential play on words neither recognized nor utilized in my 5 years of attendance) was bogged down in mayonnaise; the weiner wraps were unredeemed by the most generous application of mustard and the Sloppy Joes were, not unlike Irritable Bowel Syndrome, a chronic disappointment. Being the young connoisseur of starches that I was, I compromised by scraping the gloppy brown diarrhea-​like matter off the bun and nibbling in a circle around the stain the best I could.
The cafeteria was ruled by a stern hostess who received the unfortunate moniker «Raisin Butt». I suspect agriculture as much as anatomy played a role here, for raisins were — and still are — a major food export of the San Joaquin Valley. Many of us toted raisins in our lunch boxes and we would receive even more raisins in our trick or treat bags on Halloween. Finally, as very few of you will remember, Fresno (big city neighbor of Clovis) is the title of a 1986 TV mini series about dueling raisin estates, starring the illustrious Carol Burnett.
Needless to say, there was a draconian flair about the cafeteria which sometimes made the entire dining experience — from the process of securing one’s seat to ingesting and digesting one’s food a little bit terrifying. In fact, I’d like to start a research project to determine just how many of today’s adult IBS sufferers were produced at Cole Elementary during Raisin Butt’s reign.
Once you sat down you stayed in your seat. Hot lunch kids weren’t allowed to mingle with the bagged lunchers. Boys weren’t allowed to mingle with girls. Or at least, boys were relegated to one side of the table and girls the other. Food was not to be shared or exchanged, although I witnessed many a pie given up under the table for the right corn dog. If a ruckus could not be pinned on the responsible party we all paid dearly — well above our $ 1.00 lunch ticket price — by observing a silent lunch hour.
And if a ruckus COULD be pinned on the responsible party, well…
one time I opened my Bee Gees lunch pail and a spider dashed out from beneath my cellophane-​wrapped sandwich (my Mom the joker!) and, naturally, I was startled and screamed and was ordered to sit on the stage, facing my 200 or so dining companions, all of whom were so very… childish, and finish my lunch which, in the later years (minor footnote), always included a Capri Sun.
This experiment in public humiliation made me cry a little bit but it also made me stronger. Now when I frequent a restaurant alone, and look up from my meal to catch a fellow patron’s lingering gaze I scream, «What in the goddamn hell are you looking at?!» from my quiet little corner.
Still, despite the challenges and unpleasantries of lunching at Café Le Bulldog, and despite the appeal or lack of appeal of the day’s prix fixe menu, there was always a long line to get in. They did a stellar repeat business; I often saw the same faces ahead of or behind me in line, across from me or at the next table over. Some of their names I knew; others I did not. I had a lot of dining partners here over the years, none of whom I’ve retained as friends, colleagues, love interests or playmates.
Mostly I just watched the minute hand tick on the clock mounted above the exit door.
Which reminds me…
Time for recess.