Mystery meat on Mondays; pressed turkey slices on Tuesdays; square pizza on Wednesdays; hamburgers on Thursdays; fish sticks on Fridays. Some school lunches were better than others, but you could just about guarantee that somewhere around the lunchroom, someone would be willing to trade what was on his or her hard plastic tray for your homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Some days, the thought of an achievement test was more appealing than what was on the school lunch menu.
"Spinach day was the worst," remembers Susan Palmer Pierce, adding that there was often some little boy or girl who would revisit that spinach later in the day. All was not bad, though, says Pierce, an alum of Woodmore Elementary School.
"The day the ladies made sugar cookies was the highlight of the week. The warm aroma would fill the halls at Woodmore."
Kristen Nauss, director of nutrition for Hamilton County Schools, is originally from Pennsylvania, so when she moved to Chattanooga, she says she quickly had to learn about Southern food staples.
"Biscuits, pinto beans and turnip greens were never on school menus when I was a kid in Pennsylvania," she says. "We didn't have nearly the amount of choices that Hamilton County Schools offers each day."
The Hamilton County school system serves approximately 28,000 lunches per day to its students in elementary through high school, with another 13,000 meals served if you add in breakfast and snacks, Nauss says.
(READ MORE: Hamilton County Schools lunch staff to see pay raise)
"School meal requirements are much stricter than they were a decade ago. We now must offer more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and have limits on calories, fat and sodium," Nauss says. "The changes were initially difficult for students to get used to, so schools had to get more creative with their menus and recipes to meet the needs of students.
"However, we now know the changes have had a positive effect. A recent study showed that of all the places children are eating, school meals have the highest diet quality, beating out food bought from a grocery store or restaurant."
The top favorite in Chattanooga over the decades was hamburger day, according to an informal Facebook poll. Now, Nauss says, it's pizza and nachos.
"It's no surprise kids love pizza," she says. "But they don't suspect our nachos. We use whole-grain tortilla chips and offer lots of different toppings for students to customize their nachos, so they are a real crowd-pleaser."
Rusty Scott remembers his mother giving him a $10 roll of quarters to buy his meals at Brainerd Junior High School. This was back in the 1970s when 50 cents would buy him two big yeast rolls, two milks in those little cardboard cartons and an ice cream sandwich. Now, lunches in Hamilton County Schools are $3 for those not on the reduced- or free-lunch program. A la carte options, which include cookies, fruit, hummus, yogurt and chips, are extra, but must meet calorie, fat, sugar and sodium standards, Nauss says.
(READ MORE: Chattanooga-area readers share their best restaurant meals of last year)
Chattanooga resident Shawn Ryan says it's been several decades since he was a student at Northwoods Elementary School in Doraville, Georgia, but he still pictures "the gloppy, goopy, slimy lump of boiled yellow squash they served on Thursdays. It makes me gag a bit just thinking about it."
Hamburger day was one of Ryan's favorites, but some burgers were better than others. "Sometimes they were smashed flat like someone had stepped on them."
Private schools have always had their own meal infrastructure, hiring their own catering services, so some, such as Girls Preparatory School and Bright School, were not part of the city or county schools' nutrition program. Food could range from just tolerable at McCallie during the years of Slater Catering in the 1960s and '70s -- "We ate what they gave us, but the best food and times were on camping trips with Mr. Pat (math teacher Houston Patterson)," says Rusty Triebert, class of 1970 -- to outstanding at Bright School.
"I loved Thursday's ground steak with mashed potatoes, green beans and applesauce," remembers Candy Evans Redd.
And, adds Tom Clarke, "Don't forget Bright's dessert -- chocolate icing on graham crackers."
REMEMBERING SCHOOL LUNCHES
Chattanoogans have tasty memories -- some good, some not so great -- about school lunches in their past.
-- "The homemade hamburger buns at Northside Junior High in the late '60s were so good. The baking of those buns would make all three floors of the school smell wonderful." -- Karen Tredway Fogo
-- "The yeast rolls were the best at East Ridge High School." -- Jimmy Tawater
-- "Mrs. Donald ran the cafeteria at GPS when I was there and everything was delicious! Turkey tetrazzini was a favorite. And we could have as many desserts as we wanted!" -- Sally Tucker Stroud
-- "I hated the smell of the cafeteria at Ridgedale Elementary and don't remember anything outstanding." -- Lynda Steele Vincent.
-- "My best memory of lunch at White Oak Elementary in the late '50s and early '60s is the wonderful smell of yeast bread rolls. Whenever I smell yeast rolls, my mind takes me back to White Oak School." -- Pat Hagan
-- "The smell of rolls is mostly what I remember at Spring Creek Elementary. I liked the burgers and hated the square pizzas." -- Rusty Vincent
-- "Someone in my class at Fairyland Elementary said his split peas were too hot. So another boy placed his hand over them to check it out, then the first boy smashed the second boy's hand into the peas. You can imagine what happened after that! My least-favorite food there was the split peas." -- Mary Sellers Gott
-- "I loved the tomato soup at Lookout Mountain School. And because I was always hungry, I tried to like the Spam. I remember putting mustard on it, but it was always pretty gross to me." -- Susan Scott LeSourd
-- "At Normal Park Elementary, they served an awful salad: green Jell-O filled with shredded carrots and raisins." -- Mary Jane Thomas Ruch
-- "Pizza day at St. Jude School (was a favorite). I have no idea what meat was on the pizza, but it was great for a kid. And occasionally my mom would give me ice cream money, and I'd get a cup with those flat wooden spoons." -- Kim Greuter
-- "I wasn't a fan of the Thursday hamburgers at Woodmore Elementary. We called them soy burgers. I seemed like the rare times we had pizza, it was OK. And I recall the brownies not being too bad." -- Clint Cooper
-- "Signal Mountain Elementary used to serve a lot of boiled okra with tomatoes. Ugh! But City High had the best, biggest yeast rolls." Karen McNichols Day.
-- "Marie in the canteen at McCallie made smash burgers -- a hamburger patty smashed between two pieces of white bread. And she would also make vanilla milkshakes with a raw egg for the wrestlers." -- Jeff McCall
SCHOOL LUNCHES: A TIMELINE OF TASTES
The idea of feeding children who might otherwise go without is at the heart of the public school lunch program. In their earliest days, these programs were run by charities and welfare organizations that wanted to prove that good nutrition was key to a good education. Here's a look at how things have changed.
-- 1894: The first school lunch program launches at Boston Latin School, the country's oldest public school.
-- 1900: The idea of school lunches spreads to Philadelphia. A typical daily menu might feature pea soup, rice pudding and lentils.
-- 1920s: Immigrant children become the focus of school lunch programs to "Americanize" their tastes. They are taught the food in their homes is out of the mainstream of American life.
-- 1930s: In the height of the Great Depression, President Theodore Roosevelt's New Deal includes buying surplus produce from farmers to serve to hungry public school students. The effort proves so successful that every district puts a school lunch program in place. A typical lunch might include vegetable soup, peanut butter sandwiches and, occasionally, fresh fruit.
-- 1946: President Harry Truman signs the National School Lunch Program, which provides low or no-cost meals to children in need.
-- 1950: The nutritional quality of school lunches plummets with the rise in prepackaged foods and the government's demand to lower food costs. Meals are calorie-dense, with choices such as cheese meatloaf and sausage shortcake.
-- 1962: President John F. Kennedy creates National School Lunch Week, placing a focus on healthy meals for children and encouraging them to make healthier food choices.
-- 1966: The school breakfast program begins. Typical menus include fresh fruit, pastries, yogurt and cereal.
-- 1970s: A government report finds that school lunches, which are high in fat and low in iron, "fall far short of providing minimum nutritional standards," with such offerings as chili dogs, fried chicken and sugary fruit gelatins. This is thought to contribute to growing rates of obesity.
-- 1981: The Reagan administration cuts federal funding for school lunch programs. In order to meet nutritional standards, schools begin considering ketchup as a vegetable.
-- 1995: The Department of Defense is called upon to make provide freshly grown produce to public schools.
-- 2000s: Fast food enters school cafeterias. By 2005, an estimated 50% of schools have McDonald's, Chick-fil-A and/or Little Caesars.
-- 2014: The Smart Snacks in School standards create guidance around nutritional values of foods sold in schools outside the federal meal program, placing limits on acceptable amounts of fat, sugar, sodium and calories. The regulations are an effort to fight the national obesity epidemic.
-- 2018: President Donald Trump rolls back Obama-era regulations limiting the amount of sodium content and eliminating the mandatory inclusion of whole grains in school lunches. (This action is reversed in 2020.)
-- 2020: As COVID-19 upends life, many schools offer remote-learning students curbside pickup of meals.
Contact Anne Braly at abraly@timesfreepress.com or annebraly.com.