Cafeteria: For Sustenance and Socializing

Cape Central High School cafeteria c 1964It’s fun to look at the faces in Central’s cafeteria in 1964, but it’s more fascinating to look at the variety of food on the trays.

I spot pineapple slices with cottage cheese and a cherry. The girl in the foreground has something on a bun, but she also has what might be two deserts and a Sealtest milk. Vicky Berry, second from left, has a copy of English Grammar and Composition just like the one on my bookshelf. I have to confess that I don’t open it any more now than I did then, but it’s comforting to know I COULD if I wanted to.

I hope that’s not a rolled-up gym suit in the middle of the table.

Is that Carol Klarsfeld actually studying?

Cape Central High School cafeteria c 1964I never saw Carol Klarsfeld with her nose buried in an Adventures in American Literature book like that before. She does not appear to be reading for pleasure. There is a couple in the background exchanging a meaningful glance. Or, maybe she’s just asking if he wants her desert.

Sealtest milk was a big seller

Cape Central High School cafeteria c 1964

I’m surprised at how many students are drinking Sealtest milk. Some trays have two and three cartons on them. I can’t quite tell what’s on the tray in the right foreground. I see some form of desert, a biscuit, something that looks like beans and, maybe, a piece of chicken. I saw chicken bones on another plate, so that’s a possibility.

That’s Bonnie Strom on the left. I went K through 8 at Trinity Lutheran School with her.

This looks like a freshman tableCape Central High School cafeteria c 1964

Those boys look too young to be in high school. Gary Schemel is in the center of the background.

Cafeteria photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the side to move through the gallery. Identify the people if you wish, but I’d rather hear descriptions of what they are eating.

10 Replies to “Cafeteria: For Sustenance and Socializing”

  1. Bill Kaiser and I started bringing our lunch to school to protest the lousy food in the cafeteria. We were looked upon as local heroes.

  2. On several of the images, I spy that dreaded staple ‘Jello with stuff in it’. But nowhere do I see the worst school cafeteria offering of all: Mystery Meat.

  3. Looking at these mid-sixties era photos reminds me of how kids were dressed up in hs and what a shock it was to see the difference on the campus of UW-Madison when I enrolled just a few years later. By then it was torn jeans and t-shirts or sweatshirts that had seen better days.

  4. I think I see Jane Davis in image 15. Also Bill Kaiser and Van Riehl in the background. This was not my era; I was class of 68 but Bill Kaiser and I were good buddies back then. I have no idea where he is now but I hope he is doing well. He was a true friend.

  5. My favorite lunch was to walk up to the quick shop on Independence, use my $.30 lunch money and buy a pack of Marlboros for $.20 walk across the street to the donut hut and buy 2 day-old donuts for a nickel. The cigarettes lasted a week.

  6. In picture #4 that is Charles Hensley ’67 and Kenny Baker ’67 in the foreground. In picture #8 that is Jim McAuley ’67 carrying the tray…

  7. The sandwich seen in mulitple pictures was the poor cafeteria version of Filet-O-Fish. The Sealtest milk cartons were those weird tetrahedron shapes for a while, but they didn’t stay around. I see fruit cocktail in one small serving dish and what looks like might have been peach or apple cobbler in another. Fried chicken and black-eyed peas appear to be on another plate.

  8. # 2 has Tana Austin Spiekermann’65 with Bonnie Strom. #13 has the late Gary Schemel’64 the first CHS to die in Vietnam. #15 has Tom Holt ’65 at front table-left, back table has Tom Hamilton’65, Van Reihl ’67, Danny Birk ’66, Doughty ’66. #2-couple in back ground is JD Crosnoe ’64 & Linda ?. #9 left is John Reimer ’64.

  9. Using Brad Brune’s system of numbering,the 4th line down, #2–the couple was J. D. Crosnoe and I believe Carol Birk Schmidt.

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