Reply #9: Parochial School in the late 50's and early 60's [View All]

[mcscajun]

Lunch was by floor; file out by twos down the stairs to the basement lunchroom. Get a tray and take whatever was handed out to you as lunch for the day. Sometimes soup, sometimes a sandwich; a piece of fruit, stewed plums or fruit salad, a cookie or cardboard-wrapped ice-cream slice for dessert. Milk, always milk.

One nun at the entrance door and one at the exit.

Quiet conversation, finish your meal. Walk up to the trash can under the watchful eye of the nun at the door, who would send you back to your table if you hadn't finished everything; it was a sin to waste food. Right after lunch you'd hit the concrete paved playground to run around or at least get the fresh air until the nun rang the bell for return to classes.

High School beginning in 1965 was better: a cafeteria with a choice of a hot lunch of the day for .35, or you could buy milk for .04, an ice cream sandwich for .10 and bring your own sandwich or salad. One or two faculty monitors but seating wherever your group of friends had established their beachhead and loud, boisterous conversation until your 20-minute lunch period was over. Nobody checking what you ate or didn't eat.

Uniforms always. Brown oxfords with navy socks, dark blue navy wool jumper with white cotton blouse in grammar school. Long sleeved shirt and white gloves for special assemblies and high masses. Attendance at mass was obligatory with your class every Sunday; your parents attended their own masses in the main church while student masses took place in the basement chapel.

High school uniforms were still wool; skirts and blazers and white cotton blouses. Crisp pastel shirtwaist dresses for Spring.

No minorities in my grammar school; the school was pretty much solidly Irish Catholic with some Italian students. High School was more Italian-American with quite a lot of Irish, a smattering of Hispanic and what unfortunately were still called 'token' Black students. When lunch time came, the minority students would hang together, even though they might have friends in their homerooms and in afterschool activities.