Old-school lunch tray

Entree compartment (Pizza Burger goes here)

Dessert compartment - dollop of chocolate pudding stuff goes here

Milk carton receptacle

String bean or other institutional canned venchtables compartment

On very special occasions - french fries! Other than that I don't remember the purpose of this region.

Silverware - nothing sharper than a long-suffering fork. But we went to school before the plastic-spork days.

Mrs. W. found a big stack of these at the D.I. on 45th (D.I. = Deseret Industries, the LDS-church-run thrift store network, for you non-Utahns out there). They look just like the trays I used all through elementary school, same compartment scheme and bakelitey material and bilious color and everything. 50 cents a pop! She brought home two of them, but we might go back and fit out a Service for Eight.

I have no idea how old these are. They do look identical to the ones I used in the 1970s, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that these things had a more-than 30 year / 10,000 meal service life.

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Comments

PolishNinja says:

Those are great!
When I worked at restoration hardware at Trolley Square we sold new versions of these like crazy! They were a lot more than the deal you got!
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

king_aevil says:

I have no memory of those trays at all. I recall they had several compartments only on account of your story about getting a bum rap for sloshing your dregs between the wells.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

samwibatt says:

The hell of it was, I was accused of sloshing the dregs between the wells, but I was really only making a gravy-wave in the big compartment. I was considering adding that story to the description but typing it out made me oddly tired. Maybe I'll put that in later.

(On edit: I see a "bum rap" can be a false accusation, so I may have misunderstood you - but the story has a couple layers of that going).

For some reason I remembered these trays very clearly. Julia mentioned that she'd bought them before I actually saw them, and I asked her all the particulars about them, getting all of it dead on. They were bigger than I thought, though - I figured that my memories of them were from when I was little, so they'd be smaller than I thought, so they're actually bigger than that smaller than I thought they'd be. If you could but dig it.

PolishNinja - I'm amazed these were such a big seller. Were the trays you sold just like this? Maybe a lot of people are nostalgic about their elementary school days.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

Jim Rees says:

Goes very nicely with the tablecloth too.

I usually went home for lunch but I guess kids don't do that any more.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

samwibatt says:

That backdrop is some excellent contact paper Mrs. W. found and thought would be useful for just this kind of shot. Glad it worked!

I don't remember anyone going home for lunch from my school - there was no bus service supporting that, and I lived just far enough away that it would have been a crunch to walk there and back and eat. I think the school was determined to keep us on the grounds the whole day, too.

The school was plonked right in a suburb, so surely some of the kids lived close enough to go home for lunch - I just don't remember any doing so.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

king_aevil says:

The mere mention of Pizza Burgers makes my stomach lurch to this day.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

samwibatt says:

I knew that'd get you. Heh heh heh.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

arts enthusiast says:

That contact paper -is- cool! I went home for lunch most of the time up through 5th grade, but would bring a sack lunch when the weather was bad. My school had no cafeteria. It was the old Forest School at the corner of 21st S. and 9th East (Smith's is there now). They closed that school at the end of my 5th grade year, and I had to go to Nibley Park. The only bright side of changing schools was hot lunch! Most kids hate school lunch, but the pure novelty of it had me excited. We probably used these trays!
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

samwibatt says:

I brought lunch from home for a few years - I still have one of the lunchboxes, an old - sorry, vintage - Hong Kong Phooey one. I switched to the school lunch after third grade or so.

Complaining about lunch is one of those cherished school traditions - the food was sometimes nasty, but on the whole I liked it. Maybe that's the rose-colored rearview mirror of middle age talking, though.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

βomobob says:

Forget the tray, man, I wanna see more of that Jetson's tablecloth.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

samwibatt says:

That's just a little length of contact paper (right off the roll, which is just out of shot to the left). We're thinking of covering every surface in the house with it.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

Dania Hurley says:

Things in this post that are awesome:

* the contact paper
* the idea of covering every surface in the house with it
* the tray
* Hong Kong Phooey
* Pizzaburgers
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

samwibatt says:

Hee hee - thanks!

The Pizza Burger remark was a little-brotherly jab at king_ævil, who is in real life my older brother. From the name, a "pizza burger" sounds kind of tasty, possibly very tasty, but the reality was pretty grim. They'd get a bun-heel, heat dry it to granite hardness, then deal a glob of ground taco-like meat with an ice cream scoop - an ice cream scoop! - onto it and mash in a few sad strands of grated cheese. It was foul, and served whenever they didn't serve something else, if you could but dig it. There was a less commonly served variant called "Taco Burgers" which were identical except the cheese strands were joined by a few lettuce strands.

I didn't like pizza burgers and complained about them bitterly, but to the brother they were the very Devil.

I need to find my Hong Kong Phooey lunchbox and photograph it. Flickr needs this!
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

Dania Hurley says:

There isn't an emoticon to express the horror in my face after hearing that description. Our school did pizzaburgers, but they were like, a standard cheeseburger with pizza sauce and shredded cheese on top. Ours were good! I feel so bad for you two.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

samwibatt says:

I had wondered if there were places where the name "Pizza Burger" was used more honestly. It makes me feel better about the world to know that there were! Thanks.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

king_aevil says:

I think it was the dry bun that got me about Pizza Burgers. You are much too generous: granite comes in around 6 or 7 on the Mohs Hardness Scale (depending on the composition), whereas Pizza Burger buns rated at least a 9.5.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

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Old-school lunch tray

Comments

PolishNinja says:

king_aevil says:

samwibatt says:

Jim Rees says:

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king_aevil says:

samwibatt says:

arts enthusiast says:

samwibatt says:

βomobob says:

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Dania Hurley says:

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Dania Hurley says:

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