The lunch ladies always knew your name.
The trays were beige.
The milk was ice cold.
Everything smelled faintly like bleach, mashed potatoes, and cafeteria pizza.
If you grew up in Iowa anytime from the 1960s through the 1990s, school lunch wasn’t just food. It was part of childhood. Some meals were incredible. Some were borderline punishments. Most of them tasted exactly the same no matter what town you lived in.
The weird part?
Almost all of us miss it now.
