More from this year's dinner

Brother Jim sends along a photo he took at this year's Alumni dinner, of Ryan West and his "lunch lady" mom Olive.

Also, Jim warns that the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle's stories don't always live forever on the web, so I've taken the liberty of copying his column about the dinner so that it's sure not to get lost (shh ... don't tell the D&C). Here it is:

July 5, 2008

Love it or hate it, lunchroom food leaves its mark

LITTLE VALLEY — We met for dinner, but we talked about lunch.

The 109th annual meeting of the Little Valley Alumni Association last Saturday night was marked by talk of Sloppy Joes, fishsticks, macaroni and cheese with stewed tomatoes and something called a tuna boat that I don't remember eating but wish I had.

Those items came up because the association was honoring the "lunch ladies," a group of eight women (seven were on hand) who among them spent more than 100 years preparing and serving meals to the children of Little Valley, the village in Cattaraugus County where I grew up.

The intensity of our conversation proved that memories of school food linger long. We still are what we ate.

Counting kindergarten, I had lunch at Little Valley Central (a school that is now part of the consolidated Cattaraugus-Little Valley Central School District) for 13 years.

There may have been times when I walked home for lunch. There may have been times when I brought a lunch. But most often I bought, as did my three brothers and two sisters.

We were often eating food purchased by my father, the school principal.

He played the surplus agricultural market with the energy of an oil trader, buying cheese, turkey and other items in bulk. It was up to the lunch ladies to translate his stash into kid-friendly items.

They did well, the attendees at the alumni dinner concluded, though for sure, different classes had different memories.

Any graduate of Little Valley Central is welcome at the dinner, about 140 people came, the range of classes represented going from the 1930s to 2000, the last pre-consolidation year.

Those from the years before WWII went to the school before it had a cafeteria. Hence, their memories were often about walking home for lunch.

The post WWII classes could have been divided into the pre-pizza era — it certainly didn't exist when my class, 1960, was passing through school — and the post-pizza era.

No one could quite pinpoint the advent of the fishstick or the tater tot, both breakthroughs in cafeteria cuisine.

Vinegar-drenched Harvard beets seem to have traumatized at least two decades of Little Valley graduates. Sloppy Joes were a staple even longer. (Quick question. Is it good branding with children to name a food item "Sloppy?")

All of these items were mentioned as we alumni played School Lunch Bingo, filling in squares on a bingo-like card with the names of the meals we remembered.

After we finished our cards, Kevin Andrew, the association president, called off the names of actual Little Valley lunch items. The first few people to complete rows won prizes.

As a journalist, I felt compelled to ask lunch ladies to help me with the names of some menu items.

They looked at me as if I had tried to cut ahead in one of their lunch lines, and my sister Elizabeth turned me in to the authorities for cheating.

However, they did get me up to speed on tuna boats, which turned out to be tuna with melted cheese in a hot dog roll.

Not that their help did me much good. My sister Martha did no investigative reporting and won. Go figure.

Then again, she is a retired schoolteacher, someone who has spent many years in or near school lunchrooms.

Maybe I should ask for a recount. Or maybe I should just let things slide.

Either way, I know that someday I'm going to try one of those tuna boats.

I might have a little applesauce on the side — my father bought vats of the stuff.

But please, hold the Harvard beets. I've been to school on that lunch item and, at least for me, it doesn't pass the taste test.