TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Veggie Praise

ADVERTISEMENT

By TOM JACKSON

Published: March 25, 2009

The report that Pasco schools cafeterias' veggie menu offerings meet with the approval of PETA2, the young radicals' branch of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, stirred an ancient, possibly instructive, memory.

Mrs. Pollock's third-graders at Tampa's William Jennings Bryan Elementary School were expected to clean their plates at lunch. This was not a problem for those of us who, unwilling to risk what might turn up on the school cafeteria menu on any given day, brought lunch from home.

As for the rest, sometimes the combination of the cafeteria's one-choice-fits-all menu and the clean-plate expectation provoked the invention of desperate measures. I am thinking particularly of what came to be revered as "The Cauliflower Catapult Caper."

Now, for an 8-year-old, a spoonful of cauliflower — white lumps on a stalk — makes a suspicious offering under the best circumstances, those circumstances being either battered, deep-fried and served with a side of ranch dressing, or properly steamed and presented under a generous ladle of melted mild cheddar. Neither method would describe cauliflower prepared at William Jennings Bryan Elementary School.

Instead, our cauliflower arrived in pasty clumps, the result, possibly, of having spent days boiling in some stainless steel vat, until whatever nutritional value that arrived with it from the field had long since escaped with a steam that smelled vaguely of old sneakers.

But what it lacked in ability to whet the appetite, William Jennings Bryan Elementary School's cauliflower made up for in astonishing adhesiveness.

Sticking Like Paste

First, let me establish this about the ceiling in the cafeteria of William Jennings Bryan Elementary School: Comprised of perforated square tiles (probably rendered from asbestos, but it was the '60s: who knew?), it covered an area about the size of a basketball court and was high enough to have accommodated the average grade-school jock's jump shot.

In short, as a target, the ceiling was remote, tempting and, as it turned out to the delight of that gaggle of 8-year-olds desperate not to introduce vaguely gray, overcooked cauliflower mush to their digestive systems, unexpectedly receptive.

Now, no one knows who first conceived placing a chunk of cauliflower on the handle end of his fork, then launching it ceiling-ward by slamming the tines with his fist. History also fails to record the ancient inventor of human-made fire and the wheel.

But the fact of it is it happened, and when that first piece of launched cauliflower stuck, rendering a soft, absorbent whumpf! against the tile overhead, a realization shot through Mrs. Pollock's third-graders like electricity through iron filings. We were energized; we were one.

Laying Siege

Those without benefit of homemade bologna sandwiches, Fritos, orange sections and a Twinkie immediately recognized their deliverance. Without introducing it to their digestive systems, these dogged victims of lunch lady oppression could be rid of the offending mound of cauliflower and, unless some grown-up thought to gaze upward, no repercussions would result.

Clean plates, happy teacher. Why mess it up by asking questions or looking too hard at the evidence?

Suddenly inspired, our corner of the cafeteria resembled Alexander applying catapults to Tyre. But instead of fireballs and boulders rocking the walls of the great Persian island city, our soaring projectiles were deadly bits of cauliflower, a veritable vegetable storm that rained up, not down, reported only by squishy whispers at impact, which were met by excited smothered sniggering below.

This is not to suggest that offering modern students a meatless alternative is less than a fabulous idea. Only that if we are to judge effectively its popularity and effectiveness as a nutritional alternative, we must be willing to turn our eyes from the youngsters' spent food containers to the ceilings above their lunch tables. That's where the great Clean Plate Episode of 1962 was decided.

And it's not like school officials need to rush right out to perform their examinations. Proof of my classmates' solution to the cauliflower nightmare was plainly evident — to those who knew where to look — on our last day before heading off to junior high school more than three years later.

And they wanted us to eat that stuff? Yeah, right.

What remained was grayer and shriveled, but was still readily identifiable as the literal spoils of a pivotal battle, and a rare kid triumph, in the endless war between student diners and lunchroom ladies.

Whether the skirmishes continue now in Pasco County schools, only the acoustical tiles know for sure.

Keyword: The Jax Files, for more musings on the state of things in Tom Jackson's blog.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT