Wiener Wraps

School Lunches, Take 2 May 21, 2008

The best school lunch at Lakewood Elementary was wiener wraps. On wiener wrap days, you begged your mom for 50 cents to buy a hot lunch instead of the usual lunch box packed with some variation on the sandwich, fruit, and dessert theme. On wiener wrap days you began to notice the aroma of baking bread around math time, maybe 10 am. By the time Miss Gackle stood at the classroom door and ordered the 5th grade class to line up for lunch, the smell filled every cranny of the old school building, overpowering the smell of chalk dust, dirty tennis shoes, and unwashed pre-teens, and everyone was crazy with anticipation. Instead of the usual shoving and goofing off, everyone behaved perfectly, marching in a straight line all the way down the hall to the cafetorium, not wanting to risk any infraction that would impede the trip to the lunch line. With the possible exception of Mike, who never had lunch money anyway and knew he wouldn’t succeed at cadging anyone else’s today. Mike was his usual off-kilter self, zigzagging down the hall six feet or so behind the rest of us, arms outspread, zooming, whooshing, and buzzing his way along.

The cafeteria ladies made these amazing things from scratch. Fresh white bread dough spiraled around plump, juicy hot dogs and was allowed to rise until the dogs were all but hidden, enfolded in their yeasty bread wrappers. Hot from the oven, they were served, two to a tray, steaming and golden brown. In the round indent next to them on the fiberglass tray a cafeteria lady plopped a glob of bright yellow mustard. After another cafeteria lady plunked a carton of milk in the square indentation on the tray, you now possessed a complete meal, Lakewood’s finest cuisine. No hamburger gravy on mashed potatoes or Salisbury steak with tater tots or, god help us, fish sticks, today!

You had to savor them, not gobble them in a couple of bites. First, you dipped the end—a bit of pink hot dog peeking out of the golden bread—in the mustard. Then, you took a bite, making sure you got a cross section of the concoction in your mouth—a chunk of hot dog surrounded by its cocoon of bread. In a properly configured bite, you first tasted the tangy mustard, then you bit down on savory meat, its juices bursting on your molars, then you chewed the slightly crunchy, warm bread and finished with a swig of milk. You repeated this until you’d finished both the wraps, using just enough of the mustard with each bite so that there was some left to mop up with the last bit of hot dog and bread. Then, you regretted that there was no more. You would ask around, and see if maybe any of your friends weren’t going to finish theirs. This was highly unlikely, but worth a try. You had to gently but firmly brush Mike off if he pestered you for some of yours.