Now & Then: Close your eyes and smell the aroma

Whatever happened to cafeterias?

Remember Morrison’s, Piccadilly, S&W, or local favorite K&W? That’s where you went to get a balanced meal without having to wait for service.

Now they’re all gone, at least in our area.

They’ve been replaced by buffet bars and fast-food restaurants. People want their food now and have a hand in filling their plate.

But, wait a minute. Isn’t that what cafeterias provided?

My introduction to cafeteria eating was when I entered first grade at Franklinville School. For 20 cents you got a meat, a couple of veggies and a roll along with a half-pint of milk. But you didn’t have any choices, except if you wanted to trade your green beans for your neighbor’s sliced peaches.

At the Franklinville cafeteria, you could purchase a lunch ticket for a dollar and it was good for five meals, or one week of school. When you went through the food line, you held out the ticket, which the cafeteria manager punched for that day’s meal.

I remember Mama giving me a buck and telling me to give it to the cafeteria woman. Well, I was in line in the cafeteria and approached Mrs. Brady with my dollar bill. She instructed me in no uncertain terms that I was supposed to buy my lunch ticket from my teacher and have it ready at lunch.

That was my acquaintance to the world of business. You never know what you’re going to learn in school.

By the time I got to high school, lunch period was the time we looked forward to. We got bigger portions and some of us guys asked for extra yeast rolls. Oh, how I miss those yeast rolls.

Fridays were special since we usually had hot dogs. They were the real deal with slaw and chili. If we were lucky and the servers were willing, we could get two dogs and then nap during the afternoon classes.

When I went off to college, I found I could get a cheap meal at the school’s cafeteria. The daily student special included a designated meat, a vegetable, a dessert and a glass of tea for 50 cents.

The food was decent for the price, but I still had trouble fitting that into my budget. For a time I ate in my room, using an unsanctioned hotplate to heat my canned foods. It was not cafeteria quality.

A few years later, Ginny and I got married and were living in Greensboro. We found the S&W Cafeteria downtown near where both of us worked. We ate lunch there a time or two before it closed.

But soon we discovered K&W Cafeteria at Friendly Center. If I remember correctly, it was located near the northeast corner of the mega-shopping center.

It wasn’t too long before a brand-new K&W opened at Forum 6 on the northwest edge of Friendly Center. I guess it was our “home” cafeteria.

Our normal routine was to meet with friends at K&W after church each week. That practice continued as our three daughters came along and learned to love the chicken pan pie. They would share a plate, along with mac-and-cheese, and I would clean up afterwards.

There were two other K&Ws in Greensboro and we patronized all three, depending on where we happened to be.

We often saw folks from Asheboro at K&W and growled that we had to drive to Greensboro to eat. But after a few years, not to mention demands from Randolph residents, we had a cafeteria in town.

Now we could go to our own K&W, grab a tray, go down the line and choose among the meats, the veggies, the salads and the desserts without having to study a menu and hope for the best. 

We then took our loaded trays to a table, unrolled our cloth napkins to take out our silverware and dug in. Sometimes there would be six or eight of us eating together, munching roast beef, fried chicken, turkey and dressing, or their yummy baked spaghetti. And the kids would argue over who had the largest portion of apple pie.

Eating at the cafeteria was something of a cultural tradition. It brought people together over delicious home-cooked meals.

Now it’s an extinct species, the victim of changing tastes and habits.

But, when I close my eyes, I can almost taste the baked spaghetti or the pecan pie. Yum.

Larry Penkava is a writer for Randolph Hub. 

Contact: 336-302-2189, larrypenkava@gmail.com.