Student life: Lunch, Skipping School and Discipline

Lunch

Students in grades K-12 came from many neighboring communities to attend school in the Mound Consolidated High School building. Many had their first hot lunch experience here.

From 1917 until 1937, students would sit in the large first floor room—in the middle of the building—that served as lunchroom, auditorium and gymnasium. Every day the custodians would set up a long table, so the cook could dish up the hot dish and milk for students who were in line. Every day at lunch time, the custodians would set up tables and bench seats for students, and take them down afterwards, so that the room could again be used for gym class.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Mrs. Dullum cooked school lunch. She served a supplement to the sandwich students brought from home. Sometimes it was vegetable soup or goulash, hot chocolate or chocolate pudding, served in a tin cup or a porcelain cup. Some days "hot dish" was Spanish rice or rice pudding with raisins. Sometimes it was tapioca pudding, "made out of these big tapioca, that we used to call 'fish eyes,' remembered Grace McCann Johnson (class of 1933). The serving filled about two-thirds of the cup.

Lunchroom, 1945 Mohian
[Classroom Voices, p. 333]

When Orrin Hoefer (class of 1937) first started high school, he would walk home for lunch. They only had 20 minutes. He would walk home to his house just north of Our Lady of the Lake church, and his mother had dinner right on the table. Shortly after, he was out the door and walking back.  Everything had to be on time. Later on he ate lunch at school.

When the 1938 addition was built, there was a big cafeteria in the basement, under the auditorium, with large columns that seemed to be holding up the building. Students got a cup of something hot. Some days it might be bean hot dish or cooked tomatoes. Everybody loved Spanish rice; they could not make enough of it. Some children brought sandwiches made with homemade bread. Sometimes they would trade others for sandwiches made with store-brought bread. Students could always buy milk. A half-pint of milk cost two or three cents in those early years. The hot lunch was free. 

Lunchroom, 1946 Mohian
[Classroom Voices, p. 333]

Gertrude Soule was a school cook from 1944 until about 1963. Her daughter Mary Lou Soule Sundberg (class of 1947) remembers: "Mom cooked hot dish at school daily, and she baked at home once a week. Saturday was baking day. So, the dough was put on the warm stove to rise on Friday night, and the next day enough bread was baked to last the week. By Friday, the bread for my sandwich could be cut so thin that I could almost see through it. I asked for just butter on my Friday sandwich. It went really well with Friday’s hot dish: hot cocoa!"

Skipping School

Anfin Blakstvedt (class of 1930) and some friends played hooky from school "to go see the seining of fish, and a few other things I would have missed if I had been at school."

Orville Hoefer (class of 1932) had a weakness while he was going to school: "I wanted to go hunting ducks all the time. One time I was sitting in school, and I looked out the window. I saw that it was snowing and in the fall of the year, that was great for hunting. I raised my hand and asked the teacher’s permission to leave the room. She gave me permission. I went down and out the back door, went home to get the shotgun, and ran all the way to Whaletail Lake. I got the ducks! Then I had a neighbor girl write an excuse for me."

Discipline

In the 1920s, one teacher called her method of discipline "raising digits." When a student was talking or whispering during study hall or assembly, the teacher would assign a number. The students would be told to raise it to the 10th power.

Mildred Krenke Banks, in eighth grade (class of 1921) 

Mildred Krenke Banks writes in her Minnetrista Memories memoir: “Try it yourself! Try 39, for example. Multiply 39 by 39, then take that answer and multiply it by itself. That answer again by itself, then again and again until you had done this 10 times. Yes, you would have quite an answer by that time and the noon hour would be well over. Some chatty offenders found themselves going downtown for wrapping paper so it would be large enough to encompass the answer. Sometimes she would use more than two-digit numbers, say 395 or 3956."

"I never 'raised digits,' but I did memorize poetry—also one of her little devices. It was rumored that she had the answers to the digit-raising problems and that if you came out wrong you would have to do it over. You’d better know your tables."