When Charlotte Collins first started working at Lewes High School as what students in those days called a “cafeteria lady,” lunches were prepared the old fashioned way – out-and-out, no shortcuts, nothing ready-made or fresh from the freezer.
“When we made potato salad, we had to peel the potatoes and cook them. You made your own French fries and your own rolls from scratch.
“Chicken came packed in ice. You did your own breading and seasoning. Back then, everything like that was deep-fried,” said Collins, 72, who retired in June after 40 years on the frontlines of Cape school cafeterias.
She began working in Lewes High School’s cafeteria dish room in September 1967. It was before Lewes, Milton and Rehoboth Beach school districts merged to become the Cape Henlopen School District.
“I eventually worked my way out of the dish room and went onto the serving line. Then I became a baker. We had homemade sticky buns all the time.
“At Thanksgiving, when we had turkey and dressing, we had homemade pies. Today – if you have them – you buy the pies already made,” said Collins.
Her kitchen career had begun years earlier when she worked at Mary Gordy’s Restaurant in Georgetown. It was Gordy, then working in the Lewes school system, who remembered Collins and offered her a job.
A cafeteria lunch in 1967 cost 30 to 35 cents, and Collins earned about $2 an hour. Today lunch at a Cape middle school is $1 and $1.25 at the high school.
Collins said there’s no longer the time and labor available to make food from scratch as she did 40 years ago.
“We’re feeding a lot more children. We had grades 1 through 12 at the Lewes school when I started,” she said.
Collins said the transition from the old Lewes High School to the new Cape Henlopen High School kitchen meant major upgrades in equipment.
“We had a gas range at the old school and I used to say that it came over on Noah’s ark. But they kept everything in good working condition. At the new school we had steamers, a big mixer and more oven space and the kitchen was all stainless-steel,” she said.
Cafeteria workers experienced numerous changes through the years.
“When I started, you wouldn’t have thought about wearing slacks or pants. Everybody wore a dress. You had your white shoes, nylons and hairnets,” she said. Another reason everybody wore a dress was that no men worked in school cafeterias during that time. Collins said even today, there are very few men in the kitchen.
She said in years past, kitchen managers would prepare school menus, serving whatever they desired.
“Each school could do their own. You could order your food from wherever you wanted. Now it’s done by bids and supervisors tell you where your products are coming from,” she said.
She said meals in school cafeterias today are nutritionally balanced and market competitive.
“We didn’t have the fast-food people to compete with like we have today. But I’d tell our students that our food is better than fast food – everything is put in the oven. You don’t have a lot of that fat and grease in it.
“The students don’t agree but they have a very good meal. It’s low in fat and low in salt. I’d tell them that they couldn’t even get the same kind of hamburger at McDonald’s for what they were paying,” Collins said.
In her last year in the district, Collins worked at Beacon Middle School, an experience with students that was quite different than that at the high school. “You could ask a little kid, ‘Have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses? Why don’t you try these carrots?’ If you said that to a high school student, they might tell you where you could put those carrots,” said Collins.
She said cafeteria work is fast-paced, requires continuous standing and oftentimes long hours.
“It’s not easy work. I’d go in about 6:30 and the cook would come in about seven. Now they start serving lunch about 11 o’clock. It’s very fast moving. You get one group done and it’s time for the next group. In two hours you’ve served several hundred kids at the high school – and they don’t like to wait. Patience is not one of their strong points,” said Collins.
And in the early years, after a day spent in the school’s kitchen, Collins would go home to her own kitchen and prepare the evening meal for her husband, Norwood, and their four daughters.
“It was something that I liked to do. You have to like doing it or you couldn’t do it, you wouldn’t do it.
It’s been an experience,” said Collins.
Contact Henry Evans at hevans@capegazette.com
