Lunches at work were once much different when my "office" was the cab of a John Deere or New Holland tractor. There is a Kenny Chesney song that contains the following lyrics that brings those days back to mind:
Plowin' these fields in the hot summer sun
Over by the gate lordy here she comes
With a basket full of chicken and a big cold jug of sweet tea
I fondly remember those days. I would be plowing the field in the 'back 40' and around lunchtime I could look on the horizon and see dust rising up on the dirt road leading to the field. Those dust clouds signaled the arrival of lunch. My Dad would come and deliver me a hamburger, fries, and a Dr. Pepper. I'd gobble it down and start plowing again, singing loudly to every country song that came on the radio. Dad would also bring a Dr. Pepper and honey bun out at break time.
When I was much younger than that, my Mom would drive out to the farm at lunch time and bring us hamburgers and fries from a restaurant in Oberlin called the Frostee Drive Inn right there on Highway 165. It doesn't exist anymore, but they had some good burgers. I think it has something to do with years of grease cooked on the griddle that imparted a rich flavor to the meat! They had great root beer floats, too. We'd eat out in the pecan orchard or sometimes just eat right out on the tailgate.
Sometimes we'd have lunch in the 'camp,' warming up TV dinners in the microwave with the little window unit struggling to keep us cool. Many times we'd drive in to the Texaco station in Oberlin and get a 3 piece chicken tender basket. "Gas station chicken" is always so good! We'd drive back out to the farm and park underneath the shade tree by the cemetery and enjoy our lunch while listening to the news on the radio followed by Paul Harvey's Commentary (Good Day!).
Lunches weren't always purchased, though. Most times we would make them up the night before at home, packing them into Igloo coolers for our culinary enjoyment the next day. I can remember eating lots of bologna sandwiches, chips from a box that contained all the varieties to choose from, and pickles. Sometimes the 'cooler' wouldn't live up to its namesake and the heat would have caused the lunch meat to turn grey instead of pink and the mayonnaise would have turned translucent, violating Board of Health rules, I'm sure. But heck, we'd eat it anyway and we're still alive and kicking.
We also ate many cans of this:
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Another thing I haven't eaten in years was this:
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Once you dined like a king on this wide array of lunch offerings, you just had to wash it all down with something sweet. We would either have some Little Debbie Cakes that we would break out or we drive to Buddy's and get either a honey bun or one of these to go along with our Dr. Pepper:
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Well, it is one o'clock and thus concludes my culinary trip down memory lane. See you tomorrow.
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