Bringing Lunch out to the Field

I write this at my desk as I'm sitting in my 12 foot by 10 foot office enjoying some leftovers from last night's supper consisting of smothered chicken and rice and gravy with fresh picked squash and onions sauteed in butter.  Leftovers are delicious.  I try to eat lunch in the office everyday as I don't want to do the fast food route.  It requires some consideration, though, as some of my colleagues probably don't appreciate the smell of fish, curry dishes, or liver heating up in the office microwave.

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:

Image Credit

Ah, Vienna sausage.  When you lifted the ring on the top of the can with your fingernail and pulled the top off, you were greeted by seven little sausages looking at you, yearning to be freed from their tight confines.  They also needed to be liberated from the "jelly" that surrounded them.  What was that jelly, anyway?  I haven't eaten Vienna sausage in years.  I seem to recall that there was a BBQ flavored Vienna Sausage as well.  You know, every once in a while, we'd slice the sausages long-ways and lay them between some Evangeline Maid or Bunny Bread to make a Vienna Sausage Sandwich.  Vienna Sausage is a very versatile product!

Another thing I haven't eaten in years was this:

Image Credit

An Olive Loaf Sandwich!  Made on white bread with yellow mustard.  Olive Loaf was the king of lunch meat at our house.  I feel negligent in that I never introduced my kids to the most supreme of luncheon meats!  Those olives and pimentos were sprinkled evenly through the meat similar to chocolate chips in a cookie.  There had to be some sort of a trick to keeping the olives in suspension like that.  It had to take a brilliant mind to conceive such a product.

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:

Image Credit

We called them Stage Planks.  They were wonderful and tasted like gingerbread, but had a pink icing on top.  Supposedly they originated in New Orleans and were named for the gang planks that they would let down from the paddle wheel steamboats on the river to let people and cargo off of at the docks.

Well, it is one o'clock and thus concludes my culinary trip down memory lane.  See you tomorrow.