Of course, the only other option at the time was the school cafeteria. And to this very day I would opt for Mom's peanut butter and jelly, a bag of grapes and a couple of Hostess cupcakes over the cafeteria's mystery meat, shredded carrots with raisins and cup of warm lime Jell-O.

But, then, we didn't have the choices at that time that kids have today.

They get pizza slices, burritos, hamburgers, nachos... are you kidding me? Is this a school cafeteria or the snack bar at Pac Bell Park?

Our choices were a little less tantalizing: chipped beef, mashed potatoes and canned string beans; corned beef hash, mashed potatoes and canned peas; turkey parts, mashed potatoes and canned beets. All of it slopped into one big pile in the middle of a plate by a very large, very mean-looking lady in a hairnet named Erma, and all of it covered by a grayish-brown looking substance they called gravy.

That, in a nutshell, is why I always took my lunch— that, and the fact that my mother was just about the best school lunch maker you'd ever meet!

There was always a sandwich, if not the ever-popular peanut butter, then maybe egg salad or tuna. There was usually some kind of fruit and often some member of the chips family— potato, corn, barbecue.

And there was always some kind of dessert, usually one with some sort of cream filling—from Twinkies to Snowballs, from Oreos to a Mountain Bar.

Ah, yes. Thanks to Mom I was the envy of the lunch crowd at Daves Avenue Elementary School in Los Gatos.

"Hey, trade ya my lime Jell-O for one of your Twinkies," a kid would say.

"Umm, it even looks warm and runny, just the way I like it," I would tease. "Sure sounds tempting ... but, NO!" (It's amazing the kind of power a third-grader can derive from a package of Twinkies.)

But it's not the same for kids today. Because school cafeterias seem to have gone the way of dinosaurs and behind-the-wheel driver training. They just don't make school lunches the way they used to (thank goodness).

I happened upon some of the lunch menus for the local schools the other day, and it was nothing like I remember schools' bill of fare back in the 1950s and '60s.

Van Meter School's menu for September features such delicious entrees as pizza sticks, burritos, chicken nuggets with Tator Tots, corndogs and cheeseburgers. I assume the same mouth-watering treats are featured at Daves and Blossom Hill.

They offer many of the same menu items over at Argonaut School in Saratoga, but they also feature a Wienerschnitzel chili dog, Oriental chicken salad and something called an earthquake taco.

I can't imagine many kids show up with a sack lunch from home on Wienerschnitzel chili dog day.

Are you kidding? I don't think I would have either, even with the great lunches Mom made. But then, pizza and burritos were never part of the lunchtime fare back in the old cafeteria days, which is why I always took mine.

Of course, I'll never forget the day that I left my lunch at the bus stop. We got so involved in some chasing game while we were waiting for the bus, I left my lunch bag sitting next to the fire hydrant.

So I was in tears when I called Mom to tell her what had happened. She was very reassuring and promised me that she would drop something by the office before the lunch break.

But to my dismay, there was no brown bag waiting for me in the office when the bell rang that noon ... just a dollar with a note that said, "Sorry, Honey, didn't have time to make another lunch— just eat in the cafeteria today. Love, Mom."

I don't remember what we had that day, but it came with mashed potatoes, a canned vegetable and lime Jell-O ... you can be sure it wasn't a Wienerschnitzel chili dog!