At noon, on warm sunny days, a group of first and second grade girls would take our lunch-pails and go deep into the cemetery beyond the schoolyard.

Seated on the grass under a large shade tree, we'd open our pails ("dinner-buckets," we called them) and sort through the contents.

And trade.

Somehow, what the others had always looked better than our own.

One girl never had bread. Always biscuits. For some reason, her mother refused to bake bread, so Aletta's sandwiches were always made with soda biscuits. Beautiful golden-crusted snow white soda biscuits! Aletta hated them so she'd trade for any kind of sandwich made with bread.

I loved them, so we traded quite happily -- and often.

Another girl's mother excelled in the making of salmon patties. If I could manage a trade with her on salmon patty day, I was happy.

And so it went.

Round and round the food was passed -- a piece of cake for a piece of pie, a handful of cookies for a square of gingerbread, an apple for a pear -- until we seldom had anything left of our original lunches.

Our noon recess lasted an hour, so after we'd eaten we'd sit there and talk or play games.

Or sometimes we'd run through the cemetery to visit a certain grave, being careful not to step on the grassy mounds as we ran.

We loved to read the tombstones. We were happy and it never occurred to us that adults might not feel our behavior proper for the place. To us, the graveyard (as a cemetery was then called) not only housed our departed relatives and friends, it was the most peaceful place we knew.

(Many years later when I casually mentioned this to a friend, she was quite shocked. "You ate lunch in a graveyard?" she cried.)

Looking back on those days of childhood innocence, I'm sure that any spirits lingering there would have joined in our lunchtime gaiety.

But I hate to think what our parents would have said -- and done -- had they learned of our daily trading.

Also, of our chosen lunchroom.