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All Praise to the Lunch Ladies — THE BITTER SOUTHERNER

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Granny won me over with the government cheese. As a child, maybe 4 or 5 years old, when I’d visit her on occasional Sundays in Blue Ridge, Georgia, she’d slice me off a little treat — an orange rectangle from a brown cardboard box in the refrigerator. We would sit around her kitchen table, where she held court with my aunts by telling stories and making plans for canning vegetables. Sometimes the aunts smoked cigarettes, which they’d quickly stamp out when my preacher-grandfather came around the corner. Nevermind that my snack was processed and inexpensive, a generic type of Velveeta. In those days at Granny’s, sitting with my cheese and the grown-ups in our rural mountain town, I might as well have been tasting Camembert on the banks of the Seine. Nevermind, too, the Mason jars of homemade soup on her shelves, a kaleidoscope of summer’s bounty — tomatoes, okra, corn — put up and waiting to take the chill off colder days. Nevermind the freshly baked pound cakes under Tupperware domes l

All Praise to the Lunch Ladies - THE BITTER SOUTHERNER A beacon from the American South and a bellwether for the nation. All Praise to the Lunch Ladies Blessed are the women who watch over America’s children. Words by Jennifer Justus | Photos by Houston Cofield Portaits featured in this story were taken at Peabody High School and Trenton Elementary School in Trenton, Tennessee. November 4, 2025 Granny won me over with the government cheese. As a child, maybe 4 or 5 years old, when I’d visit her on occasional Sundays in Blue Ridge, Georgia, she’d slice me off a little treat — an orange rectangl

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