ALUMINUM TV DINNER TRAY : IS OVEN’S LOSS TO BE MUSEUM’S GAIN?

Archeologists of a future civilization will find one lying all bent and crinkly in the apocalyptic rubble, and wonder. But not for long. Of course! The peas went here, the turkey and mashed potatoes here, and the apple cobbler over there.

And people used to put these on their laps and sit in the living room and eat while they watched TV!

And they never got their peas mooshed in with their potatoes, either, God forbid.

“The Swanson Aluminum Tray Is History,” proclaims the Campbell Soup Co. Well, we all knew that. But now it is official. One of the original 1955 aluminum trays designed for the first of Campbell’s Swanson TV dinners has been presented to the Smithsonian Institution for possible display in the Museum of American History.

It will join a collection of cultural artifacts that includes Fonzie’s leather jacket and Archie Bunker’s chair.

The TV-dinner tray is not to be confused with the TV tray. The TV tray is a folding metal stand that usually hits one in the nose as one is setting it up and upon which one places the properly heated TV dinner. Then, it’s on with the show! And in with the peas.

At least, they look like peas.

Swanson “historians,” says the company (boy, those guys must have grueling work days), recall that the first TV dinner contained turkey, cornbread dressing with gravy, buttered peas (told ya) and whipped sweet potatoes, and sold for about 98 cents. Hungry Man dinners and other such sophisticated refinements were still a long way down the pike.

And today, the aluminum TV-dinner plate has been replaced with a plastic one so it can be popped into a microwave oven. The term “TV dinner” is no longer used by the Campbell company, though consumers may cling to it, and the microwave version has four food compartments rather than a mere paltry, terribly antiquated three.

On the other hand, today’s microwaving kids simply will never know the suspenseful fun of ever-so-gently peeling back a layer of irradiated foil to reveal the succulently tasty Salisbury steak that lay piping hot beneath. At least, it looked like Salisbury steak.

The physical as well as psychological link between television and food, made indelibly inarguable by the TV dinner, is stronger than ever. Indeed, microwave ovens look and light up like TV sets (gosh, I could sit and watch the food spin for minutes, couldn’t you?), and TV, thanks to the VCR, now is able to offer the video equivalent of leftovers. You can warm up last night’s Dave Letterman show and have it this morning, like an old pizza.

America was basking in prosperity and self-satisfaction in 1955 when the TV dinner was introduced. We were the technological masters of the universe! That changed. At the movies, we learned how to say the word sayonara , little realizing how much use we’d have for it.

And on TV, what did America watch? America watched Ronald Reagan, and professional wrestling. My, but we have come a long way.

The TV dinner performed an important service that is never mentioned. By introducing the concept of food that tasted like nothing, the TV dinner prepared us for innumerable meals on innumerable airline trips to come. Indeed, sitting on a plane with a fold-down tray, eating airplane food and watching a movie on a TV screen makes one feel as if one were still at home--except that at any moment, the plane could explode and you could die.

Now at least our children, and our children’s children’s synthetic children, will be able to visit the Smithsonian and see firsthand the origins of cryogenic cuisine. You are what you eat. Yes, but you are also where you eat it.

There aren’t many private household functions left, really, that one cannot perform in front of a television set. Science is probably working hard right now to eliminate the few that remain. I don’t want to hear about it, and neither do you.