Lunch at School continued...

So – I talked about the great lunch pails I took to school growing up. Today I thought I’d expound on a few similar memories.

How many of you remember getting milk in glass bottles at school? Before the nice little wax-cardboard ones we're all so used to now, we had our milk in glass bottles with little sealed paper caps. This was in early grade school, so it would’ve actually been in the mid to late ‘60s. Seems like hardly a week went by when someone didn’t drop and break one in the cafeteria causing quite the stir. And of course there was only one “variety” – milk! (I would guess it was what we all call “whole milk” now). We didn’t have any other options!


I also remembered what I consider now to have been the ultimate in “pinching pennies”. My mom would make lunches for us 4 kids, dad, and the occasional kid or relative that may have had an extended stay at our house. We were required to bring our lunch sacks (read “small, brown, paper bags”) home every day and make each one last for the whole week! As if that wasn’t bad enough, we also had to save our baggies if they weren’t messy. While the economics of this made sense, given our middle-class status and the sheer number we would’ve gone through, it always presented the challenge of avoiding being seen by classmates as I neatly folded my bag (with clean baggies inside) and tried to slip it into my back pocket undetected. Now - of course – my mom would be heralded as a forward-thinker, eco-green proponent, and role models for families everywhere… but back then – it was “Aww, mom!?!”, and “the OTHER kids don’t have to save their lunch sacks!”. Kudos to mom for sticking to her guns.

One last thing – We only got to buy it like 4 times a month, but the best lunches we ever got to buy at school? Pizza! Hot, square and loaded with great toppings!

Taking Lunch to School

Metal lunch pails (also called lunchboxes)! When I was a kid, these were a must have! Of course, they were what everyone else had, so I had to have one, too! The measure of how cool you were was whether or not you had the latest lunch pail of the latest cool thing – usually a TV show, cartoon, rock band or teenage idol.

The really top-of-the-line lunchboxes had the matching thermos that had the plastic cup on top for bringing mom’s homemade soup. These usually had a cool spring loaded metal clip that held the thermos in place. What’s sad is that I don’t even remember what ones I had, although I don’t think I ever had the fancy ones with the thermos. I do remember vividly the feel of it in my hands; the way the little clasp locked tightly to hold it together as I carried it to and from school; the way it would look when I got home and the remnants of the days lunch – or worse – of that part of the lunch I didn’t eat, were stuck to the sides of metal … ewww!

Like so many things from the ‘70s, these have become collectible and, in some cases, rare and valuable. There’s a cool blog that has a very inclusive list of all the lunch pails available back then. you can see it here: http://www.skooldays.com/decades/lunchboxes_1970s.htm

There's also a site called collectorsquest.com with pics and the story of this guy who has amassed quite a little collection. see it here: http://www.collectorsquest.com/collection/574/vintage-metal-lunchboxes.html