My swell lunch box !!

This is my swell lunch box !!!(Pat Sloan was talking about lunch boxes over on her blog and she got me thinking about them.) Remember when lunch boxes were always metal with a hinge and came with a matching breakable thermos AND had your favorite super hero or Barbie on the front? (if you don't remember , don't tell me because that means you're younger than me and I don't want to hear it !) Back in the stone age when I was in elementary school there was no cafeteria and everybody brought their lunch (except for the kids that lived within a block of the school -- they went home for lunch.) When the bell rang at Hometown Elementary School (yes, that really is the name of it), we'd walk to the back of the classroom (and yes , there was a classroom for each grade -- this was NOT a one room schoolhouse -- I'm not THAT old, for Pete sake !!) - anyhow, we'd walk to the back of the classroom to the "cloak room" to get our lunch boxes. Then we'd sit at our desks and eat lunch. Sometimes I had a salami sandwich or a turkey sandwich (except on Fridays, we'd always get a PB&J -- no meat on Fridays for us Catholic kids). In the winter, mom would also pack a thermos with hot soup (she didn't need to pack a drink since we all brought our "milk money" and got a carton of milk -- sometimes they even had chocolate milk!) To go with my sandwich, mom would also put in a small bag of chips (Charles Chips !!) , an apple, AND Tastycakes !!( sometimes butterscotch krimpets, sometimes chocolate cupcakes with the cream in the centers!!). After school, when we got off the bus and had to walk down a big hill , those metal lunch boxes doubled as a sled in the winter -- didn't do much for the breakable thermos inside, though -- I went through quite a few of those!

AH, yea, those were the days -- the Beaver Cleaver 1960's elementary school lunch boxes and lunches! Now my every day lunch box (i.e. the one I have to use because my lunch sits in a hot car all day while I drive all over timbucktu to see my homecare patients) is one of those insulated , hi-tech sporty jobs --- and even more depressing is the lunch my ever slowing , hormonal metabolism allows me to eat and not gain a thousand pounds -- a cheese stick , a can of V-8 juice, some blue organic tortilla chips, and a Kashi bar for a snack . (BIG SIGH ......) Maybe, today, just for fun I'll pack up my metal "I Love Lucy" lunchbox with a good ol' PB&J on WHITE BREAD (horrors!), and throw in some butterscotch krimpets for good measure !!! OH BLISS !!!!!

Toodles,
Mary Anne (aka Mare)