Out to Lunch

 

This Saturday my sister Susan was prepping her house for the coming Thanksgiving, which this year includes a curious and grabby toddler. Since the house is rather like a museum, this demands a bit of finessing. Among other simplifications she gave me a 1969 milk glass Avon shampoo bottle in the shape of Snoopy. This goes well with my plastic Charlie Brown Avon shampoo bottle; it makes a nice ‘echo’ on my shelf of the Complete Peanuts. This started a train of thought, or chain of memories, that led me to the subject of our early lunch boxes. This is kind of how the train moved out of the station.

The bottle reminded me of this old Snoopy lunch box, which we never had in the early years or carried to school, but which we bought later, probably at a garage sale.

There was a Peanuts lunch box that someone (I forget who) had in McQueeney, which of course I envied. I was always trying to read or identify the ‘strips’ that decorated the sides.

Of course, the lunch box I remember best is my own, the fabled Disney Bus. After its rusty remains were thrown away, I spent years looking for a replacement. I remember one glued down as a decoration at a localish restaurant where I spent an entire meal plotting to see if I could find a way to carry it home.  Susan finally found and bought me one at Eckman’s.

There was also what might be called a companion piece to the Bus, the Disney Fire Truck. We never had it and I never saw it in real life, but it’s always intrigued me as a sort of alternate universe variant.

What Mike’s lunch box was I have no clear memory. I thought it might be Peter Pan, and when I looked it up, I did feel a definite ‘vibe’. It seemed familiar to John as well. As Mike had no sentimental attachment to it, it did not particularly live in memory or reminiscences. Its sides were decorated with square pirate ship ‘portholes’ with portraits of Peter Pan characters.

Now John had a box that we all remembered, from Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. A feature of these metal boxes was that they had raised or bas-relief pictures, so they could almost be read and fingered like braille. The idea that we had Peter Pan and Pinocchio lunch boxes kind of echoes the two Golden Star Library books we had.

The year John was in 3^rd Grade he and Kenny got new lunch boxes. John (the monster kid) got one for the animated Addams Family and Kenny (the slightly junior monster kid) got Scooby Doo. After John mentioned the Addams Family one, I did remember it, but I have no memory of the Scooby Doo. I’m assuming that since it came out the same year that this is it.

When Susan entered elementary school she got a couple of her own lunchboxes (still metal at the time, but soon to switch over to vinyl) with two of her favorites, Holly Hobby and Strawberry Shortcake. Since I have no clear memory of these (I was in college by then) I assume they were like these, if not exactly. When I get a chance, I will have to confer with Susan about them.