Different Drum Humor: Lunchbox possibilities have gone out to lunch
Not long ago, I traveled to one of my favorite antique stores and came back with an item I had not set out to purchase. Imagine that – which is not difficult if you are also someone who knows your way around antiques and have at one time or another purchased something you neither collect, nor have actual use for, but nevertheless decided, spur of the moment, you couldn’t live without because of its uniqueness.
This time, said item was a late 19th Century old-school, rectangular-shaped, metal dinner pail with two generous, stackable compartments and the original handle and removable tin cup sitting atop. It was in incredibly good condition for pushing 140 years of age and being handled as thoughtlessly as people do most types of utilitarian items.
I am always more attracted to pieces that radiate utility than I am to objects of beauty. My philosophy has long been that if I can’t wear it, play it, sit on it or eat from it, I have no business owning it. I consider it a bonus if something just happens to be beautiful in addition to being useful. But that’s more the exception than the rule, which holds true for people, too.
One glance in the direction of the antique dinner pail (aka “lunch box”) and I was picturing a container of broccoli salad in the bottom compartment and in the upper section a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich on Bavarian rye, carefully wrapped in a layer of wax paper, as a nod to sandwiches of the past and how they were transported before there was a Subway. Additionally, I could hardly wait to drink from that little tin cup. The whole lunch kit-and-caboodle called my name.
By now, those of you who speak the language of antiques are breaking out in a sweat from memories of your own such experiences and in anticipation of your next blast into stuff from the past. You know of what I speak.
Historically speaking, it’s likely the dinner pail I purchased didn’t belong to a school-aged child, but to an adult, working-class person. The first dinner pail in the United States was invented in 1887 and later patented by inventor J. Robinson. It met the needs of hard-working, nation-building men, frequently miners and loggers, who would be away from home at mealtime and needed a secure container in which to tote their vittles along with them.
According to lunchbox.com, a website that sells lunchboxes and provides intelligent commentary on them, “At the time, a lunch pail wasn’t really a pail; it was a latching, heavy-duty metal thing made from a toolbox-grade metal that would protect the working man’s noontime meal from anything less powerful than a small bomb.” How funny!
Interestingly, it wasn’t long before the youth wanted its own food pails/boxes. Children began appropriating any kind of metal box they could find, including biscuit, cookie and tobacco tins, to carry lunches inside. In 1902 the first officially-manufactured-for-that-purpose kids’ lunch boxes appeared on the market: shaped like small, metal picnic baskets and adorned with lithographs of children playing. Three decades later, the 1935 the first Mickey Mouse-themed lunchbox showed up, foreshadowing the era of “cool” lunchboxes.
In the 1950s, a Nashville company called Aladdin noted lunchboxes were too plain and sturdy, thus held no appeal for children and lasted too long. So, Aladdin mass-produced Hopalong Cassidy-decaled lunchboxes, for which children eagerly discarded their plain pails, proving planned obsolescence could occur outside the automotive sector.
Not to be surpassed, cowboy star Roy Rogers approached Connecticut’s American Thermos and the next year they sold 2.5 million metal lunchboxes bearing his lithographed picture. Lunchbox wars have only intensified since, with current lunchbox themes ranging from super heroes to TV celebrities and movies.
Something interesting at lunchbox.com are horror movie-themed lunchbox designs, notably the ultra-sinister-looking “Bride of Chucky” lunchbox and “The Exorcist” lunchbox, which shows Linda Blair hurling green projectile vomit an impressive distance. It almost topped the realistic-looking cockroaches on various foods lunchbox my son carried many of his elementary years.
What would those miners and loggers make of a Freddy Krueger-adorned lunchbox? Probably not a lot, provided it kept their grub safe from grubs.
Kristy Smith’s Different Drum humor columns are archived at her blog: diffdrum.wordpress.com
This article originally appeared on The Daily Reporter: Opinion
