After writing yesterdays posting about my dog my thoughts did wander back to the days of my youth. The days of wax paper and a tin lunch box. I remember well my favorite lunch box, it was shaped like barn with a hip roof. Painted the traditional red it came with a wide mouth thermos. And yes, that thermos was glass lined. I carried it for several years until I became too " old " for such things. I'm thinking that may have ended when the new elementary school opened. Located at 3 Gingerbread Lane in the village it was grades kindergarten through sixth at that time. I distinctly remember being there in 1963 when Kennedy was shot. It also had a large cafeteria. A carton of milk was 3 cents and you could buy an ice cream too. The main course was served on a tray, like a tv tray with separate compartments. I recall liking the welsh rarebit. But before all of that was wax paper in my lunch box. Peanut butter sandwiches was the usual fair along with a piece of fruit. There was no concern about peanut allegories back then, bring all you want. My thermos might have soup or chowder in it. Some days it had cool aid. Well, whatever was in there, I enjoyed having it.
Mom always used waxed paper, most everyone did. Tin foil was too expensive to use for that. Fact is aluminum foil was in common usage by the time I went to school but Mom still called it tin foil and thought of it as expensive stuff. You didn't go using that to just wrap a sandwich! You could also use waxed paper to lubricate the slide on the playground when that became necessary. That waxed paper worked well but did leave a smell behind. At least I believe that is what the smell is. Are you old enough to remember the smell of a tin lunch box? They do have a distinct odor about them. Is it the lunch box, the food that was carried in it, or the waxed paper? It would have to be the combination of all three is my thinking. Whatever the cause it is a pervasive smell, no amount of washing will erase it. Mom scrubbed the paint right off my barn and it stayed! There were no warning labels on that lunch box. Still I didn't eat the paint as it chipped off and if the thermos broke I didn't eat the glass either. I guess back in the day the manufacturer figured if you were in school you had enough sense not to do those things. I don't think kids even carry lunch boxes these days. If they do they have to go through a metal detector and mine would have definitely set that thing off! School would have been in lock down every day. Of course we didn't have lock downs, we just hid under the desk when a nuclear attack was imminent.
That was in the good old days though. We weren't so concerned about sanitation, soap and water was good enough, no hand sanitizer. Our lunches weren't refrigerated just stored in the cloak closet until it was time. We shared or exchanged lunches with each other. No one was allergic to anything that we knew about. Well except for one girl that was allergic to shrimp! It wasn't posted on the walls and you could bring shrimp for lunch if you wanted to. At least that was the word on the playground. I remember one boy that would bring blood pudding for his desert. Can't recall his name right now but his family were farmers. I heard they made that blood pudding after they slaughtered the hogs. To each there own I suppose, I wanted none of it.
I have seen on the show American pickers that people collect those lunch boxes and some are worth quite a bit of money. I even saw my barn on there. They didn't buy that one, but was interested in the KISS lunch box. It's another one of those things, who would have thought? Now if I had my Fathers lunch bucket that would be a collectable for sure. Dad always called his a lunch bucket or lunch pail. He had one of those black ones with the thermos in the lid. Every working man had one of those. I have one sitting on top of my kitchen cabinets as decoration. Mine had been carried by a man that worked for the railroad, wonder how many miles that box has seen.
Now I wonder if we shouldn't bring those old lunch boxes and wax paper back. Seems to me the kids were a lot healthier years ago. Didn't seem to have many kids with ADHD or allergies. We didn't get forty five injections by the time we reached sixth grade either. At the beginning of the school year the doctor came to the school and examined each student. That seemed to be good enough, we all survived. Didn't need insurance for that, it was included in the school year. We ate whatever Mom packed or made our trades. No government intervention! No hand sanitizer, no face masks and no air conditioning either. Yes I had indoor plumbing. There was no confusion about which bathroom to use, it was obvious to us back then. It you weren't positive, look at your lunch box, they had ones for boys and one for girls. Just act accordingly. Life sure was simple back then.
Mom always used waxed paper, most everyone did. Tin foil was too expensive to use for that. Fact is aluminum foil was in common usage by the time I went to school but Mom still called it tin foil and thought of it as expensive stuff. You didn't go using that to just wrap a sandwich! You could also use waxed paper to lubricate the slide on the playground when that became necessary. That waxed paper worked well but did leave a smell behind. At least I believe that is what the smell is. Are you old enough to remember the smell of a tin lunch box? They do have a distinct odor about them. Is it the lunch box, the food that was carried in it, or the waxed paper? It would have to be the combination of all three is my thinking. Whatever the cause it is a pervasive smell, no amount of washing will erase it. Mom scrubbed the paint right off my barn and it stayed! There were no warning labels on that lunch box. Still I didn't eat the paint as it chipped off and if the thermos broke I didn't eat the glass either. I guess back in the day the manufacturer figured if you were in school you had enough sense not to do those things. I don't think kids even carry lunch boxes these days. If they do they have to go through a metal detector and mine would have definitely set that thing off! School would have been in lock down every day. Of course we didn't have lock downs, we just hid under the desk when a nuclear attack was imminent.
That was in the good old days though. We weren't so concerned about sanitation, soap and water was good enough, no hand sanitizer. Our lunches weren't refrigerated just stored in the cloak closet until it was time. We shared or exchanged lunches with each other. No one was allergic to anything that we knew about. Well except for one girl that was allergic to shrimp! It wasn't posted on the walls and you could bring shrimp for lunch if you wanted to. At least that was the word on the playground. I remember one boy that would bring blood pudding for his desert. Can't recall his name right now but his family were farmers. I heard they made that blood pudding after they slaughtered the hogs. To each there own I suppose, I wanted none of it.
I have seen on the show American pickers that people collect those lunch boxes and some are worth quite a bit of money. I even saw my barn on there. They didn't buy that one, but was interested in the KISS lunch box. It's another one of those things, who would have thought? Now if I had my Fathers lunch bucket that would be a collectable for sure. Dad always called his a lunch bucket or lunch pail. He had one of those black ones with the thermos in the lid. Every working man had one of those. I have one sitting on top of my kitchen cabinets as decoration. Mine had been carried by a man that worked for the railroad, wonder how many miles that box has seen.
Now I wonder if we shouldn't bring those old lunch boxes and wax paper back. Seems to me the kids were a lot healthier years ago. Didn't seem to have many kids with ADHD or allergies. We didn't get forty five injections by the time we reached sixth grade either. At the beginning of the school year the doctor came to the school and examined each student. That seemed to be good enough, we all survived. Didn't need insurance for that, it was included in the school year. We ate whatever Mom packed or made our trades. No government intervention! No hand sanitizer, no face masks and no air conditioning either. Yes I had indoor plumbing. There was no confusion about which bathroom to use, it was obvious to us back then. It you weren't positive, look at your lunch box, they had ones for boys and one for girls. Just act accordingly. Life sure was simple back then.
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