Wondertime Staff Blog: The Lunch Box

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Staff Blog: The Wonder Times

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November 18, 2008

The Lunch Box

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By Steve Richards

As you may have noticed, here at Wondertime, we love to add personal touches to each issue. I'm thrilled to have had that opportunity on page 52 of our October issue, which shows some clever (and easy) Halloween costumes for young children. No, none of those cute, dressed-up kids are mine. The source of my pride is the lunch box our little construction worker is sitting on. That lunch box, adorned on all sides with dozens of stickers, has won me more compliments than anything else I've ever owned, which either tells you something about the sorts of things I own or how cool this lunch box is.

My wife bought it for me about 10 years ago at a Restoration Hardware store near Boston. Turns out the lunch box was made by a small company in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, May Metal Fabricators, which apparently is the home of the Original Miner's Lunch Box. According to the company's website, some 50 years ago Leo May, who worked in a nickel mine in Sudbury, came up with the idea for this lunch box which is made of heavy gauge aluminum. He designed it not only to hold his lunch, but to serve as a mealtime seat -- this after his attempt to sit on his tin lunch box ended with him sprawled on the ground and his lunch squashed. I can attest: this lunch box can hold a lot more than the pint-sized hardhat pictured in our pages.

It can also hold, at last count, about 259 stickers. Most of mine are from fruit I've had in it, since those stickers peel off the fruit easiest. Most are from bananas and oranges, but there are also plenty of pears and apples, and the occasional kiwi, peach, and nectarine. My dad, an electrician, was my inspiration; I remember him having fruit stickers on his lunch box.

Once my 8- and 6-year-old started to take notice of my lunchbox stickers, my collection diversified. Obviously, kids like stickers . So now Scooby-Doo, Charlie Brown, Bert from Sesame Street, and a fuzzy little fish all reside amidst the Chiquitas, Sunkists, d'Anjous, and Macouns. And every day I go to work, I get to take along a little bit of Isabelle and Levi (and my dad).