Web Site News

Site Map

Contact Us

Home

Yesterday's lunch is today's treasure for Bonnie Clemson of Hambden Township.

The kaleidoscopic collection of 1,200 bright-hued metal lunchboxes that line the walls of her basement on G.A.R. Highway are a virtual monument to lunches - and pop culture - of yore.

Ma, Pa, Laura and Mary Ingalls pose for a "Little House on the Prairie" portrait on one. "The Flying Nun" levitates on another. Col. Hogan from "Hogan's Heroes" gets a haircut on a third.

Clemson doesn't discriminate. Boxes depicting The Beatles sit beside those commemorating the Osmonds, Partridge Family and Disco Fever.

"People love them," she said of her reasons for latching onto lunchbox collecting. "They come down to my basement and point out the ones they had in school. Lunchboxes are colorful, and they really take you down memory lane."

Of course, not all those memories are pleasant.

"Isn't this one of the most disgusting things you've ever seen?" she asks, holding up a specimen that depicts the fake-blood-spitting, rock quartet KISS. "Eating lunch out of this one would be enough to make anyone lose their appetite."

Maybe it was the fact that her mother bought her the plainest, most common lunchbox of all - a red plaid one - that made her fixate on the bright and unusual as an adult.

Clemson, 36, says she started her collection four or five years ago, when her husband, Bill, an excavator who operates Thompson Drag Raceway, returned from an antique show with two shopping bags full of them.

Since then, she has prowled auctions, garage sales, antique shows and flea markets in search of her quarry.

"When we first started out, the kids would see one and get real excited and run over, and we'd have to pretend not to be real interested so we could bargain," she said.

The oldest one she's got is a "Hopalong Cassidy" lunchbox from 1954. The jewels of her collection are a rare "Jetsons" lunchbox worth about $800, and a "Star Trek" lunchbox worth the same amount. Most are worth no more than a few dollars, she said.

"I don't really care about how valuable they are," she said. "I know if I don't have them, I want them."

Clemson said she acquired most of her stash three years ago, when a Massachusetts collector sold her more than 1,000. She picked them up with fellow lunchbox maven, Madison Mayor David Reed.

"We drove up there and stuffed several hundred of them into a van until no more would fit," she said. "The guy who sold them met us later midway in Pennsylvania with the rest."

Occasionally, Clemson finds treasures inside the lunchboxes, like some "Davy Crockett" iron-on transfers. Another time, her stomach fell when she shook a new purchase and feared it contained fossilized luncheon remains.

"It turned out to be a bunch of sand dollars," she said. "Fortunately, I've never found anyone's old peanut butter and jelly sandwiches."

Comments or Suggestions?