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One piece of Americana has kept bologna fresh and soup warm and spanned from late-19th-century Pennsylvania coal miners to the "disco fever" of the late 1970s.

The lunch box has come in many shapes and sizes over the years. And in its honor, the National Museum of American History, along with Thermos LLC, debuted the Smithsonian Institution's latest exhibit, "Taking America to Lunch."

Located, appropriately, near the museum's main dining area, the Main St. Cafe, four glass cases hold 136 lunch pails and thermoses decorated with images inspired by Hollywood, television and sports.

"The lunch box you carried was a part of your identity," said Brent Glass, the museum director. "There is a certain power of association with the values of working-class life."

The exhibit contains not only the brightly hued likes of Roy Rogers, the Flying Nun and '70s singer Bobby Sherman, but also converted food tins that were used as early as 1880. Crude pails were constructed from metal buckets and finished with rope to keep hardy meals warm for the noontime whistle.

"We try to tell the story of our country ... what it has meant to be an American," Glass said. "The lunch box has an amazing story to tell."

June Lockhart, who played the mother in the "Lassie" TV series, joined other lunch-box celebrities to open the exhibit, which will remain on view indefinitely.

"It's thrilling just to be in the Smithsonian," said Shirley Jones of "The Partridge Family" TV show fame. "It's my favorite place in the world."

Jones, with her '70s-style blond shag, is immortalized on a lunch box as the driver of the Partridge Family's psychedelic school bus. She said people still bring her lunch boxes to autograph at concerts.

Highlights include a 1908 thermos-sealed tennis trophy, a Hopalong Cassidy box (the first character ever portrayed on a pail) and a 1962 Barbie vinyl kit.

Designers not only drew on pop culture for inspiration but also from historical events. In the '50s and '60s, metal boxes were decorated with cowboys and astronauts, and in the '70s, scenes from the Cold War were painted in grayish-green hues.

Thermos donated 28 historic metal boxes and accompanying vacuum bottles, and the rest of the exhibit came from the Smithsonian's permanent collection. Thermos paid an average of $300 to $400 to buy some of the boxes in the collection. Several were purchased on the online auction site eBay.

"They bring back a lot of memories," said Jeffery Landes, 54, a physician from New Jersey who has been collecting toys since 1975.

Landes purchased a mint-condition 1954 Superman lunch box for $11,999.99 on eBay in 2000.

Harlem Globetrotter legend Meadowlark Lemon said he looks forward to the day when his grandchildren will walk through the Smithsonian, see his image going in for a lay-up and think, "That's my pappy."

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