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Bryan Ehrenholm felt like a big man on campus when he showed up for school with his ultimate badge of coolness: a "Wild Wild West" lunchbox, based on the hit TV show.

"And when I got all big and macho," he said, "it was 'Adam-12' and 'Emergency.'"

Ehrenholm was an elementary school kid when his mom sent him off to class with his metal lunchboxes, filled with sandwiches, fruit, milk and other goodies carefully prepared and packed for him.

The days of toting homemade meals to school and swapping bologna sandwiches for peanut butter and jelly have long passed for the Modesto man, now 37. But that doesn't mean he's outgrown his interest in lunchboxes, not by a long shot.

Ehrenholm owns about 370 of them. When he opened a sandwich shop in north Modesto last year, he decided to call it The Lunch Pail. And he adorned the walls of his Bangs Avenue business with lunchboxes.

His collection includes not only the three he carried as a kid -- not the very same ones, but replacements he found on the Internet -- but many many others. There are boxes featuring "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman," "The Dukes of Hazzard," "Get Smart" and "The Munsters."

He's got lunchboxes featuring musical acts and pop-culture icons: The Osmonds, The Partridge Family, The Bee Gees, Charles Schulz's Peanuts gang, the "Hardy Boys Mysteries" (the '70s TV show with Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson) and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

Ehrenholm's collection also includes two 1940s electric lunchboxes that could be plugged in to heat the meal inside, a 1918 hand-painted Snow White box from Switzerland and a collapsible metal lunchbox from the late 1800s.

When asked to pick his favorite, he says the decision is tough. "I have so many," he said. "They are like art to me."

Of course, he has a special affinity for the ones he carried back in the day, especially "The Wild Wild West." That was the first one he owned.

Lunchboxes from the '50s, '60s, '70s and mid-1980s are enjoying renewed popularity among baby boomers and the generation X and Y crowds -- people who either carried lunchboxes to school themselves or coveted certain boxes because they were adorned with the images of a favorite group, singer, movie, sports or television personality.

Vintage lunchboxes are the rage, according to Sean Brickell, co-author of "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Metal Lunch Boxes." And for those who covet them, they often elicit strong emotional reactions.

"Even if you hated school, you loved lunchtime -- that was the favorite part of the school day," Brickell said.

"Lunchboxes reflected something we thought was very cool or important during those early formative years. Your lunchbox made a statement about you: 'I'm "The Man from UNCLE" or Annie Oakley, a Harlem Globetrotter or whatever.'

"Lunchboxes bring back a lot of memories, and that's why people respond to them."

Lunchboxes also play a part in preserving popular culture.

"They are great pop art," Brickell said. "They have become icons of pop culture. They had terrific designs and art. The manufacturers had one time of year to sell their boxes -- before the new school year -- so they had to predict which TV shows or artists would be hot."

Lunchboxes on tour

Even the Smithsonian Institution has recognized the lunchbox phenomenon. Its National Museum of American History has an exhibit titled "Taking America to Lunch," which features dozens of illustrated metal lunchboxes and beverage containers that date from the 1890s through the 1980s.

The museum has a portion of the lunchbox show on the road for those who can't make the trek to Washington, D.C. Through the institution's Traveling Exhibition Service, an exhibit called "Lunch Box Memories," which showcases 60-plus lunchboxes, has visited seven U.S. cities since November 2002. (Sorry, but it's already come this way; it was in Napa, at Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts, in the fall.) According to information on a Smithsonian Web site, the tour is booked solid through January 2006.

Before the Internet, collectors looking for vintage lunchboxes scoured garage sales, thrift stores, and antiques and collectibles shops in search of boxes featuring Hopalong Cassidy, Hong Kong Phooey and Disney characters. But with Web access, tracking down a favorite box takes but a mere few mouse clicks with online sites such as eBay.

Ehrenholm tracked down many of his boxes using the Internet. He estimates the collection is worth $15,000.

Sharing memories

Not a week goes by without a customer sharing a story about his or her own lunchbox, he said. "They bring back a rush of memories for people."

He recalled one customer who was deep in thought as she stared at one box. He thinks it was a Holly Hobbie lunch pail.

"I asked her what she was thinking about and she said when she was a kid, she wanted that lunchbox, but her mother wouldn't get it for her," Ehrenholm recalled. "All those years had passed, yet that was still vivid for her."

There was another time when a customer brought a lunchbox that once belonged to her grandmother. It had a picture of Queen Elizabeth II on it. The boxes were given away during her coronation in 1953. She told Ehrenholm she wanted him to have it.

Brickell, the author and collector, has similar stories of strangers giving him lunchboxes. He still gets emotional when he tells one story. "I got a call from a woman in North Carolina who had a Campus Queen lunchbox," he recalled. "She said it used to belong to a little girl who lived across the street from her. They had formed a great relationship."

One day, while the girl was outside playing her home, she was hit by a car and killed. The family, devastated, sold its house. Before moving, they had a garage sale, and one of the items for sale was the little girl's Campus Queen box.

The woman "said to me, 'I couldn't let that lunchbox get sold,'" Brickell said as he recalled the conversation. "She said, 'If I send it to you, will you give it a good home?'"

Ehrenholm gets inquiries from people who want to buy his boxes. He tells them his boxes aren't for sale, but sometimes he takes down names and numbers and searches the Internet for the boxes they seek.

Ehrenholm says he gets a kick out of watching people gaze at the boxes. "I enjoy listening to them talk about their kid experiences," he said. "The memories they have. It's fun."

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