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No matter how many times your mom washed it out, by the end of the school year your lunch box would have that strange metallic, processed-cheese, warm-Kool-Aid odor that made it unusable after months of being packed with sandwiches and pudding cups.

But that was OK, because picking out a new lunch box was a yearly ritual that made going back to school a little easier to handle. Besides, that Osmonds lunch box that was so cool in '71 was so passé by '72.

Whether you carried a lunch box to school, the nostalgia-filled "Lunch Box Memories" exhibit, which opens Sunday at Gallery L in the Main Library, is sure to bring a lot of childhood images back into view. It showcases 75 rare metal lunch boxes from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Sunday's opening will have several special events. Families can take advantage of a rare treat and bring their own lunch to enjoy at an indoor picnic. Kids can transform a cardboard takeout box into a lunch box. And Rick Spreitzer and Kevin Edwards will entertain with acoustic guitar and harmonica.

A companion exhibit in the Children's Library will showcase 10 lunch boxes from the more than 200 vintage metal ones owned by Mike McGuire, who runs the New Waves of Joy retro shop in the North Davidson Arts District.

McGuire's lunch boxes and the "Lunch Box Memories" exhibit will be on display through Sept. 26.

"It's a fun way to look at American history," says Rita Rouse, the library's programming and communications director. "Everywhere the exhibit has traveled, people love it because they enjoy thinking about that time when they were kids." Rouse is one of those who didn't carry a lunch box to school.

"I actually went home for lunch every day," says Rouse, who grew up in a suburb of New York City.

After seeing the lunch boxes on display, Rouse says she knows which one she would have picked: "I really like the Barbie ones because I had a huge Barbie collection."

For Kari Hippert, who is doing the exhibit's design installation, it brought back memories of her favorite lunch box from her elementary school days in Hickory.

Her lunch box "was like a board game, I can't remember which one, but it had a spinner and magnetic game pieces."

The exhibit brought back memories for others on the library's staff.

"One of our maintenance men started talking about his favorite lunch box that had the Beatles on it," says Rouse. "I asked if he still had it and he said yes. That's a very valuable one. There's a Beatles lunch box that's part of the exhibit, but maybe he'll bring his in."

The exhibit begins with lunch boxes from the turn of the 20th century and shows the progression from a working man's necessity to a child's accessory.

The change began in the 1920s, when movies became popular. Disney wanted Mickey Mouse, from "Steamboat Willie" (Mickey's first movie, released in 1928), to be more recognizable -- and someone came up with the marketing idea to put the now-ubiquitous rodent on a lunch pail.

By the 1950s and 1960s, lunch boxes were covered with characters from popular TV shows. The beginning of the end of the lunch-box years was 1984, when the boxes went from being metal to plastic. Now, most kids that take their lunch to school put it in nondescript insulated bags with ice packs and fancy thermoses to keep everything at a perfect temperature.

For those of us who carried our smelly Snoopy lunch boxes with pride, filled them with unrefrigerated food and made it out of grade school botulism-free, "Lunch Box Memories" makes that accomplishment even more sweet.

"This isn't an art exhibit, it's a nostalgia exhibit, because it's symbolic of an old, simpler life," says Rouse.

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