Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Back to school memories

So kids went back to school today and some sites are asking for your memories of the experience. So here's mine:

My mom would always take the week off before school so that she could drag us around to Leberfeld's to get uniforms (now a closeout store - photographed by Miss Heather) and to TSS to buy school supplies (now Kmart). Then the week of school she cleaned the whole house. (Mom was never big on actually taking vacation to go on vacation when we were kids.)

As I recall, picking out the lunchbox was always the highlight. And I have a very vivid memory of joining with some classmates in making fun of a girl who showed up for 1st grade with a lunchbox like the one pictured. Even though we were really young at the time, we knew this was just lame. If you were a girl you had Snoopy, Strawberry Shortcake or Wonder Woman and if you were a boy you had Superman, Spiderman or Star Wars. If you had the Bee Gees, it meant you were a freak. And speaking of freaks, until I found this picture, I had totally forgotten about the disturbing-looking clown that advertised the 'flip-n-sip' feature of the enclosed thermos. He was stickered onto just about every lunchbox and gave the kids nightmares. Ah, memories!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

My favorite was my Holly Hobbie lunchbox. I had forgotten about that. Thanks Crappy.

Anonymous said...

Oh you rich kids with your fancy lunchboxes. I got a paper bag, and as I recall, I was supposed to fold it up and bring it back home and use it again and again until it was all wrinkly and oily from leaking mayonnaise.

Back-to-school was a scary time, as I didn't fit in (maybe it was the old wrinkly lunch bags) and so I did not look forward to another year of humiliation.

We got a clothes budget at Mervyn's which was never enough, and we got to pick our own clothes from whatever they had there. They had bell bottoms, but not Super Bells, so I never had a big enough bell to be cool.

Anonymous said...

Same here no boxes just paper bags.

I honestly dont know of anybody who used a lunchbox ?

If you sported a Bee Gee's T shirt or box in 1978 Ridgewood you would likley get egged or get your a** kicked.

That Bee Gee's disco scene and "The Godfather" movies sturred up all the Guidos.
It was horrible, so many were real A**holes.

A real desgrutsiad (spelling ?)as my Grandfather would yell at them !!!

-Joe

-Joe

Anonymous said...

I remember that clown on my Empire Strikes Back lunchbox. My friends all had thermoses with that too.

We were too cool for some creepy-ass clown so we stickered over it or in my case, used a perment marker to make him look even creepier, to the teacher's chagrin.

Anonymous said...

how 'bout a lunchbox with crappy on it?

the thermos could look like one of the fountains in Flushing Meadows park, but there would be no way for a kid open it to pour out the kool aid. Except during the US open.

Queens Crapper said...

Kurt and Joe are obviously not GenXers. I like the merchandise with subliminal messages though. How about the outside of the thermos lined with tweed?

Anonymous said...

I have a Tweed Thermos and 6 matching tweed cups in different colors, pink, lime, rasberry, aqua.

The tweed is under clear plastic right ?
...Drinking out of one right now. They work great !!

Still have my 1964 World World Fair lapel badge with the flashlight bulb, ome "Moldarama" Dino's with a Sinclair Dino Book.

Gen X ?
I was born 1959 and I remember "Duck and cover" in case the commie rockets were coming.
Also cars with 1/2 the headlights covered. We had a Pontiac Starchief with the Indian on the steering wheel.

-Joe

Anonymous said...

desgrutsiad ???!!!!????!!


disgraziato

sorry joe, couldn't let that one slide

georgetheatheist said...

I wish I had my Roy Rogers and Trigger lunchbox. It was the hit of the Catholic school.

Anonymous said...

"It was the hit of the Catholic school"

Roy and Trigger days ?

Whoa yikes.. Dominican nuns and steel dont mix!

...I wonder how many of those metal lunchboxes were used on kids by those fustrated nuns.

Lucky you are still around and have hands and scalp

---Especially those days before State laws.

Anonymous said...

I had a scooby doo lunchbox

ps 49 1976-1983 k-thru 6th

only had the lunchbox 1 year or so

we used to go to pats pizzeria on 80th and el;iot for lunch or silver barn when you could enter on 80th st side

Anonymous said...

TSS! (formerly Bargain Town USA!) What a childhood memory!

When I lived in Lawrence (OK, not in Queens, but just outside of it) my brother and I would walk to the one on Rockaway Blvd. to buy "Bobby Orr Rally" street hockey sticks and Spaldeens. And of course records from their great music dept.(69 cent singles and $3.49 albums!). And their snack bar sold the best hot pretzels outside of Manhattan.

One of my best memories of being in 6th grade in the fall of 1969 (besides the Mets, of course) was walking there after school one day, and my brother and I pooling our money to buy the brand-new releases of the Beatles' Abbey Road and the 'Stones "Let It Bleed"--and then rushing home to secretly listen to them and safely hide them away so that our our parents didn't find them, confiscate them and punish us for buying "drug music."

"dave in milwaukee"

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