Basement Update - calling it done for Christmas!

After more time on my knees in this basement than I like to think about, I've gotten pretty close to finishing the main area with the bar, fireplace, and record player.  The aluminum tree is up and spinning, I've got a fire going, and I'm listening to vintage Christmas albums!  We had some good friends over for lunch and I just barely got things cleaned and straightened to make things presentable.  Still on my checklist: finishing with the floor trim, waxing the floor, adding curtains, adding a mirrored shadowbox for behind the bar, making some kind of panel backing for the R above the fireplace, restoring my Plycraft chair, and working on getting the other furniture fabrics to match up better (I'm thinking about having new covers made for the Z chairs). But for now, I'm pretty happy with the progress.   Have a look --

I'll probably blog again next weekend, if time allows.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Have Lunch Will Travel

OK, so when I was really really into buying and selling lunchboxes, I came up with my ebay handle "Pailotin".  At the time I thought it was pretty clever, since lunchboxes sometimes were call lunch pails made of tin (yea, I know they're steel, so sue me), and one of my favorite lunchboxes was tied to the Paladin "Have Gun Will Travel" TV show.  Yea, corny, but I like it.

So, my business card was going to have this homemade graphic, the slogan Have Lunch Will Travel, and my name and contact info.  If you've never seen the show, the hired gun Paladin had a business card with his handle and the HGWT slogan.   I never did pursue the buying/selling thing as planned, but I did acquire the Paladin lunchbox. I have managed to collect the thermoses for most of the boxes I own,so I busted out the thermos for these photos, but I usually keep the thermos inside the box on display just to save space.

A few more lunchbox favorites

I'll toss out a few more photos of some of my lunchbox favorites.  It's funny how so many of these color graphics capture their subject so well.  One reason I like these so much is the colorful, whimsical art.

I watched the Archies every Saturday morning, it was part of a routine along with so many other kids shows.  If I had the endurance to make it through a sugary cereal morning in front of the TV, I might even last through The Banana Splits, Monkees reruns, and on into American Bandstand.

It's best not to dwell so much on the thousands of hours I spent watching TV in my youth.  I watched pretty much everything, but I was definitely a fan of the Batman and Green Hornet TV series and all the great spy shows that were popular.  I watched the westerns too, but my favorite was the Wild Wild West -I absolutely loved that show and all the wild gadgets employed by James West and Artemis Gordon.

More to come....

Vintage Lunchboxes - Part I, the boxes I had as a kid

I got back into collecting baseball and football cards in the late 1980s but eventually lost interest in those when I started collecting old lunchboxes.  For several years I was a dyed-in-the-wool boxaholic.  I still have many of the ones I picked up on display in our basement, but I don't buy them very often any more ([after all, you can only stretch hobby dollars so far ;-).

I have managed to re-acquire the boxes I had as a kid: Tarzan, Rat Patrol, and Laugh-In.

Many of the boxes I picked up came in a single trade I made with a guy who gladly took many of my boyhood baseball cards that I had never let my Mom toss out.  When we made the trade around 1992, I drove about 80 miles to meet the guy half way.  I barely got all 110 boxes shoved into our Honda Accord for the return trip!  Shifting the manual tranny was a challenge, and visibility was too with cardboard boxes stacked everywhere, but I managed. The rest of my boxes came via ebay, flea markets, antique stores and other auctions.  I found over the years that a lot of collectors strive to find mint, untouched boxes -- for me, I prefer the boxes that got used and loved but are still in presentable shape.

The market for these old boxes has gone up and down a lot.  About six years ago, I sold off most of my dome-top boxes and used the money for my old car hobby.  The remainder of my collection is based mostly around 1950s and 60s boxes, with most relating to old TV shows.  I'll showcase some of my other lunchboxes in future posts.

How about you?  Boxaholic?  Carry one as a purse?  Do you still have the box you carried to school?  Were you one of those poor, uncared-for plaid box carriers?  Any stories of great finds?  I have some others I'll tell one of these days.