I lived in Maine long ago when first married, and worked for an old-timer who called his lunch pail a Dinner Bucket.

Some people in Nebraska called it that too. I visited the Pioneer Village museum in Minden, Nebraska a couple years ago, and there was a one-room schoolhouse. In the front of the schoolhouse, there were lunch containers all lined up. There were lunch pails and cigar boxes and any other containers that school children in the old days could bring their lunch in.

And some 30 years earlier, my Dad rode his horse to school in northern Kentucky, carrying a loaded revolver.

Looking at the young man on the left, you can see where the old expresson "lunch pail" got its origin. Lunch was actually packed in a small bucket or pail. It had a handle, was sturdy and leakproof.

Maybe the term lunch pail was a regionalism, but it was popular in my area, especially among factory workers.

I'd be willing to bet that during winter they had to walk uphill both ways in the middle of a blizzard.

Sun flash on the Lunch Bucket. Serendipity, do you think, or are there multiples of this shot trying to get it?

[Actually it's because Ma packed Billy a plutonium sandwich. - Dave]