W.O.F. 31 Steve Canyon Thermos

..and now I'm too ridiculously nostalgic to eBay this sucker...

This was on the "take home or discard" pile the last time we visited Dad's house in Baltimore. It is a thermos that came with a long-gone lunchbox that I took to school for many a year in elementary school. I believe I took my own lunch for the first few years, but converted to the hot lunch - that must have cost all of thirty cents - in my later elementary school career.

Anyhow, this Milt Caniff masterpiece does remind me of those elementary school years, which I look upon fondly. I believe I enjoyed the elementary years as much as any in the Baltimore County public school system. Pretty good times, but way too much dodge ball for anyone's good.

The weird part? I don't remember ever, EVER being what
you'd call a big Steve Canyon fan. I think the parents bought
this thing on a whim, or got a heck of a deal, or something.

Yeah, looking at this thermos is a memory-starter, just as smelling freshly mimeographed paper used to be. You just can't find freshly mimeographed paper anymore, can you? With all this fancypants digital technology, mimeo has gone the way of the slide rule.

A friend and I used to publish a little monthly magazine on his $20 used Gestetner mimeograph. We sent it to a random California address one month just to say our 'zine went coast to coast. Man, that mimeograph was messy. We'd end up with ink all over our hands. But it was our love of solid journalism that kept us inking up our hands, month after month. I think at our peak, our little product, called "Interests Illustrated", had a circulation approaching, um, twenty.

Anyhow, the smell of that mimeo paper - I think a schoolkid could get a bit high off that stuff. Then there was the sweet smell of all that homemade flour paste they would mix up for first grade projects, cutting pictures out of magazines to make barnyard scenes (or whatever). I wonder what magazines they would use now.

Detail from the opposite side of the thermos.

OK, so much for this little overly long trip down memory lane. What sends YOUR mind racing back to elementary school? Have a great weekend...