Georgia Magazine - June 2017 - 26

A (lunch) box
full of memories
Columbus Lunchbox
Museum delights
visitors with nostalgia
STORY AND PHOTOS
BY JENNIFER J. HEWETT

lvin and the Chipmunks,
Flipper, Barbie, The Bee Gees,
"Knight Rider," "The Flying
Nun," Superman, Roy Rogers and
Dale Evans, "Star Wars," Doctor
Doolittle, Little Orphan Annie and
more. These childhood favorites
were in the comics, in books and
on the radio and TV-and when it
was time for school, many kids toted
them along on the sides of their
lunchboxes.
Not far from the banks of the
Chattahoochee River in Columbus,
these pieces of pop-culture history are celebrated at the Lunchbox
Museum. Walking into the museum
is like stepping back in time. Metal,
plastic and vinyl lunchboxes featuring TV, movie and pop-culture favorites since the 1950s fill the shelves
lining the museum's walls.
Opened in 1990, this quirky collection of more than 2,000 pieces is
Allen Woodall Jr.'s creation. For the
last 10 years, the museum has been
tucked in a building at the back of
the International Marketplace at the
site of the old Columbus Farmers
Market.

spoke by phone with Bob Carr, who
had amassed a very large lunchbox
collection.
"He was a professor in St. Louis
and was doing a lot of research on
lunchboxes. Then all of the sudden
I heard that he had passed away,"
Woodall says.
Though people in New York and
California were interested in Carr's
collection of 600 to 700 lunchboxes,
Woodall says he contacted Carr's wife
and promised that, if he could purchase the collection, he would write
an encyclopedia and price guide
about lunchboxes with the help of
Carr's research materials and dedicate
it to her family. She agreed to the
This simple lunch pail is one of the vintage
deal, and things really took off.
items in the Lunchbox Museum's collection.
No stranger to collecting, Woodall also owns Rivermarket Antiques
A former radio executive who
(home of the Lunchbox Museum),
studied at the University of Georgia
which showcases and sells a little
in Athens, Woodall got his start in the of everything, including furniture,
world of lunchboxes while browsing jewelry, Coca-Cola memorabilia
at an antiques market in Atlanta.
and oddities, restored classic cars
"Back in 1989, when the collect- and muscle trucks, folk pottery and
ing of lunchboxes was just getting
model planes.
going, I used to go to Lakewood Fair"I've been doing this all my
grounds market. I saw a Green Horlife. I love collecting-anything," he
net and a Dick Tracy lunchbox" and
says. "Beer steins, old shaving mugs,
had to have them, Woodall recalls. "I lunchboxes, old barbed wire, stamps,
used to listen to both of those on the coins-anything."
radio in the '40s and '50s."
But the lunchboxes have been
After his initial purchase, he was more than a passing fascination.
hooked. He'd meet up and talk with
Woodall has been interviewed by
other collectors at the market and do The Washington Post, CNN, NPR and
some trading, he says.
Georgia Public Broadcasting, among
About that same time, Woodall
others-and some of his lunchboxes
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Georgia Magazine - June 2017