On rainy days like this one, lunchtime soup warming one hand, fingers of other hand clicking out a path through the web-o-sphere in front of me, I like to take a few minutes to wander the quiet back hallways of the American Package Museum.

Maybe it’s because I work on the ‘net all day, in a world of branding and cross-branding, marketing and lifestyle and CPMs, but I find something very soothing about artifacts from a simpler time.

Like a “Week-End Assortment” of Uneeda Biscuits, from the National Biscuit Company.

Or a cylinder of Pablum in soothing hues.

Or a Depression-era shaker of Palmolive Talc for Men.

The wrappers, labels, and boxes in the Package Museum tell the story of America’s “corporate heritage” (ponder that phrase for a moment, please). They tell it in faded hues of blue and red, nifty type treatments, and very early attempts at the kinds of snazziness or sex appeal that we take so for granted, now.

They feel faded and nostalgic, at once hopeful and forlorn, kind of like a blues song, kind of the perfect lunchtime ramble for a rainy day like today.