(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on February 22, 2021)

 

In the same bag (above) as 4 of the 5 previous posts (and the one after this), I found Mom’s stash of political memorabilia – some of which supported/explained/fleshed-out some of the events featured in the previous post. And all of this ignores a big book of a stamp collection that my father put together in his younger days (and that I found WAY too tedious to post about. Sorry, Dad…………you should have collected guitars).  😉

Mom worked in three presidential campaigns: one win, two losses. Let’s start with the win – Richard Nixon in 1968.

Here’s something that was mailed to Mom in October, 1968:

 

In it is a whole article about the visit at the Neptune Inn in Paramus by VP-candidate Spiro Agnew, where Mom got one photo from not-close range.

Here’s the article:

I should mention here that some of the articles/writeups, etc., may be too small to read, so if any historians need to be able to read something, let me know.

 

The New Jersey Trumpeter of September 1968 tells of Nixon’s visit to South Jersey and some of the noted speakers who lent their support, including someone Mom photographed that I wondered about in the previous post: Texas Senator John Tower:

 

This brochure features the POTUS/VP candidates and their families (hard to believe that Tricia and Julie are now in their 70s):

 

This (well, what’s left of it) is a find! It’s the flyer for Nixon’s visit to Fort Lee, NJ, where Mom photographed him:

 

On the back, it appears that Mom was tallying the national and local races. “Burr” is probably Frank Burr, who was mayor of Teaneck from 1970-1974. I think we know who “Hump” is (Nixon beat him):

 

 

BUMPER STICKERS

 

 

BUTTONS (and matches)

(anyone notice the error button on top?)

 

POSTCARDS

Mom addressed this to herself (her handwriting is a dead giveaway) and mailed it on 10-14-68, received it the next day, and – for some reason – squeezed in her title and initials amongst all the candidate names………..probably as another Republican for responsible government (though she did not run for office):

 

Poor Hump. I recall my father once describing him as someone whose entire face was on the bottom half of his head:

 

 

ELECTION DAY DOOR HANGER/REMINDER:

 

 

Four years before that victory came this loss by Barry Goldwater in 1964.

The item with the earliest date is also the spookiest. It’s a letter concerning a campaign kickoff rally at the Bergen Mall in Paramus, NJ on………….November 22, 1963! (as my mother noted on top). It’s also weird to me because I was on a school bowling team that bowled at Ten Pin On The Mall…………..in the Bergen Mall THAT DAY! You’d think it would have been canceled since it was RIGHT after we heard the news in class, but it wasn’t, so at least one of our family members made it to the Bergen Mall that day (nothing to be proud of, but I wrote about it here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=11804) :

I don’t know for sure, but I imagine that the rally was probably canceled. I can find nothing about it online.

 

My mother received this envelope on 3-31-64. Inside were a couple of copies of Goldwater addressing issues. Although each copy shows a Teaneck P.O. Box number, the return address on the envelope was, “Bergen Republican Committee For Goldwater Headquarters, 93 Main St, Hackensack, NJ”:

 

Some or all of these items may have been in the above envelope:

 

Here’s the only item addressed to my father – of course, it’s an April 1964 request to the breadwinner for money:

 

How thoughtful! This time, they included a check to fill out AND provided space where you could fill in how much your NEXT contribution would be! Here are the fronts and backs of two items:

 

I wonder how much – if anything- you had to contribute to get this 8×10 of Barry:

 

I found this beat-up sign and didn’t know where it came from…………

 

………….until I flipped it over and read what my mother wrote on it:

She probably pulled this souvenir off a pole or wall somewhere.

 

Here’s a small blurb about the event (“Golduwater”?):

 

Here are two pages from the 10-25-64 New York Sunday News (I had to position them sideways so they’d line up with their ticket partner):

 

The postcard about the final meeting…………as you may have guessed by now, Mom wrote the message, but didn’t address it:

 

 

THE STASH!

 

Bumper stickers:

 

Buttons

 

Circus animals:

 

Two items that went well together – ESPECIALLY the Barry-fied elephant, which actually had two holes in its head to insert the back ends of the glasses:

 

The man himself:

 

 

Other Republicans in the Collection

 

 

This would explain the picture of Mom with James L. Buckley in the previous post:

 

“Peace with honor” was a phrase used by Richard Nixon in a speech on January 23, 1973 to describe the Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War. I think the sticker below it was also from the Vietnam War period:

 

What caught my eye was what’s attached to the top one:

 

Guess where IMPKO was from:

 

I’m not sure where the elephant on the left came from, but I’m pretty sure the “Max” one came from fellow Teaneck Republican, Max Hasse, who was shown posing with Mom and the County Sheriff in the previous post:

 

A closeup of the pachyderm and its new shoes:

 

I recall the name “Henry Hoebel”, but not any of the others:

 

Now we’re going back to the ‘50s:

 

I’m assuming that all these items belonged to my mother. If so, these two buttons – and her political leanings – go back as far as the year after she graduated high school, possibly when she started working for IBM:

 

 

She DID try to indoctrinate me in 1960, but it didn’t work. I had my own large piece of Nixon memorabilia from that failed campaign and you can see/read all about it here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=265

 

 

NO MORE POLITICS! (I hope)

 

Welllllllll……….maybe just ONE more little (and late) addition I found on March 12, 2021:

 

 

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on February 25, 2021)

 

 

Four of the last five posts (and this one) all came from the above paper-and-plastic treasure chest, which – as you can see – was given a security update after the last post. This one is, by far, the most eclectic of the bunch.

Actually, I wrote this up before the previous post, but it made sense to run the two politics-oriented posts together first. And THESE items were found in a smaller bag inside that larger one.

There’s a lot of stuff to get to and explain, so let’s jump right in to what might be the coolest item of the lot.

 

It’s a 30” x 20” Irish linen in great condition. It’s been folded in its plastic bag for decades – maybe as long as a half-century. Even if I owned an iron, I wouldn’t dare touch this with something that hot for fear of ruining it:

 

There are a few of these on eBay in varying conditions, starting at around $50 (at least there were when I wrote this). Here’s the most ridiculous one I could find online from someone in Australia on a site called https://www.1stdibs.com/:

 

With a shipping rate like that, I hope the buyer gets to keep the kangaroo that delivers it.

I don’t recall buying this (ours – not the Aussie’s) and have no idea who might have, so if any sibs know how this wound up in our family, lemme know.

 

I have NEVER seen this Mr. Peanut item before. As you can see, the bottom cup holds one tablespoon’s-worth of whatever. The next-to-impossible-to-read top cup holds ½ teaspoon. How often does a recipe call for a half-teaspoon of anything? (asks the helpless bachelor who thinks heating up a can of……….anything is cooking):

 

These pins from the 1980 Moscow Olympics are really interesting. You may recall that the US and 65 other countries boycotted the Games over the 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan, so how did Mom acquire these?

Also in the box – right in the middle – was the small US flag pin that I took out of the box. Now that I think about it, was its placement a middle finger to Moscow?

Mother!

 

My parents went on many trips outside the US. I’m guessing that these were acquired on one of them:

 

I have no idea why they would have this ashtray. I’ve never heard of the place, nor do I recall them ever mentioning having any reason to go there:

 

I also have no idea how this spoon (or the next one) came into our family. Admiral Sampson was a United States Navy rear admiral known for his victory in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish–American War. The story of the Admiral Sampson ship can be found here: http://www.dcsfilms.com/Site_4/Admiral_Sampson.html

 

Ooo -controversy!

Just remember: way before Hitler, the swastika was an American Indian (and other cultures) symbol of peace and good luck.

 

Here are the two spoons together to show relative size:

 

I think this is a 1940s pin that MAYBE belonged to my father, but all I know about the place is what I just read here: https://www.mitchellairport.com/airport-information/history

 

These were mine. I think the one with the string was attached to a glove I bought for use in Little League. I’m not sure how I acquired the other one, but I was all about Mickey Mantle back then:

 

I think the ad in the center two pages of the booklet indicates that I may have washed with Lifebuoy soap in 1956 to get my copy:

 

Speaking of 1956, I’m sure you’ve all heard of Malcolm Forbes. Apparently, my parents received Christmas greetings from him and his family that year. I found this in two pieces that appear to have been heavily-taped at some point:

 

Thirty-two years later, I happened to photograph Malcolm Forbes along with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth and film director Penelope Spheeris. You can see the pic and read the caption from my site below:

 

Malcolm Forbes? Seriously? I found this on the LA Times site’s archive:

. . . And talk about an odd couple. When “Decline of Western Civilization: The Metal Years” opened in New York recently, director Penelope Spheeris was shocked to find herself being introduced to a secret admirer–Malcolm Forbes. The business magazine tycoon not only attended the heavy-metal documentary’s premiere, but stayed for the party afterwards, where he had his picture taken with Spheeris and Megadeath leader Dave Mustaine. “I was flattered,” Spheeris said. “Especially when he told me, ‘Penelope, your movie’s going to make a bundle of money.’ ”

It didn’t say who the writer who couldn’t spell Megadeth was.

 

OK – that’s it for my stuff…………..time to switch gears to Dad’s.

In my SERGEANT DAD (WWII) post, I wrote about the fact that my father attended Bordentown (NJ) Military Institute during the 1934-1935 school year. Thomas Durland Landon was a long-time commandant of BMI until his death in 1934, so it’s not difficult to figure out how Dad acquired this item:

 

I’m guessing this is a Mom item, but I really have no reason to:

 

This is definitely a Mom item (big Pepsi collector – she even wrote “Mom” on the label……….as if any of us would steal it). She probably picked it up on a trip with Dad to Brazil (the song is in Portuguese, but I found an online translation):

 

If you really want to hear it (why?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hatmAPWtfc

 

I’ve only mentioned about a hundred times that my parents met and worked at IBM World Headquarters in Manhattan in the ‘40s, but this New York World’s Fair occurred in 1939 when Mom was a senior in high school. Could it be that she attended the World’s Fair that year and the IBM Pavilion interested her enough to seek employment there after graduation?

 

On a 7-years-after-that related note, I found the booklet for IBM School for employees. It’s not likely that this was for Mom as she resigned from IBM on June 24, 1946, to marry Dad:

 

Ever see Jeopardy shows where contestants did battle against “Watson”, an IBM supercomputer that beat two of the show’s greatest contestants?

It was named after Thomas J. Watson – the head honcho when my parents worked there. Here’s his pic from the School booklet:

 

And here is the list of subjects that the School offered:

 

Engineering class (No gurls aloud!):

 

Dressmaking class (No guyz alowd!):

 

Equality in accounting!

 

Thinking of signing up for any of the 28 offerings? Here are both sides of the enrollment card to download. I guess Dad didn’t use it (no Chevy courses available):

 

I’m going to finish off with something I cannot for the life of me figure out how, why or by whom it was acquired. It’s an 8 x 10 transparency of 4 women sitting on a beach while holding colorful umbrellas as a fifth woman strolls by them holding a white umbrella that says “TRUE”:

Anyone know what THAT umbrella’s about?

 

I do……………….but only because I remember the logo.

 

 

 

IT’S

 

 

 

 

FOR

 

 

 

 

THIS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What does the scene have to do with the product – the product that none of them are using?

 

Who acquired this and why? (he asks three related people)

 

Who knows? Who cares?

 

On to the next goodie bag…………

 

 

 

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 1, 2021)

 

This was not the easiest post to write and it would really only have some meaning for my siblings and extended family, but I’ve also heard from a few non-family members who say they enjoy reading family stories (hello, A.R.), so I’ll give it a shot.

Through the years, I’ve found a few packed-away, thick family photo albums – the ones with big, black pages with many photos on each page that are trying desperately to stay attached. Because I had gone through them every decade or two, I pretty much knew what they contained and – to this point – have ignored them.

But as I started going through the most recent bag of family goodies, I saw the top of something that – while still packed tightly (and vertically) in the bag – resembled a smaller version (10” x 13.5”) of our old photo albums. Its visibly flaking page-edges were not black, but rather brownish-yellow from old age.

It simply said “Scrap Book” on the front and showed the outline of what appeared to be a dog’s head in the middle of the embossed cover.

I had never seen this book before!

 

Its covers and content were bound by a string that ran through everything at two points that were equidistant from the top and bottom.

The book contains no photos, but instead shows event greeting cards and even a couple of telegrams from four events that took place over an almost-two-year period from early 1946 to very-late 1947 – a time when life changed dramatically for my mother, who put the book together.

The first couple of pages show NOTHING, which is just as well because they’ve separated from the rest of the book:

 

The 1946 segment begins with some engagement congratulation cards in February, continues with a LOT of wedding cards in July and ends with a couple of “Best Wishes In Your New Home” ones in August.

Because I have never seen this book before, I have to assume that my brother and two sisters have not either, so I’m showing EVERY page in the book. Many of the senders are either unfamiliar to me or not in the cast of relatives that were ever a part of our lives, so I’m only going to zoom in on the senders who were.

Here’s the first page:

 

TWO of the signatures were worth featuring:

Aunt Edie lived in Teaneck when we did. I’m really not sure who “Dick and Diddy” were, but I seem to remember the sound of that pair of names (but I’m probably thinking of Dick & Dee Dee and their 1961 hit “The Mountain’s High” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU2rjoSXI34).

 

The next four pages:

“Joanie” and Catherine were Mom’s two sisters – our beloved aunts and Joe was Mom’s (and J & C’s) brother………….and my godfuncle.

 

Two more pages:

Why is that last card bent weirdly? Here’$ the answer:

It’s dated “July 13, 1946” – the date of the wedding. “Dad & Mother” are Grandpa and Grandma Kibbe…………and they and Mom were from Williston Park. Maybe this was their first chance to write Mom’s new name AND the last chance to place it before Dad’s, since that situation would reverse later that day.

I was wondering why Mom never cashed it, but then noticed the not-exactly-legal “Dad & Mother” signatures, so maybe it was a home-made memento of the day.

 

Next two pages:

What the two cards on the right page said:

Terese and Jack were sister and brother (and our beloved aunt and uncle). Jack lived in Teaneck on the street behind ours. Rose Cobb was a good friend and co-worker of Mom’s at IBM. I remember visiting “Aunt Rose” in Poughkeepsie a few times when I was a kid (she was NOT related).

 

2 more:

I have no idea who sent either telegram. “172 Capitol Ave” was her (and her parents’) old address. “Mrs Lease” is the first of many name-bungles you’ll see here by Western Union.

 

The card at the top of the left page:

It’s from two of our Teaneck relatives. Their son, Larry Jr, and I share a birthday, but he’s two years older.

 

Eight more pages that end this segment:

The telegram in the first pic says “Noar Lease” (not even close, Western Union).

 

The last card on the 8th page is from Aunt Terese and Uncle Jack. If you look closely on the left, you’ll see a “Dorothy” signature. I’m guessing that was our Nana, Dorothy Kavrik:

 

 

No entries for another year, until……….The 1947 Segment of the book: What This All Leads To (he says, modestly)

 

All the embarrassing details you never asked to see:

 

Two VERY interesting cards from an unexpected source:

0

 

The first one:

I got a card on the day I was born………….from my father!

 

So did Mom:

I’ll get to the “Koiby” thing later. As for “O’Levy”, I have no idea about the “O” part. As for the rest of it, the only thing I can think of happened when I was a very young, smart-ass pre-teen. I went to a Catholic school in neighboring Hackensack, where I heard a couple of “Jew jokes” (sorry – that’s what they were called). I repeated one to my father. Let’s just say he wasn’t laughing, but rather than yell at me, he said something that I had already learned in school: how immigrants had their last names changed when they arrived at Ellis Island by whoever processed them, if that person didn’t like their name.

He told me our last name was originally “Levy” and it got changed to “Leafe”. It wasn’t true, but I didn’t know that then and was duly chastened. He never heard another “joke” like that from me again.

He handled things the right way back then. Unfortunately, teenage me was not so easy for him.

Lastly, “Aristocrat” must have been the manufacturer of my true first set of wheels.

 

Back to the loving cards: This is a side of my father that I’d never seen before.

 

The next two pages:

 

Every two days while we were still in the hospital, Dad would write us love notes:

“Pop”? We never called him that, but HIS father – Norman S, Leafe, Sr – was referred to as “Pop Leafe”, so maybe Dad was trying to create a tradition. BTW – Pop Leafe died on the same day as that second “Pop” usage: August 20, 1947. As I’ve mentioned before, Dad used to tell me that after I was born, his father took one look at me and keeled over. Not that I’d remember it, but the truth is, we never got a chance to meet.

In that same 8-20-47 card, Dad’s “I loves ya both” sounded very familiar. I realized it sounded like Jimmy Durante talking. Then I remembered that Dad once interviewed Jimmy at a Broadway theater one afternoon when he was on assignment from the Teaneck High School newspaper, where he was the editor in his senior year. “Hot Cha Cha!” (https://tinyurl.com/Schnozolla – read it!)

And speaking of “I loves ya”, look what I just found online:

Jimmy signed it that way.

 

In the last card – “Koiby & the Doiby”? OY!

OK – I think I can figure out “Koiby”. Both of my maternal grandparents AND Jimmy Durante had the New York (Brooklyn?) accent where “ir” and “ur” had the sound of “oi” and where things that were supposed to have the “oi” sound came out as “er” – kind of the exact reverse of what they were supposed to be.

My father used to recite the following to me in that dialect: “A doity boid sat on the corner of toity-toid ‘n toid, choipin’ an’ boiping an’ eatin’ doity woims, but then he fell off the corner into some erl.” (Be sure to read that out loud when other people are around.)

OK – that knowledge reduces “Koiby” to “Kirby”, which sounds like “Kibbe”. “The Doiby” might not be so easy. I never knew my father to favor hats, let alone derbies. So, the only thing I can think of is that his father, who was born in England, emigrated to the US from a town called Derby, so maybe “Kirby and the Derby” got tongue-lashed by Grandma and Grandpa (with an assist from a Mr. Durante) into “Koiby & the Doiby”.

Better explanations will be gratefully accepted.

 

Mrs. Norman S. Leafe got mis-initialed and had her new last name misspelled TWICE by Western Union, but who cares? The nice messages from Grandma & Grandpa Kibbe and her sisters Joan and Catherine were all that mattered:

 

Onward to the next two pages: First page – Western Union finally got Mom’s new name right and I got something nice from Grandma and Grandpa, as Mom noted on the inside of the card:

 

Second page – Two cards from neighbors:

(note to sibs: Mrs. Aiken was pre-Cimini)

The Augustines were our next-door neighbors.

 

Two more pages:

From the first of those pages:

“Helen” was Helen Downs – Mom’s best friend (I think) since their teens and Terese and Jack = Sis/Bro, Aunt/Uncle

 

The second of those two pages:

“Edith” was Aunt Edie and “Mother & Dad” were Grams and Gramps – terms we never used.

 

Four MORE pages (does it ever end?):

That last card comes from Grandma:

To the left of that card you can see one with a letter tucked behind it. It’s from a Mrs. Ruesing who lived on the street where my mother grew up and where her parents lived. When we used to visit there, I was kind of bored and mopey, so they introduced me to a boy who lived down the street, her son – Eugene Ruesing, who was the same age as me.

We’d go to the schoolyard a block away and play catch. One time, he was hitting grounders to a supposedly slick-fielding Little League infielder from Teaneck. On its last bounce close to me, one of the hard-hit balls hit a pebble, which changed its trajectory and smacked me right in the eye before I could react. The eye swelled shut immediately and I had a black eye for 2 weeks. It wasn’t his fault by any means, but……….OUCH! (the things you remember……………).

Oh……….and the card right above Mrs. Ruesing’s was from Grandma Ruesing.

 

SIX more pages (yawn!):

 

Wait……did anyone notice this card from that next-to-last page?

So I’m a young movie ACTRESS? Well, at least there’s no “a” added to my first name:

 

 

Maybe you should get a snack or hit the head before tackling these next TEN pages:

 

Fortunately, they only generated one name I recognized:

George Skelton was Mom’s boss at IBM.

 

LAST FOUR PAGES (I promise!):

 

Another first! Apparently, I SENT my first card to my parents. I was 4 months old and had perfect printing abilities, except I couldn’t get the hang of the letter “S”, which someone tried to transpose to signify a youthful writing deficiency, but it came out looking like either a 2 or a Z.

Luckily for me, as soon as I dropped the “-by” from my first name, perfect “S”s ensued.

 

 

DONE! FINITO!! IT’S OVER!!!

 

 

It took me a whole day to do all the photography, picture editing and file-size shrinking from 18.2MB to 7.3MB (thank you, https://compressjpeg.com/) and another 2 days to assemble the picture order, write this up and create this post.

It also turned out to be more emotional than all my other posts so far because I discovered a lot about my parents – especially my father – that I never knew before and never really saw as I grew up. I hope it has a similar effect on my siblings.

I really can’t believe that I’ve never come across this scrapbook in my entire life until now.

And speaking of scraps, this is what my trash can looked like after LEAFEing through the book once to take the pictures (it was MUCH too crumbly to scan):

 

Thanks to all of you non-family members – if any – who made it all the way through. I hope you enjoyed it.

 

ON TO THE SILLIER HALF OF THE GOODIE BAG!

 

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 5, 2021)

 

I still don’t even know what it is or its purpose…………..more on that later.

Meanwhile, here are the rest of the parental items found in the bag that included the previous post’s scrapbook.

 

This was sitting on top of everything else in the bag, so I guess it wants to be first:

I have no idea for whom this unopened item was intended. I did my best to move the tumbler inside the plastic to include Donald (right pic).

 

This had to be Mom’s:

 

Four travel items

 

I wonder if they fought over who got which pillow:

 

Good to know they stayed at somewhere nice:

 

I can’t imagine my mother agreeing to stay anywhere that would have door-hangers like this:

Maybe she refused and stayed at the Hilton (and got the nice slippers) while Dad stayed here.

 

Two of Mom’s travel photos (no info on back):

She won some photo contests with some of her travel photography.

 

Oh, no! More political stuff from Mom! But this ashtray is interesting. You DO know who this candidate is, right? Hint: when he spoke to his daughter, he addressed her as “Little goil”:

 

Mom had two of these. I think she was interested in the guy who liked Chemistry:

 

OK – small family mystery time from 1988. I found these 3 items that lend themselves to perfect sequencing: an ad for the newest edition of the Hess Toy Truck and Race Car ($6.95) in the 12-1-88 New York Daily News (which my parents received every morning), a 12-1-88 receipt from a Hess gas station for $7.37 ($6.95 + 6% sales tax), and an apparently unopened Hess Toy Truck and Racer:

One of my parents read the ad and rushed out to a Hess station to buy it that same day……………..but WHY and for WHOM? And why didn’t that person receive it?

And what’s a 32-year-old, unopened Hess Truck and Racer worth today? Just curious. (Answer: maybe around $25, according to eBay)

 

Though I don’t recall seeing this since I was a kid, I knew right away what this was when I looked straight down into the bag and saw only the top of his hat – my Cookie Cowboy (though subsequent sibs may have also used it):

Note: I cannot find one of these ANYWHERE online. Hmmm…………..

 

I featured one of these earlier from 1947 (I think). This had nothing inside worth showing. I wonder if Mom did all the blue coloring on the cover’s ’54 out of boredom:

 

Groping around the bottom of the bag, I found these 4 items: a LEE doorstop, a miniature fake antique camera, an Esso ziploc bag for who-knows-what and an old rattle/teething ring(?) with 3 rolling balls in it. It may have been mine or it may have been everybody’s:

 

Someone wanted all to know when she got it and that it was HERS:

 

I was surprised to find a flag-in-a-bag, but I didn’t have a 9.5’ x 5’ open space in my jammed apartment on which to unfurl it, so it stays in its (red-white-and-?) Blue Heaven pillow bag from B. F. Goodrich. Who doesn’t yearn to lay their tired head on a pillow made by a tire company?

 

This Crime Scene sign appears to be in a frame…………

 

……..but in this shot from about 5 minutes before, it’s actually packed in the bag against the frame (and both are packed against the Scrap Book from the previous post):

 

So what is the crime scene? When you take it off the frame, you get……….

…………..Bonnie & Clyde.

 

B&C’s final crime occurred a few minutes later when I put their frame back in the super-tightly-packed bag and it just ripped the whole side open. I had to pull all the big stuff out and dumped what was left on the carpet, including a lot more scraps from you-know-what-book:

But because a lot of little items that I had overlooked before also fell out – including something that I had been searching for for decades, I pressed no charges against them.

 

Those Little Items

Oooo……….somebody’s been to Paris:

 

………AND Japan:

 

This smallish pin looked like something might have been attached to the front of it and fell off – it was just so plain and had little spots all over it. But then – when a light source was nearby – something different was seen, depending on the light source and its angle. The fourth image shows the plain back:

 

This Princess Phone on a chain looks like it was beaten with its throne……….

 

………..but it still has its readable tagline on the bottom:

 

 

OK – THIS is what I’ve been looking for for decades. When I was a kid, my Uncle Joe (my godfather) worked for Sperry-Rand on Long Island and then in Alabama. My understanding was that he had something to do with the space program:

 

One day, he sent me something that had to do with his work. Here are both sides:

I didn’t know what it was (still don’t), what it did or where it did it. Of course, the only thought that enters a kid’s mind is that it must be a part of a rocket, so whenever a rocket failed, I wondered if it was because it was missing this 3″ x 4″ piece.

It probably had nothing to do with a rocket, but it certainly stirred the imagination of a young boy who was proud of his godfuncle.

I knew that I didn’t get rid of it, but had no idea that Mom had preserved it at the bottom of that bag.

 

It’s never going back there.

 

(and the thought occurs to me that there may have been a second gift)

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 10, 2021)

 

I’ve never had the slightest inclination to write about newspapers.com, but this popped up one day when I was doing parental research:

 

It’s their engagement notice in our local paper, The Record, but if you wanted to see the whole thing, a newspapers.com subscription would be in order……………

or

……….perhaps you know someone who has a subscription who can get it for you.

I contacted my siblings and my sister Lorraine and her husband Scott subscribe, so……..

It’s a ghastly shot of Mom (unless it came off microfiche, their photo preservation process could use a little tweaking), but at least we now have something we didn’t have before.

Newspapers.com offers a one-week free trial and if you’d like to see where you’ve been been in newspapers over the course of your life, try it out and then quickly unsubscribe. Be sure to read reviews before you do anything.

I tried it a couple of years ago and found some things I didn’t know existed when I entered my name (which they shade in yellow and put an ill-fitting box around wherever it shows up). Turns out there were around 77 matches over the course of 54 years. As you’d expect, there’s some career stuff in there, but there are also other items worth finding.

Obviously, most of the matches came from NJ, but there are 8 other states that the site says picked up on stories:

 

Excluding a couple of matches, I think I’m just gonna present them sequentially.

Note: I’ve made some of them larger than usual so they can be read (if you so desire). When you see “Click to enlarge”, those will be the ones. Some marked images tell you to click twice for full enlargement. In all cases, use your back button to return to this page.

I’ll go further back later, but right now, I’m starting with 10-31-82.

Things really took off for me in 1983, so this was an ad in the paper during a slower time the year before:

 

On 8-8-84, The Herald-News paper (in the next county) did a story on The Uncle Floyd Show, which I was a part of:

 

Jumping ahead a decade, here are two out-of-state articles about my London auction at Bonhams, which had already been held on November 23, 1994:

Despite what Peter Watson in London wrote, it was not an auction of my archive and I did not walk away with millions of dollars. I still have the archive. But if you know anybody……….

 

I just found my auction catalog for sale online. Looking at the covers, you can see why the auction was called “From Led Zeppelin to Liberace”:

 

What was being sold at the auction were 200 individual slides. Since you can’t hang slides on a wall, they made displays with a 5×7 of each image on an 8×10 board and had me sign them.

They sent me the displays afterwards, so I had a gallery showing of them the following year:

Click to enlarge this one:

 

The Record newspaper had a weekly photo feature called Insight which featured readers’ photos and which I got in a couple of times. Here’s one published on 9-14-97 that newspapers.com made a little too contrasty. It shows the Great Falls in Paterson, NJ – the second-highest falls east of the Mississippi (and now a National Park that’s 10 miles from home):

 

2001 brought the possibility of dreaded cell antennas being attached to my building and very close to my apartment. Here’s the city’s initial rejection (click to enlarge):

 

The carrier – Nextel – appealed and won, prompting this Letter To The Editor from me in 2002:

 

Also in 2002, this article on family memorabilia may sound familiar to some of you:

 

The Record wanted to do a story on my cell antennas dilemma in 2003 and surprised the hell out of me when they put in on the main front page:

 

This story somehow did NOT show up amongst my newspapers.com matches, but – of course – I saved the paper (Click both images twice to fully enlarge):

Despite what it says, I have NEVER had a garden on my roof!

 

Also in 2003, The Record had done a story on songs about local places. I let them know they left out a couple:

 

I spent 5 years putting over 2,000 pictures and their stories together on my career site, bobleafe.com and launched it in 2004. The Record did a half-page story about it on 3-14-04 in their Sunday Entertainment section. Here’s the wide view:

 

And here’s the tighter view that includes the pictures they used (click twice to enlarge):

The Springsteen shot was a stroke-of-midnight-on-New-Year’s-Eve one, taken at a 1977-into-1978 show. It was “kiss my girlfriend or take this picture”. I made the right decision. Bruce was feeling no pain at that point and shook/shot champagne everywhere. That string of white dots is the previous shake/shoot. I see a video camera in the background. I’d love to see what they shot. Did they get me and Bruce and champagne everywhere?

In the upper right, Jon Bon Jovi is flying over the crowd at Madison Square Garden in 1987. You’ll have to go to bobleafe.com if you want to read that story.

The other picture is Joan Baez winking at me at the 2nd Annual MTV Awards in 1985.

 

Originally, I only found text of this Record story, which I’m including below (in case the newspaper shot is hard to read):

Rock photographer uploads his life’s work — It’s a pop culture archive, or maybe just a big magazine

JIM BECKERMAN

Date: 03-14-2004, Sunday

 

If you tried to put all of Bob Leafe’s photos in a coffee table book, it would probably break the coffee table.

That’s one of the reasons the Hackensack photographer decided to put 2,100 of his choicest photos of rock stars, notables, and landscapes on a Web site.

Visit bobleafe.com and you’ll see everyone Leafe has photographed in his 20-year career as a freelancer for the likes of Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone. The photos are arranged alphabetically, from Accept to ZZ Top.

“I wanted to get this all out there for everyone to see, and what better way?” says Leafe, who launched his site three weeks ago. “This is like the world’s biggest rock magazine.”

They’re all there: Aerosmith, Anthrax, Ginger Baker, Paul Butterfield, Johnny Cash, Madonna, Elvis Costello, Fleetwood Mac, Gloria Estefan, Alice Cooper, Paul McCartney, Joan Baez, the B-52s, and on and on.

And with them are stories. Leafe, 56, happens to be a good raconteur with a more-than-good memory. In many cases he recounts, on his site, the tales behind the photos.

For instance, how Chuck Berry was more interested in chasing down a teenager (“she couldn’t have been over sweet little you-know-what,” he writes on the Web site) than getting his picture taken.

Or how strong-arm guards nearly prevented Leafe from taking a shot of Bon Jovi in midair at a 1987 Madison Square Garden concert.

Or how Leafe had to choose between kissing his girlfriend at midnight on New Year’s Eve and getting a great shot of Bruce Springsteen, onstage, popping a champagne cork. You can see what he chose on the Web site. “I know I made the right decision,” he says.

Why rock stars? It was something Leafe, a Teaneck native, just fell into, he says. “I was born and raised on rock-and-roll,” he says. “I was home sick one day in the 1950s and I turned on the radio, and I haven’t turned it off since.”

But he didn’t seriously think of becoming a rock photographer until later in life. A graduate of Bergen Catholic High School, Leafe has a chemistry degree from Ramapo College and was a faculty member at Bergen Community College when he landed four tickets, fourth row center, to a 1973 Led Zeppelin show – coincidentally one that was featured in the film “The Song Remains the Same.”

“I borrowed a camera because I thought I would never get that close again,” he says. “That was the first time I ever shot a concert. From then on I was hooked. … I dumped the degree and went with my heart.”

Since then, he and his trusty Minolta have been seen in all kinds of places: backstage and front stage, from mosh pits to stars’ dressing rooms. His portfolio of star shots swelled when he became staff photographer for TV’s “Uncle Floyd Show” from 1979 to 1984. As Floyd’s fans know, many a rock star and rock-star-to-be appeared on the show. “It got me a unique opportunity to shoot music stars in a setting different than a regular concert situation that every other photographer has,” he says. “Everybody has the Ramones onstage, but not everyone has them on the Uncle Floyd Show.”

His Web site also includes other kinds of photos: views of Hackensack and Teaneck, Fourth of July fireworks over the Manhattan skyline. There also are shots of non-music celebrities: Walter Cronkite, Rodney Dangerfield, Muhammad Ali.

“Sometimes you take a photo and you get a chill of excitement because you’ve really captured something unique,” he says. “It’s so great to be able to make a living doing what you really love. Everybody I guess wants to be a rock star at some point in their lives. I get to be anonymous and still have all the fun.”

Leafe is hoping for buyers as well as browsers: The photos on his site sell for $99 to $149 depending on size.

“People have always asked me for photos; now they can get them,” he says.

 

Eleven days later, I was included in a story about local light pollution – a problem I’ve always had to deal with concerning 2nd-floor, downward-pointing light installations that shine brightly in my 7th-floor apartment:

I don’t know where the rest of that article is………..I may have just kept the page I’m on.

 

Three days after that, I’m sounding off about the same issue in a Letter To The Editor:

 

On December 4, 2004, I’m included (so is Mom) in a Road Warrior article about cheap Teaneck (click to enlarge):

 

In 2006, The Record’s Hackensack offshoot – The Chronicle – did a story on me:

 

In 2007, I weighed in on a subject I knew little about…………sounded good, I guess (I didn’t write the headline, so maybe the editor agreed with me):

 

I made it to Insight again on 9-30-07:

 

I turned Green with another Letter To The Editor on 12-17-07:

Over 13 years later, nothing’s changed.

 

June 22, 2008 was my last Insight appearance:

It’s not a feature in the paper anymore.

 

The Hackensack Chronicle corrects an error on 1-23-09 and I’m not saying any more about it:

 

This 2009 article was about Woodstock’s 40th anniversary. I never said “See? Here is the mud”………..that sounds like a Dick & Jane book:

 

The Record’s Road Warrior was taking questions on 4-7-10, so I asked one:

 

In what I think is the last Letter To The Editor I wrote (8-12-13), I got to correct a columnist AND announce my birthday in a novel fashion:

 

 

WELL, that just about does it for the newspapers.com matches I found for me………..oh, wait………….I just found something from SIXTY years ago. I’m thinking there might have been some parental coercion involved in these newspaper “Wanted” ads:

But I fooled them – NOBODY hired me!

 

OK? You happy? I can’t POSSIBLY top that!

 

Or can I?

 

You tell me. This is from two years before the last one:

 

I have to tell you………..I was shocked to find this. I absolutely do not recall this at all!

 

Whaddaya think, Ed?

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 15, 2021)

 

GEEZ, this bag is heavy! What the hell is in this thing?

BOOKS, as it turned out. School books.

Whose? (mine)

From when? (the first two years of high school)

WHY? (good question)

Condition? (VERY used)

 

Before we start, I just found some related material elsewhere in another old, falling apart scrapbook:

 

I’m not sure how it works now, but back then, if you attended a Catholic grammar school, it was considered a VERY BIG DEAL to get into some of these schools…………so much so, that you had to take a test and could only list 3 schools. If you didn’t do well on the test, you would probably wind up going to public high school (which might not have been a bad choice).

I got into all 3 schools I applied for. Sadly, I didn’t choose the nearby (next town) co-ed one (BIG mistake!) and went for the all-boys name one 3 or 4 towns away:

 

Back to the bag-o-books:

There was some light stuff sitting on the top of the bag, so as to not get crushed by the books – something to do with peanut butter, presidents and noses.

Right on top was a partial piece of paper advertising products from Planters: peanut butter, oil, and candy (5 cents for a “Jumbo Block”);

 

On the back, you could get yourself an “historical and educational paint book” from Mr. Peanut if you sent him lots of empty peanut bags, candy wrappers or other refuse. Got peanut allergies? Tough – you lose out:

 

Something looks very familiar about that paint book, but I don’t think I ever had a paint book from anywhere in my life (watch one show up in the next bag):

 

Under that was a slightly-yellowed and oversized plastic bisection of a human nose with a door on it that says “OPEN”. Who wouldn’t want to open a door to the inside of a nose?

 

Did you know that besides having an interior door, your nose has different parts with black numbers on them? Me either:

 

There are a couple of other black numbers visible when you flip it over:

 

I also have this loose piece that seems to fit over the right part of the previous image at an angle:

 

Well, that’s as far as I got – knowledge-wise – until I dug further into the bag and found this cardboard with a piece of paper attached to it:

 

Good lord! It’s my freshman year, Bergen Catholic High School Science Fair project with the answers to all those number questions!

(“1-E” was my class’s designation)

 

This item tells me that I probably had a choice of which sense to focus on for the project:

 

I could have bought one that was fully assembled AND painted for 5 bucks? I’m sure that wasn’t allowed, but I didn’t even bother to attempt painting this one (though I DID have the instructions):

I wonder what kind of grade I merited for this slap-together job.

 

 

On to the books!

 

HISTORY (Part 1)

The one on the left looks as old as the contents:

There’ll be one more history book later.

 

LANGUAGES!

Yes, I took Latin. Two years of it were required…………..I took three (I liked it):

The problem was that two years of another language were also required. I took Spanish for three years. After a while, you start mixing them up. I remember one test where I had to write the Spanish word for “boy”. Simple enough, right? I wrote “puer” – Latin for “boy”.

I still remember a lot of the Spanish words I learned back then and Latin was always interesting to me because so many of our English words are derived from it.

Useless information: the Latin word for “asparagus” is “asparagus” and it’s a male noun. And why can’t people understand the difference between the written form of soundalikes “alumni” (male plural) and “alumnae” (female plural)? It drives me crazy when a reporter writes about some woman and mentions that “she is an alumnus of so-and-so university”. NO woman is an alumnus of ANY university! “Alumnus” is male. “Alumna” is female.

See? Latin IS useful! It turns its students into cranky old know-it-alls who no one understands.

 

Next up – MATH!

Math – especially algebra – was easy (until I got to calculus in college):

 

Behind the middle book is this:

Apparently, it was corrected by another student (signed under my name). The problem I got wrong is on the other side. I’m sure Dad didn’t mind signing this “A” test. “2G” was my sophomore class.

 

RELIGION

Not a lot of respect given to this beat-up old book. I don’t remember if there was an option to buy new books. Given the tuition that had to be paid, it probably made $en$e to keep recycling these books:

 

Things you always wanted to know about receiving Holy Communion (this is not my handwriting). I had to look up “Viaticum”, which is the Eucharist given to a person near or in danger of death (Good news! You don’t have to fast!):

 

HUMOR

No – not a book about humor (though that would have been an interesting class). Some of the images in our schoolbooks were custom-made for developing teenage senses of humor. The religion book was no exception.

Take, for example, this handy guide to good personality traits for boys and girls. Though they’re all, um……..wonderful, I found the “For Tired Eyes” girls tip and the “For Well-Toned Muscles” boys tip to be particularly useful for……….well, no one:

 

These next two were there when I got the book……………honest!

 

HISTORY (Part 2)

Here’s that other history book I mentioned earlier:

 

Given my upbringing, it’s possible that the second image’s notation could be mine:

 

 

BIOLOGY

Another not-exactly-new book:

 

Everyone’s two favorite bio lab experiments:

 

This is definitely my high school handwriting:

(and Procter & Gamble owe me about 60 years of advertising royalty payments)

 

 

YAWN!

I absolutely do not remember this class, this book or anything about either:

 

Someone had to write 3 letters on the page edges to remind us what class this was:

It was all stories and poems that no one cared about or retained. Somehow, we navigated life just fine without them.

 

Its slightly more-interesting sibling:

 

I found a couple of beat-up, old notebooks under it all:

 

This was a compilation of previous 3-hour exams to prep us for finals (I think), put together by the school’s baseball coach (who I also had as instructor in a Business Law class). The second pic shows a General Science test from the school year before I started there:

 

These last 5 images were quite a surprise to find because they were from that year before I started at BC, when I was in 8th grade at Holy Trinity in Hackensack.

Let’s start with this book(let?) that I don’t recall. The note inside was written in May of 1961, so it’s from 8th grade. It shows that my vocabulary was sufficiently built up enough to be able to substitute a word I knew I could spell correctly:

 

Next up is this very strange, stapled-on book cover that has the word “Science” handwritten on it. It also says “8A” – my class at HTS – on the bottom.

I can’t draw to save my life, so I’m wondering if this was a used book whose artwork I inherited. Unfortunately, only my name is on it, so…………..?

 

Pulling back on the ugly cover revealed what the real cover looked like. Seems harmless enough…………….why cover it?

 

The inside the cover info:

 

A confident student’s note found inside:

Hey, I had handwriting just that like back then – what a coincidence!

 

So why did my mother preserve my school books? In case I flunked and had to repeat the class? Why didn’t she just sell them to a next-year student to further deface them?

And why am I asking YOU?

 

Anyone need some six-decade-old school books?

 

Didn’t think so………..

 

 

(ignore 4-30-17 publish date – this was published on March 20, 2021)

 

 

OK – all kinds of weirdness in this bunch, starting with the title. The above pic is an actual, personalized license plate that was NOT influenced in any way by the New Orleans Saints’ “WHODAT?” chant…………or so says the creator of this plate, my sister Geri.

When I found this, I thought she might be surprised and like to have this ‘70s memory. She said she took the original with her when she moved to Colorado in 1980.  Now in South Carolina, she sent this picture as proof:

 

On the same day she sent it, I found 2 more of the blue plates in a State of New Jersey license plates bag (NJ switched the plate color from cream to blue in mid-1979):

There’s gotta be a fourth somewhere.

 

Next question: who used these plates? Geri thought it might be other sister Lorraine, who said, “No – it was Mom.”

I should have known.

And now that I think about it, I seem to recall taking pictures of Mom’s car late last century when I had to sell it. I wondered if these license plates were on it then.

NONE of my photos outside of the music ones are anywhere near as organized as that archive, so finding this one-off shoot of 2 or 3 pictures was gonna be a job-and-a-half.

I’m pretty sure it was in 1997, so that narrowed it down and I would have shot print film – something I almost never used. Eventually, I found 3 or 4 envelopes of prints and negatives that said “1997” on them, rifled through them and……………look what I found:

So yeah, Geri – your plates lived on for another 17 years after you left town.

I only got one response to whatever ad I put out to advertise the car and I’ll never forget that some really goofy nerd showed up. He checked out the car and looked thrilled, saying that he couldn’t wait to drive “this chick magnet”. I really needed to make the sale, so I resisted the urge to ask him what planet he was from or ask if he was referring to poultry.

I made the sale (easily) and off he went: a whatzat driving a former whozat.

 

 

On to the WHATZAT portion of the show!

 

Right next to the plates were these unusual candles:

 

Mom liked to buy these things and never use them………..a true collector. The closeup:

 

Seven little things: I have no idea what the significance is of the two red items or the silver-plated ship (if you do, please enlighten me in comments), but I DO know who the big bowler was: paternal grandmother Nana:

 

Here’s a closeup of the back of the largest one after she became Dorothy Kavrik in the 1940s:

 

And here’s a bracelet of hers that I’ve had for ages from when she was a champion bowler in the 1930s, when she was still married to Dad’s father – my grandfather:

 

I wondered whose corny piece of graduation plastic this thing was………until I flipped it over:

 

After graduation, I did NOT go down the shore to Ed Zaberer’s restaurant in Wildwood:

 

This can’t too old because it shows a zip code:

 

Leave it to Mom to sneak in one more Tricky Dicky thing:

All the presidents up to Nixon are listed on the side. This shows the first column on the right and the last one on the left (Was it really necessary to write that, Bob? We ALL took history!).

 

Here an interesting water bottle you might not expect your saintly mother to have:

 

Another assortment of smalls:

The yo-yo may be mine, the Rice Krispies truck was found in an envelope sent to the buyer: Mom (How truly rare is this unopened Matchbox truck? Someone’s selling 6 unopened ones for $12.00 on eBay, where you can find about 240 other ones), the letter openers look quite dangerous and were probably used to cut the lines to the Princess phones.

 

These items – minus the truck – were found in this handy container that has all sorts of conversion tables on it, including metric (which I was SO well-prepared for in 1976, when the US really blew its chance to switch over):

After being rejected, the container found solace in the company of a still-sealed Elvis 8-track tape.

 

So what do a Thunderbird keychain, a Mystic Seaport sticker, two 1982 World’s Fair tickets, a rain hat from a funeral home and a VIP Playboy ashtray have in common?

Fork if I know……….

 

And what’s with all the Playboy items? This is not the first post I’ve made that showed such items in parental possession. Oh, look…………..here’s another!

“Uh……….we only got it to hold these colorful items…………..yeah – that’s it!”

 

Uh-huh……..

 

Well, let’s have a look at some of them.

 

Oh, this is attractive:

A button with schmutz on it AND an ugly…………..what’s that expression? “…like putting lipstick on a……frog? This will drive more people to go back to smoking.

 

I have no idea what this Pathmark Supermarkets item is………..an early loyalty card for discounts?

 

I DO remember the name “Frank Osmers”. He was one of those old-time congressmen who actually put patriotism over politics (can you imagine that?). He’s worth looking up if you can’t believe that anyone in Washington would really do that:

 

Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Leafe were gallivanting on the other side of the world:

 

I’m not sure what that top tag is about. It says “Record and Detach” on a GMAC keychain. GMAC wasn’t a truck (that’s GMC), but rather a financing company (General Motors Acceptance Corporation):

If anyone can tie these two things together, kindly bail me out in the comments.

And I have no idea what the old-timey-looking key is for, but it fills a space.

 

Almost forgot these 4 little bottle openers for COTT beverages. They’re hard to read, but the middle image shows what they look like. Surely you remember “It’s COTT to be good!”.

 

Yet another assortment of weird smalls:

The musical note peeled off. You were supposed to put it on something and let WABC77 know what it was to win “super prizes”.

Somebody had a Sling in Singapore.

A card party at Volk? Volk is a funeral home in Teaneck!

Next to Mr. WABC Music Note is a hotel front desk service bell.

Below that appears to be a sticker for a Farm Products Cooperative (?) in which the fruits seem to have switched lips/mouths. Sounds cornographic.

And below THAT is a parental guide to figuring out exactly what your kids are high on (glue sniffing, heroin, cough medicine or pot).

Lastly, we have the pair on the right. Could the photographer be implying that there’s a connection between the two? Well, DUH!

 

I’m not sure, but I think I recall a time when Dad was into bolo ties (or maybe Mom told him he was). Whatever. It looks like Dad was prepared to look hip in New Mexico or the Hawaiian Islands (but only the western ones):

 

ONCE AGAIN, IT’S CHEVY TIME!

 

Has anyone ever heard of Tilt Wheel? Apparently, it was SUCH a big deal that they made all sorts of useless things to push it, including refrigerator magnets, sewing kits, page markers, pens, playing cards and coasters:

(who snuck that non-Tilt Wheel knife in there?)

 

A little closer:

 

A LOT closer:

 

Some of the playing cards’ pictures (each suit had the same pix on the same cards):

 

Found in the playing card case:

 

 

 

FROM GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION TO:

 

“Morman Leafe”? Whozat?

 

This is how you honor someone? By misspelling his name? Let’s open it.

Ooooo………….Objet d’art?

 

Nah – it’s just a cigarette lighter that Dad never took out of the box. And it’s stamped with a CBM Chevrolet logo – something nobody recognizes:

 

And look what we find on the bottom of this gift from all-American company, Chevrolet:

I can still hear Dinah Shore singing…………

“See-ee Ger-man-ay

in your Chevrolet……….”

 

Wait – there’s more:

 

So what’s “Morman” being congratulated for? See for yourself:

And couldn’t you just kick yourself for not knowing that CBM stood for the “Council of Business Managers”? Too bad they didn’t write THAT name in German:

                                               “Rat der Geschäftsführer“

I’m not sure why, but that really seems to fit.  

 

Let’s finish off Chevrolet with this odd, plastic-encased coin for which I don’t know what to say other than I think I know why Dad packed all these “goodies” away as soon as he got them:

 

 

I originally found this item a couple of years ago and took these photos:

It’s a hundred-year-old wedding cake topper that I think graced Grandma and Grandpa Kibbe’s wedding cake. I don’t know from where else we could have gotten it.

 

I had never seen this last item before or anything like it. It appears to be a summons from Bergenfield, NJ, which is to Teaneck’s immediate north…………but it’s from 1951. What did Dad (or Mom) do?

Nothing.

It doesn’t say “Municipal Court” – it says “Maternity Court”. What the hell?

IT’S A BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT! And a rather humorous one (the baby has an occupation?):

It’s from the Libonati family, which is well-known in Bergenfield for their eating and/or drinking establishments.

But what is my family doing with this? I’d never heard them mention anyone named Libonati………..ever.

Of course, Mom had written the answer in 1951 on the back (which I’ve attached at the bottom).

She mentions that Anthony – the father – was a policeman in Bergenfield, but the real clue is in the next line. Anthony’s brother, Jerry, was a mechanic who worked in a place called Teddy’s.

This may seem unrelated, but it’s not. You may recall that my parents met at IBM in NYC in the ‘40s. Mom quit in ’46 when she got married, but I never found out when Dad quit.

However, I DID know that he worked in an unusual place called Teddy’s in the early ‘50s. Teddy’s was in Bergenfield on the corner of S. Washington Ave and New Bridge Rd. Teddy’s Service gas station was on the S. Washington side – the main drag in town and the extension of Teaneck Rd in Teaneck – and I recall seeing auto repair bays on the New Bridge Rd side.

And I just found a picture of it:

But what made Teddy Snyder’s place unusual was that he also had a Studebaker dealership on the premises in there somewhere that I can’t recall seeing (written before I found the above picture), but I know it was there because that’s where Dad worked. That’s the job that prepped him for bigger and better things in a couple of Chevrolet dealerships.

Apparently, he was friendly enough with Jerry Libonati to be given this unique birth announcement 70 years ago.

I wanted to find out more. Was it common in the Libonati family to do this? Do they still have this one? Would they like a copy?

I called two Bergenfield/Libonati numbers I found online. One was out of service and I left a message on the other, but never heard back. I needed to up my game.

I emailed the town clerk, asking to be put in contact with the town historian, who emailed me the same day, asking how she could help.

I wrote back asking if she could call me. She did……………RIGHT at the moment I had a mouthful of potato chips, which I immediately blew into a nearby receptacle so I could almost say “Hello?”. I’m sure that made a great first impression.

Anyway, she was quite helpful and turned out to be very tight with the Libonati family.

I emailed her the “summons”, which she is now spreading around the family for their reactions.

Thank you, Eva Di Maggio Gallione, Bergenfield historian.

 

That does it for today and also for this pile of stuff in my living room,

which has now been switched out for another pile from my back room (“WHAT? There’s MORE?”).

I know…………….bear with me. It’s for a good cause: it gives me something to do at home during the pandemic and keeps me sane……….ish.

 

 

Last-minute note: Just got a call from Eva Gallione, who heard back from Ed Libonati – the 70-year-old subject of the birth “summons”. He had never seen it before nor was he aware that it even existed. He got a kick out of it.

Two happy historians are quietly patting themselves on the back tonight.

 

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 25, 2021)

 

PART 1

I needed to go walk somewhere local that I haven’t been to in a few years. My inspiration came last Saturday when I took a couple of pictures from my living room of balloons at a car dealership 3 blocks away:

 

They do this every weekend as if the sight of strings of balloons triggers something in people driving by to suddenly pull in and buy a car.

The dealership – as you can see in some of these pictures – sits on the bank of the Hackensack River on River St. On the other side is Teaneck, which I used to be able to see more of until construction of a 5-story building a block from me took away that view last year.

Fortunately, I was able to shoot a photo stitch from the roof of that building last November 5, which illustrates my route nicely (click TWICE to fully enlarge, scroll laterally to view and hit your back button to return to this page):

 

From my building, I walked down the side street that’s on the other side of the apartment building on the far left, made a right on River St for a half-block, crossed the street and then made a left to walk up River St in the opposite direction. Right before the white building (just to the left of center) with the big lot of cars, I stopped by the cars that were just before I got to the front of that building – that’s where the balloons were, so I took some closeups:

 

Continuing past that building, I walked to the left (north) until I got to Anderson St – where the bridge crosses the river into Teaneck and Anderson St becomes Cedar Lane. About a hundred feet beyond the bridge was a fence with a slightly-opened gate. This was the Teaneck Greenway – technically, “The Hackensack River Greenway Through Teaneck” – which runs from that opening along the river southward to where you see the big bend in the river in the above stitch, which the path then follows eastward:

I hadn’t been here in a few years because I always started to think about it whenever I saw the sprouting foliage. The problem is when that happens, it’s too late – you can’t see anything on the opposite (Hackensack) side of the river or take any pictures because of all the leaves. Fortunately, I thought about it this year before they sprouted.

The path starts out as tire tracks and devolves into a rough path. I recall that there was a garbage dump here a long time ago, so that may be the reason for the old tire tracks. There’s still a dump there, but what’s dumped these days are leaves and snow and those trucks come in from another direction:

 

It’s quite the opposite of the smooth, paved path of the Hackensack River Walkway in Hackensack. There is a lot of vegetation between it and the river and it’s difficult to actually reach the river, what with all the sticker bushes, skinny tree limbs, rocks and pieces of concrete on the inclined bank. Oh, yeah – and the remains of……….something that used to be alive:

 

After getting on the Greenway, I looked back toward the bridge and saw all these loitering geese:

 

Initially, I could see my apartment and tried to shoot through all the tree branches:

 

Walking a bit further, I could see the apartment, the balloons and the river. In the upper left is the new building where I shot the stitch from its roof:

 

Suddenly, the geese back at the bridge started honking and flying low over the river in my direction. When they reached me, there were way too many branches in the way to get a good shot.

They ignored my pleas for a re-do (it would have been a great shot), but they DID reverse direction and flew to my other side higher through the trees:

Not a great shot, but it’ll have to do.

 

As I continued down the path, I could see the old bank building at 210 Main with the new sculpture on its roof after the building was converted to condos. Two trees sort of made an X with their river reflections, so it made an OK picture:

 

But I noticed something else………….a very small but familiar shape in one of the trees. I zoomed in as much as I could, but the viewfinder didn’t let me identify what I had just shot:

A bald eagle!

 

I must have spent the next half-hour trying to find a clearing with a horizontal surface to steady the camera for shooting some video. The maximum zoom in video is WAY beyond the maximum zoom for stills. It’s impossible to hold a small camera still when trying to focus on a super-tiny spot that’s far away and under maximum magnification.

Plus, I was trying to do this while contorted on an inclining river bank while standing on unsteady rocks and broken round branches that made it feel like I was standing on a couple of rolling pins.

I got a couple of crummy vidbits that I’ve stitched together while complaining about my inability to get steady footage, and I’ll post that a little later.

Since the eagle hadn’t budged in quite a while, I decided to finish my path walk, and then walk back to Hackensack and hope he’d still be there.

The path bent around to the east to follow the river bend as I mentioned before. From one clear point, I was able to take a 7-photo stitch that lined up nicely of the entire bend section (known as Kipp’s Bend) from its easternmost point (Terhune Park in Teaneck) to where it takes a right to continue heading south (mid-picture), Foschini Park in Hackensack, the bank/condo building on Main St and back to the thick vegetation of the Greenway (same as the previous stitch: click TWICE to fully enlarge, scroll laterally to view and hit your back button to return to this page):

 

I started to head back because I still had a lot of walking to do and noticed some things I had missed before (though I don’t know how I could have missed these):

The red ones were pointing in the direction I had just come from (was I in danger?). There WERE a lot of holes in the ground that could have housed animals (I DID look for shed snake skins when passing them). Oh well………..too late now.

 

How did I miss THIS? Actually, it was on my left as I was scanning the river on my right (Eagle-Eye always has a good excuse):

I DID check: this thing was firmly embedded in the ground.

 

Before I left the Greenway, I took one last shot of the Hackensack riverbank:

 

 

ONWARD TO THE HACKENSACK EAGLE! (I hope)

Passing the car dealership again, I noticed that the balloons were getting tangled up in the telephone wires:

 

The Audubon Society would prefer that nesting locations NOT be revealed so as not to cause disruption to mom and the eaglets, but I could see from Teaneck that there was no nest – it was just a high-up perch, so here’s what happened.

As I passed by the famous White Manna burger joint (for all you out-of-towners, Guy Fieri suggests you watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9RRsUbDV0U), I knew I was getting close. When I got to the far end of the gas station next door, I looked up and saw:

 

He waited! But there were still obstructions and the camera was focusing on the branches that were between us. Besides, he was facing south and I was facing east, so I had to go around the next building to face him. By the way – there’s a McDonald’s across the street, so maybe this bird likes burger joints.

Late addition for the locals: this image from Google shows the McDonald’s arches on the far left, White Manna is circled in green and behind the indicated building on the right is where the tree is. Remember, it’s just a random perch the eagle occupied at that moment. Don’t go there expecting to see the bird there again.

Click ONCE to enlarge and use your back button to return to this page:

 

Unfortunately, I was now further from him, but I DID get a fairly clear – albeit small – shot of him (on the right):

 

As you’ll hear in the video, he was being harassed by a gang of noisy fish crows. I could even hear them when I was across the river. I saw a fence opening that might get me closer and with a more unobstructed shot, but as I reached that spot, I looked up and he was gone. The stupid fish crows had chased him away.

Damn!

As I started to walk away, I noticed a couple standing by their car about a hundred feet behind me. The man was holding a 35mm camera with a MONSTER lens on it. It was so long, he had to cradle it in his arms like a baby.

He said the eagle had headed south downriver and that he had first spotted the bird from where he lived in Teaneck.

Looking at his lens, I said, “You must have gotten incredible shots of him”. He showed me one that wasn’t that great and wasn’t that close.

“How big IS that lens?”

“500mm”

“ALL of that is 500mm?”

“Yep”

I was astounded. “My little dinky camera’s optical zoom goes up to 448mm,” I said, rather insensitively.

“Well, gotta be going.”

And that was that.

 

Here’s the crappy video that was mostly shot in Teaneck:

 

One last thing regarding the above encounter with the couple: I went home and started to edit all the shots. If you look at the Kipp’s Bend stitch, you’ll see a clearing between two sets of reeds in the Foschini park area. That’s where people can easily walk down to the river’s edge. I’ve done that often.

While still on the Greenway 40 minutes before that meeting, I happened to notice two people approaching the water from that opening and took a picture:

The man is carrying a camera with a VERY long lens and is cradling it in his arms like a baby.

Guess who……………

 

PART 2: THE OTHER SEGMENT OF THE TEANECK GREENWAY (2 days later)

This is the easternmost part, accessible from Terhune Park on River Rd in Teaneck.

Whereas I was facing south in Part 1’s photo stitch of Kipp’s Bend, I am now facing west from Terhune Park:

(the Part 1 path is on the right side)

 

If that’s not clear, maybe this will help:

 

While the neighbors are peering out their windows to see if I jump across their property line, I made another lucky discovery and beat it back to the path:

 

Originally, I actually wasn’t sure just what I saw – maybe it was an empty nest – so I took one shot that didn’t come out very well………..just in case:

 

As I started back on the path paralleling the river, I happened to take a look to the right and saw something amazing: what looked like a bald eagle was zooming very low above the water and then appeared to grab at something. I never saw a fish, but the bird immediately took off upward and over to the right towards Foschini Park and then crossed back over the river and settled in some trees near my starting point.

This happened so fast and there were so many shoreline obstructions where I was, that I couldn’t have raised my camera, found and framed the speeding bird, focused through the branches and shot the scene. Even if I was prepared and waiting, I still probably wouldn’t have captured much – if anything – so I concentrated on where it was going instead.

I slowly made my way back to my starting point – stopping every few feet to find the bird – but I never found him. I’m sure it was the same bird I had just poorly photographed because he was facing the same direction as the one that flew by.

I ran into some DPW guys nearby and asked one of them if he had seen a bald eagle. “All the time”, he said, and proceeded to tell me stories about his sightings by the riverbank.

During the conversation, he confirmed that there had been a dump nearby and that the dump trucks probably did create the tire tracks that existed near the Greenway’s Cedar Lane entrance. Apparently, I guessed correctly

“It’s still a dump, but only for leaves and snow these days.”

Nice guy – maybe I should hang out with him if he’s such a bald eagle magnet.

Time to continue on the path:

 

Closeup of that sign:

You can see where I am (X) and the land above the green loop on the far right is where the “No Trespassing” sign was.

 

Geez – did they have to put the bolt through its jaw?

 

Ivy on trees – an arboreal no-no:

 

I hope they eventually clean up the shoreline and the fallen trees:

 

And the stupidity:

 

……so it can be more of a true national recreation trail:

 

Walk the plank?

(I didn’t look inside the cabinet.)

 

Views across the river:

For all you locals: This construction is taking place where the big parking lot across the street from Bowler City is.

 

This one is in my neighborhood (my building would be just to the left of the left edge). Continuing on to the right: 417 Main, new construction at 435 Main (across Main St from the recently-closed Sears) and the Holy Trinity Church steeple between them (where all the Leafe kids were baptized):

 

Back on the path, returning to my starting point:

 

Something new to me:

I don’t know who the deceased was.

 

On the way back to my car, I came across this relatively-new entrance to this segment of the Hackensack River Greenway on River Rd (same as before: click TWICE to enlarge, laterally scroll, hit back button to return):

This entrance takes you right to the northernmost point of this segment – right by the “No Trespassing” sign.

 

The highlight of these two visits? Obviously, a bald eagle sighting each time – something that’s never happened once in all the dozens of other visits.

 

Reason to return………….

 

 

                                                                   (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 30, 2021)

 

“Spring”, huh? Then why is there a turkey on the left?

One thing I’ve been grateful for as I go through tons of parental possessions was to NOT find every single little thing that their darling offspring have ever produced as children…………until I came across this pile of kindergarten images created by their first-born.

Admittedly, I can’t draw to save my life, but I DID find a few of these to be somewhat interesting, if for no other reason than the coloring.

The paper is so fragile that it’s a mess to clean up after trying to count them, but I think the total is around 70. Some of them say “AM” and some “PM” on them, which must be the half-day kindergarten sessions. Others have obvious teacher’s handwriting on them and a couple have a cutout added that could not have been scissored by a 5-year-old.

I’ve selected 14 of them, starting with obvious Spring images.

I actually like this one for some reason, but it’s REALLY falling apart:

 

April showers………….

……..bring May kite fliers. This one appears to have a Mohawk, a pumpkin puss and a leg in a big red cast:

 

A butterfly flutters by:

 

These next three will have to pass for Summer, starting with a door-less house:

 

This one says, “3 Wigwams and cambfires” (“Uh, teacher? May I have a word with you, please?”):

 

A bakery! (I think I deserve an extra donut for that hat):

BTW – this is the only one of the 14 with an adult-written date on the back: 3-3-53.

 

On a less-appetizing note, here are some trees that appear to be up to their armpits in, um……….fertilizer:

 

But some of their leaves are turning color:

So…………..

 

On to the Fall and Halloween costumes:

 

………….and pumpkins with dental problems…………and ears!

 

……..and poorly-drawn turkeys:

 

Winter: time to wrap gifts and wrap up this silly post:

 

 

Now you know why I take pictures instead of trying to paint or draw them.

 

(BTW – our very nice kindergarten teacher’s name was Miss Baum. You think 5-year-olds didn’t have fun with that name?)

                                                     -artiste

 

(I know that “artiste” is an incorrect usage, but this 5-year-old doesn’t know that and thinks it sounds cool.)

 

 

                                                                                 (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on April 7, 2021)

 

I think this paper embosser is from the ’50s-’60s. I had to try it out……..

a) to see if it still worked and

b) to see what it said.

I also found his accompanying ink stamp, but it didn’t print well, so I just photographed the bottom of the stamp and reversed it:

The last two digits of the year are missing, so I’m sticking with my date estimate of ’50s-’60s.

 

I had picked out a LOT of stuff to post……….TOO much, in fact, so I decided to split it all into two posts, but I couldn’t find two distinctly different categories to place them in. Ultimately, I decided on “slightly more serious” and “slightly less serious”, but those are hardly enticing titles.

You see what I’ve selected for this post’s title. When you see the next one’s title, you can decide which is which.

Military items have to be considered serious, but not when you use either of the next two guys as models. This is my father’s hat:

It was not made for my faceless, 7-foot-tall roommate’s head.

 

It fits 3-year-old me a little better:

 

This is also Dad’s, but nobody here wanted to model it:

 

I don’t recall ever hearing that Dad was in the Army Reserve, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t – and nobody else in the family qualifies, so………..

 

$1.40 for a carton of cigarettes? (14 cents a pack!) I remember paying 28 cents a pack in the late 60s (and about the same for a gallon of gas):

My initial guess of the period of this flyer was early 50s. I found 4 brands listed that I ever heard of, so I looked them up: almost ALL of them mentioned early-to-mid 40s with Piedmont starting around 1910, so I’m gonna guess that this flyer came out in the mid-to-late 40s and probably appealed to my father – a smoker – after he returned from WWII.

Here are the 4 brands I never heard of. Click to enlarge it:

 

It’s probable that these driver’s manuals were Mom’s:

 

They’re undated, but the second one gives a driver’s license example that’s dated 1943:

 

It also gives some no-no’s that you’re not likely to find in current NJ driver’s manuals:

 

Unless this is a coaster (and why would the phone company be making coasters?), I have no idea what it is:

 

Mom had a thing for D.C., but I’m NOT scanning all this stuff. I think we all know what D.C.’s sights look like:

 

Apparently, she also had a thing for Steno Cuffs (whatever they are). This is the second time we’ve seen these items:

 

And I KNOW she had a thing for the Teaneck PD:

 

And ALL law enforcement:

 

AND Republican politicians. The first two buttons are NOT a run for the NJ governorship by Mariano Rivera (or James Hetfield). I don’t know what to make of the Long Island RailRoad Tours button:

 

Make your own comment:

 

Useless school stuff

BCHS freshman school bus pass (don’t remember this at all):

 

Boring course list – including ROTC – for my one semester at SHU:

 

ROTC deposit – probably for my uniform:

 

Extra ROTC expenses ($2 for HAZING?):

 

Parking permit (my car was also my ROTC changing room so I’d look normalish in other classes):

 

Useful school stuff (to Mom)

Holy Trinity Church 100th anniversary booklet:

 

Why was it useful to her? Because first daughter was in first grade and first son was in eighth grade that year:

 

AND all her favorite nuns were in it, including 6 that covered the majority of my time there:

 

Last and least, Father Giella was the religious pervert who has constantly shown up in the lists of the worst local offenders. “Photography” sounds about right for him. I can only imagine what photography of his isn’t shown here:

 

Letters to Dad

This first one is of interest to local historians. Hiram Blauvelt – owner of the famous Blauvelt Mansion and Art Museum on Kinderkamack Rd in Oradell – was the president of Comfort Coal & Lumber in Hackensack.

The Mansion:

The letter is from (and signed by) Mr. Blauvelt and expresses condolences to my father about the recent death of his father. My grandfather died on August 20, 1947, and the letter was written on the 24th.

I’m not aware that anyone in our family personally knew Mr. Blauvelt, but we were Comfort Coal customers, getting regular coal deliveries to our basement to heat our house. How did someone of Mr. Blauvelt’s stature find out so quickly about and personally react to the death of a customer? Did secretaries scour death notices in newspapers and cross-reference them with customer lists?

Whatever the situation, I have new-found respect for Hiram Blauvelt, whose Coal kept me Comfort-able throughout my childhood:

 

This letter arrived in 1962 from an even more famous house – a White one in Washington, DC – and was written to Dad by special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, Larry O’Brien, who would later become Postmaster General:

I don’t know who Merrill Tucker was, what position he may have been under consideration for or why my Republican father was recommending him to a Democratic president. I’m rather amazed that I can’t find a single reference to any of this online, so if you know the answers, please dazzle me in the comments. Thanks.

 

Let’s finish off with some fancy knifework:

Well………half-fancy.

 

Navy knife:

 

Of course, the non-Naval knife is the beauty here. It’s a Jezzine (Lebanon) Rooster handle knife that’s 10.5″ long. It took a while, but I finally got it out of its scabbard:

 

And here’s something similar I found online:

 

And here’s one with a different color scheme, but the same scabbard designs on both sides:

 

While I’m finding very few similar dagger-like knives, I AM finding all sorts of eating utensils that look related, so I decided to check out the town of Jezzine in Lebanon.

One interesting image I found was referred to as a Giant Phoenix – the symbol of this small Christian town in southern Lebanon:

What a great shot! (that means I wish I took it)

 

Lastly, I give you Jezzine at Christmas. Who wouldn’t want to experience this?

 

(Uh, hello……..probably all of us…….it’s in LEBANON, remember?)