2021 – Treasured Childhood Item Found
(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)
I think the first travel photo is St Marks Plaza in Venice.
They had a 3-month old grandson on 12/1/88 so maybe that’s why. Don’t know why they picked Hess or didn’t send it, just a thought.