(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.