2021 – Un-jammed bag…….FINALLY
(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on July 10, 2021)
There’s so much STUFF in this latest bag of parental goodies that it’s taken me a couple of months to get through it all to scan. Some of it may require their own posts.
There’s not gonna be any rhyme or reason to this, so here goes…………
Link Frames:
Well, this looks nice……….and appropiate, considering Mom and Dad had 4 kids. Let’s open it up.
Out of the box, they’re stacked and look who’s on top – the first-born in his ugly 8th-grade graduation photo:
Let’s check out my siblings:
Uh, Mom……….is there something I should know about our family?
Exotic Black Coral
One 5”-tall piece on 2 different backgrounds
It came wrapped in this 4-page brochure (the piece is shown again on the last page to fill up space between the 2 tape marks).
More Cowbell!
Dad Cards
Invite to Dad’s 1938 high school graduation:
This is suspicious. His mother divorced his father in 1940 and then married a captain in the Little Ferry, NJ, police department, who then gave my father a Get-Out-Of-Getting-A-Ticket-Free card. Hmmmmm……….…tryin’ to win the kid over?
Cards for various jobs Dad had that I know next to nothing about (though I DO remember something about some sort of interaction with Gloria Vanderbilt), except that the Studebaker one probably prepped him for the Chevy career:
Gavel
This HAD to be Mom’s. She worked in the Violations Bureau of the Teaneck Police Department and I seem to recall a picture of her parking in the judge’s space, so I don’t know if someone was goofing on her with this gavel or if it might have been wishful thinking on her part:
And this is definitely mine:
Coins, Pins, Medals
Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority coins
1994 Australian 50-cent piece with unusual depiction on the back:
Coin-like “wooden nickels” from Teaneck PD (why did Mom have a box of them?):
Inside this little box:
…were 2 pins – Dad’s “Ruptured Duck” Honorable Discharge pin…
…and this other pin that only says “Hazard Zet Forward” (‘No matter the risk, move forward’). What did Dad get this for?
HE DIDN’T! IT’S FROM SETON HALL UNIVERSITY! IT’S MINE! (though I don’t remember it or why I have it. I thought maybe it was for ROTC, but research seems to indicate it’s more of a Seton Hall thing than a military thing.)
This is definitely Dad’s:
Wait…………he had to PURCHASE his military awards and decorations? I thought if you EARNED them, they were given to you:
This is definitely Mom’s. I vaguely remember her selling these brushes when I was little (or was it Fuller Brush?):
The one on the left is obviously mine (and “1955” was the year the school was founded – NOT when I went there), but I have no idea what the one on the right signifies. Anybody know?
Catchin’ Dinner
I know nothing about this 5” x 4” piece other than the image appears to be painted on the back of the glass and the hanging mechanism isn’t the classiest one I’ve ever seen. But it looks like they’ll be eating well tonight:
Writing Accessories
This pen says “Edward Todd & Co. 1 NY “ on it. I think the handle is mother-of-pearl, but I know nothing else about it other than it’s not a fountain pen:
Such an elegant pen deserves these 19-cent pocket savers……….
……..and only the finest in writing paper, such as these cheap pads from The Grand Hotel in Taiwan or the Playboy Resort and Country Club in Great Gorge, NJ:
Speaking of the Playboy Club, I can’t believe I’m still finding MORE stuff from there in my conservative parents’ possessions:
Mom was the roller-skating queen, so we know to whom this belongs:
I used to have a wallet like this, but this is NOT mine. Medical privacy reasons prohibit me from revealing who the owner was, but I was sure happy to find it!
The contents included 3 Old Glory flag stamps (Forever stamps) and 3 Imodium A-D capsules (is there a connection between them?):
But what put a smile on my face was the $71 dollars I found within (no pictures – it’s already spent).
Post Yarns
This is a little (3” x 4.5”) war-oriented booklet of cartoons from the Saturday Evening Post in 1945. A few are funny – the rest are corny. “Post Yawns” might have been a better name:
Postcards from me 25 years apart
I sent these home from Washington, DC and Dallas, Texas in 1962 and 1987, respectively. The earlier one came from a paperboy who won a trip there. The other one came from a rock photographer who was shooting the Texxas Jam in the Cotton Bowl:
(Why didn’t I flip those first two lines? I would have had a nice little rhyme going on…………)
Chevy Stuff
Gotta have some Chevy items, right? We’ll start with the cheap stuff:
Never heard of the Chevrolet Atlantic Coast before. Was this a giant floating El Camino jammed with Chevy dealership husbands and wives?
Kind of a non-specific , 2.75” x 2.75” x 1” Lucite award from the CBM at Chevrolet:
Talk about non-specific! The only thing I’m sure of (I think) is that it comes from Chevrolet. What is the “100% Award”? What does the “6” stand for? Did the CBM become the BMC? This monster is almost a half-inch tall!
Probably not Chevy-related:
Early Reading Material
I might have read one of the three, but still haven’t figured out what the lesson of the last image is……….always wear your skeleton?
Another Viewer
We’ve seen a couple of these here before, but those showed people we knew. This is rather generic:
Anybody Remember Freedomland?
Do you know where Co-Op City is in the Bronx? That’s where Freedomland was from 1960-1964. I went there that first year and wrote a paper about it in 8th grade. I scanned these large so they were readable, so click to enlarge – especially on the cover picture (Geez – even then, I was trying to tell stories with pictures!):
THINK!
So I find this 9.5” x 12” hardcover book in a crumbling paper cover…
I removed the cover and found:
This tells you exactly what it is:
And with a name like “Think”, you know it has to be from IBM:
There are a zillion pictures from WWII in it, which made it difficult to pick one or two pages, so I picked two side-by-side pages that each had a lot of pictures, but these were all related:
If anyone’s interested, there are a lot of these for sale on eBay and they’re not expensive.
The things your mother saves!
I found this rather crumpled-up cut-out from a 1979 college newspaper, showing a picture of me and my girlfriend Ronnie (yeah, right). It told of my life as it was in early 1979. It has some silly misspellings and omissions in a list of performer names.
What is doesn’t/couldn’t tell you was that by the end of that year, I was outta there and had switched job allegiances to you-know-what.
I’m gonna wrap this up with another cutie who was definitely NOT my girlfriend. This one worked in a bank in 1973 and the bank thought this almost-19-year-old should represent them in newspaper ads……………but why would my mother save this?
Because it’s her daughter, Geri! (which would make her…………)
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