Grumpa Joe's Place

Why do people collect things? I think it is because it is fun and it sets a person apart from others who do not collect. My own fascination with collecting began in the fourth grade with Sister Flora. During the winter months when the weather was too cold or too snowy we often ate lunch indoors. I was fortunate enough to live within 500 feet of my school, and went home for lunch most of the time. By nine years old I could make myself a peanut butter sandwich, pour a glass of milk on my own, and then have enough time to watch Uncle Johnny Coons on TV before returning to class. Mom worked and was not at home for lunch so when the weather was really bad, she packed us a lunch and told us to eat at school. I didn’t mind because dressing for the cold took time which cut into play time.

During an eat-in lunch we were on our own for thirty minutes while our Nun ate her lunch. When she returned she always had some fun thing to amuse us with. One day, she introduced us to stamp collecting. She was a collector and needed a source of new stamps. Just about every kid in our school was the offspring of immigrants. Our parents had relatives in the “old country” with whom they communicated by mail. So we were a source of stamps from many countries. Sister Flora taught us geography by explaining where the the stamps came from. She taught us about perforations, and cancellation marks, and watermarks. She showed us how to make our own stamp book by drawing a grid on notebook paper. She introduced us to the hinges used for attaching stamps onto the pages of our homemade collection book. After a couple of lunch meetings on stamps she established a stamp club which met once week. I have never stopped collecting stamps since. I haven’t put a stamp into an album for at least forty years, but I cannot throw away a commemorative stamp. I merely tear off the corner of the envelope and keep the stamp in a special drawer of my desk. About thirty years ago, a neighbor who belonged to the same garden club told us that we could benefit birds by donating used stamps to the Auduban Society. When my desk drawer gets too full of loose stamps I put them into a bag and take them to Kay’s house, and she relays them to Auduban. I have one very large corrugated box full of my stamp collections and loose stamps that I cannot throw away. Since the hobby has lost its attraction to the general populace the demand for old collections is non-existent. One of my heirs will have to deal with it.

My wife Barbara loved to save things too, and she was avid in the pursuit of items to add to her collections. Her largest collection, by far was her trove of depression glass. The glass came in several colors namely blue, pink, yellow, green, and clear, she specialized in saving pink. The most popular color is blue, and also the most expensive because of the demand. Although she collected the pink dishes and put them on display, her philosophy was to use them on special occasions. She would set the table with her best china and also use pink serving bowls from her collection.

Next to her depression glass collection, she had a love for deer. She loved the real live wild animal for its sleek lines, beautiful color, and gentle nature. No doubt the Disney film Bambi had something to do with this fascination. By the end of her life she had accumulated over three hundred ceramic, plastic, or glass deer. She had salt and pepper shakers, pitchers, and decorations of every conceivable form. Our house was loaded with deer. They were on tables, book cases, and shelves, in every room of the house. Barb and I spent untold hours attending antique shows searching for collectibles. It was our one form of entertainment that turned us both on.

Collections can become a big thing to dispose of. After Barb died, and I was emotionally strong enough to begin the chore of cleaning the house to prepare it for sale I learned the hard fact of life that something you paid five bucks for might net fifty cents. Had she lived she would have died from the shock of having to get rid of her collection for so little. She got her money’s worth from the joy these items gave her.

I began a new collection about ten years ago when I bought a bottle of Cabernet wine from Australia called Nineteen Crimes. The wine isn’t very spectacular, but when I discovered that each cork was printed with one of the nineteen crimes I began to save them. The story behind the name and the crimes goes back several hundred years to when Australia was a possession of England, and England had all these weird laws on the books and decided that if one was found to be guilty of any of them that their sentence would involve being shipped to Australia for life. I had to have all nineteen crime corks before I could switch brands. Well that hasn’t happen for a number of reasons. The biggest one being that some of the crimes are not coming on the corks. I”m still looking for those final crimes.

In order to write this post I found it necessary to take inventory of the corks I do have. Come on, it’s time to quit this non-sense. I’m still lacking no.s 1, 6, and 19. It makes one wonder if the company is withholding them on purpose to addict suckers like me into continuing to buy their swill. The laws are hilariously funny, although I’m sure at the time the perpetrators didn’t think so when they found themselves chained to the inside of a dungy ship for a four month, thirteen thousand mile trip to a foreign continent inhabited by kangaroos and the world’s deadliest snakes.

One of my favorite crimes is number #5, impersonating an Egyptian, WTF???? What could possibly be so bad about wanting to look like an Egyptian? I think number nine should be adopted here in the USA, instead we are going the other way, and allow thieves to get away with stolen goods, #9 Assault with the intent to rob.

The punishment given to the people for these crimes has yielded a population of really nice people. I like Aussies for a number of reasons, and being an ancestor of a 19 crimes perpetrator is not one of them.

Anyway, I must continue to buy my Cabernet from Nineteen crimes until I have numbers one, six, and nineteen in the bag with all the others.

Filed under: Biography, family | Tagged: Collections, deer, Depression Glass, Stamps |