Historical February 1991 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
I’m a collector.
I guess I’ve always been a collector.
As a small kid (well, a kid anyway; I was never small) I used to collect the normal boy kid-things: comic books, model airplanes and warships, sports magazines, and statues of football players. Today those collections are nowhere to be found. Like every man I know who was once a young boy, my mom threw out my baseball card collection.
In her defense, I suspect that I was gone and married by the time that she got-around to doing the big purge, but it still hurt.
I remember that I had the entire ’57 set of World Series players as well as several copies of the “MUSIAL GETS 3000TH HIT!” card. Living in St. Louis, it was really hard to get flips—that’s what we called ’em—for Cardinal players.
I didn’t know anyone who lived in another city, but we always talked about how this was something that the bubble gum companies had done to get us to buy more cards.
It wasn’t just St. Louis, we figured, this was the case for every major league city.
If you lived in Chicago it was impossible to get the Cubs flips and so on.
We always speculated about how great it would be to go to another city with our flips and trade our local rejects for theirs.
We never did this, though, and the marketing strategy worked.
We continued to buy bubble gum cards after bubble gum cards after bubble gum cards, in search of Alex Grammas, Curt Flood, and Wally Moon.
The flippers could be used for many things. Their primary purpose, of course, was to introduce youngsters to gambling.
We played heads/tails, match, double-up, and corners.
I don’t remember much about the bubble-gum itself except that it was pink, sweet, and fairly tasteless. Turns out that the gum was good preparation for the first wife’s cooking, but that’s another story. Aside from the games that could be played with the flippers, they were great for putting in the bottom of your shoes to cover over the holes in the soles. Like your socks, you’d change these flippers daily, but while you’d wash the socks, you’d throw these flips away afterwards.
I also used to collect model airplanes and warships. I’d spend hours painstakingly gluing them together, then destroy them by using bricks to represent bomb attacks or by dropping them off the back porch.
We lived on the second-story, so this was great fun and enjoyed by all of my friends. Mrs. Hermann, the lady who lived downstairs, was pretty tolerant until one day when a replica of the U.S.S. Missouri wizzed by her head as it plummeted to the bottom of the Atlantic.
During my wilderness years, my adolescence, I don’t remember collecting much except poor marks in conduct on my report cards and red sploches on my face.
I didn’t really seek—or certainly deserve—either of these, but they seemed to always be with me.
The red sploches on my face could at least be blamed on my bad eating habits, but the poor marks in conduct were totally beyond my control.
The teachers inevitably had it out for me. Honest! I’ve always collected books.
As a subscriber to the theory of “literary osmosis;’ I believe that knowledge can be obtained simply by being near unread books that you possess. Thus, even to this day my study, desk, bedside, and car all contain books in various stages of unread. I’m always amazed that someone can have the time or patience to read a book twice; each book that I read calls out the title of a dozen untouched cohorts sitting on a shelf.
As an adult, chronologically at least, I collect lots of things.
I still collect books. Saturday, in an effort to create some degree of organization in my life, I created two areas for particular categories of books in my study. First is my Churchill shelf. I’m an avid fan of Winston, and now have all of the books that I possess by and about him in one place.
If there was ever an example of the right man at the right time, it was Churchill; conversely, there were periods when if there ever was an example of the wrong man at the wrong time, that was also Churchill.
The other category of books that I created was my BOOKS TO BE READ NEXT shelf. Now, mind you, this isn’t (unfortunately) all of my unread books, simply those that are next in line. Would you believe that the line, the shelf, contains no fewer than 38 books?
There are other collections in which I dabble: novelty cigarette lighters, chess sets, and rather bizarre lamps to name a few, but when you mention clocks to me my eyes light up and my heart skips a beat. Clocks have become the passion of my collecting life.
As I write, in this small cluttered study, I’m surrounded by 59 clocks.
While I’m somewhat of an eclectic collector, that’s a euphemism for someone who collects fairly indiscriminately, my specialty is electric novelty and statueclocks. Remember those clocks that were in vogue, maybe semivogue, thirty or forty years ago, with all kinds of statues or figures posed next to electric clocks? Those are my specialty!
In my study alone, I have statue clocks of Franklin D. Roosevelt (“F.D.R.—The Man Of The Hour” it says), an eagle with wings spread, a Cinderella coach drawn by four horses, a matador holding a cape by a bull, a light-house on a rocky coast, a covered wagon, a girl sitting in a swing, and two bowlers. Yes, two bowlers.
The most typical clock of this vintage is the one with the horse standing in various poses; I have three of them. And that’s just my study.
There are well over 100 other clocks throughout the house and a dozen in my office at work, all near and dear to me although a real clock collector would probably scoff at most of them.
Most purists would appreciate neither my pirate clock (three buccaneers looking rather gruesome standing around a giant clock-face) nor my cow clock (a two cow and one lady clock trophy from the Ohio State Fair, holstein class).
I love ’em! I’m often asked if all of these clocks actually work. No, hardly any of them do, but that’s not the point.
If I want to know the time, I’ll check my Casio.
If I want a vision of what human imagination and creativity can do to test the boundaries of good taste, I’ll look at my clocks.
While having and looking at all of my clocks is fun, a big piece of the joy of collecting is in the chase. That’s why you’ll often see me at flea markets and estate sales. I’m a Gypsy Caravan regular and try to bring clocks back from each vacation I take.
I can give you the names and locations of flea markets in London, Tampa, Vienna, Cleveland, and Zurich. Bringing the clocks home always makes passing through airport security an interesting experience. So if you have any of those old nonworking electric statue clocks that you’d like to be rid of, give me a call. I’d be happy to trade some of my first wife’s shoe collection!
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February 1991.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1991_02.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
