Historical Summer 2009 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
What do you collect? No, I am not asking about what you have. Having something might imply a need or function.
All of us have a toaster, an ash tray (even though smoking is verboten!), a pair of shoes, a keychain, and an accordion. (OK, most of us for the accordion.) Collecting is different than having.
As we’ve seen, having something simply means that, well, that you have one, maybe two. How’s that for redundant? Maybe you tend not to throw things away. Do your relatives call you el rat de pack?
When did you last move to a new home and purge the detritus in your closets and basement?
If you never pitch, then chances are you have multiples.
I have four coffee makers, for example.
I like caffeine as much as the next guy, but four coffee makers? How is that? One coffee maker I bought on sale.
It was such a good a deal – it came with free coffee and a set of filters too – that I purchased it even though the coffee maker I had was making coffee just fine, thank you.
I remember thinking that my coffee maker would wear out some day and I’d have this brand, spankingnew one ready to replace it. How smart am I? Indeed, that good thinking was six or seven years ago, and I still have that brand, spanking-new coffee maker.
The old guy is still going strong each morning. (By “old guy,” I refer to the coffee maker, not me.
The title certainly applies to me but whether or not I’m still going strong is open to debate.) Another coffee pot appeared even earlier, a decade or so ago, when the coffee maker I was using (the one I’m still using today, in fact) was broken. Ever the handy guy, I tried to fix it but had no luck.
I bought a new coffee pot, plugged the puppy in and brewed away.
The new pot didn’t make coffee that was as good however – beats me why this could be the case, but it was – and I missed the old one. Ever the intrepid tinkerer, I pulled the old pot out of the trash to try it once more, and eureka, it worked! I’m not sure what happened here but I suspect it may have worked better the time that I plugged it in. Anyway, that meant that the replacement pot was destined to the basement where it hibernates still today. That accounts for three of my four coffee makers. I’m not sure how I got the fourth one. Like a birthmark, it seems to have always been there.
But I don’t collect coffee pots; I don’t admire them, don’t seek them, don’t look for this feature or that gizmo.
I just have them. Indeed, and it’s probably just a function of late middle-age but I have lots of STUFF.
If you name it, I have it. It’s not new and probably is missing a piece or has a heavy wrinkle, but it’s here somewhere. Just give me a minute and I’ll find it.
But I don’t collect stuff.
I just have it, lots of it. I’ve got the plural of stuff.
I have been a collector, though.
As a kid, I collected baseball cards.
I collected them even before I was a baseball fan.
A native St. Louisan, I always bought the packages of gum and searched for the elusive Stan Musial card.
We all did. Stan’s cards were much rarer than his strikeouts, though, and I never came across one.
In my youth I used to think that the bubble-gum companies had fewer Musial cards available in St. Louis in order to encourage us to buy more “flips,” as we called them. Today, much older and a little wiser, I am sure that there were fewer Musial cards available in St. Louis than in Chicago or Pittsburgh. And it worked.
I can’t believe I chewed that much bubble gum. Today, I no longer look for Musial but I still collect things.
My number one collection is clocks.
I probably have between 200 and 300 clocks.
Most of them don’t work, or at least I don’t know if they work.
I didn’t get them to tell the time.
I got them because they’re fanciful and attractive. Their actual value isn’t all that much but they’re valuable to me.
I have clocks just about everywhere.
I have old metal clocks with horses and soldiers that gong through the night.
I have wooden clocks in which the pendulum rocks back and forth, visible behind the class on which is painted a picture of the State of Liberty or of a turkey.
I have a couple of grandfather clocks and a grandmother clock.
It looks like a grandfather clock but is a bit smaller (and makes better apple pies).
I have more mantle clocks than mantles.
I have a cuckoo clock, and metal and wooden clocks that I carried home from Italy, Switzerland, England, and China. (This was back in the days when you could haul just about anything that you could carry on to the plane. Once I flew back from London holding a clock in my lap throughout the flight.) Some of my clocks make noises on the hour. Typically the clocks gong but occasionally you can hear dogs barking or birds chirping on the hour (three barks means that it’s 3:00!). And when they’re wound, a lot of my clocks gong on the 15, 30, 45, and hour.
This is not a good house if you’re a light sleeper.
My favorite clocks are my novelty electric statue clocks.
My study overflows with these clocks. (I think there are books behind the clocks.) Statues of famous people are often displayed on these clocks.
I have several clocks with FDR (he’s standing behind the wheel of a ship, steering the country), one with Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson (they look a bit like a singing group, in costume of course), one with pirates (looking pirate-like), another with Lincoln (still at the wheel but painted), one with McKinley (looking presidential), and two with Will Rogers (complete with microphone).
Then there are the clocks that feature non-descript folks: majorettes, ice skaters, baseball players, cowboys, and bowlers. Yep, I have all of them. Clocks often have statues of animals, and I have quite a few with horses in different poses.
I also have clocks with pheasants, bulls, eagles, dragons, and frogs.
Then there are statue clocks that show things: windmill, cross, steamship, train, fireplace, cowboy boot, covered wagon, lighthouse, and girl in a swing. Did I say that I collected clocks?
I used to prowl flea markets and antique stores for clocks, and then along came E-bay and my job was much easier. Unfortunately, even this big old house has finite space so there is no more room for clocks. So much for growing the collection, eh? (If, however, you have a Joe Lewis clock, he’s posed with his fists clinched, that is looking for a good home, please let me know. That’s one that I don’t have!) But I have even more ties than clocks so I suspect that I collect ties too. Unlike clocks, I never consciously set out to accumulate ties.
It started because I wore some ties that were pretty outrageous in other people’s minds (I always feel that my ties reflect sophisticated taste. What do they know?) Since I wore ties that no one else liked because people started giving me ties that they wouldn’t wear. Or that their dad wouldn’t wear. Or perhaps a spouse or significant other wouldn’t wear the tie. Who knows?
My tie collection grew and grew. Like some feral animal living under the bridge, the pack of ties seemed to have a life of its own.
It continued to get larger and larger, gaining sustenance from where I know not. One day I had half a dozen ties and then a score of years later I have hundreds, really, of ties.
The beauty of my taste is that I don’t concern myself with whether the tie matches a shirt or coat, so the mix & match possibilities are endless. Best, I never have to worry about someone taking any of my ties because most people wouldn’t be caught dead in them. You’ll find me wearing the usual holiday ties – proclaiming Christmas, Chanukah, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July, and sometimes I’m even wearing them on the right holidays. Actually, it’s fun to wear a Santa tie in July; he doesn’t mind. And I have Disney ties, Warner Brothers ties, Dr. Seuss ties, Marx Brothers ties, a Toy Story tie, and a tie of ” Starry, Starry Night.” I have ties for the Three Musketeers, the Lone Ranger, a world map, and dancing ladies. Ties of mine feature cigars, birds, frogs, dinosaurs, panda bears, snakes, wild animals, fish, I-HOP food, dragons, the virus for the common cold, cowboys, guitars, baseball players, and smile-faces.
I even have a tie with the painting of the dogs sitting around the table and playing cards. Of course, I have ties that are striped, checked, plaid, polka-dot, paisley, and some that are all of the above.
The good news is that ties take up a lot less space than clocks (and unlike clocks, they’re never wrong).
I have hundreds of ties, all crammed on a tie rack that was designed for 50 ties.
I try not to wear the same tie twice in a year but I’m not organized enough to keep track of what day it is, much less what I wore when. Getting dressed is a bit of a crapshoot each morning, and that is good: It adds to the mirth of the day.
Finally, smaller in quantity but no less distinct is my collection of salt & pepper steamships. Oops, I’m running out of space! Tell me, dear reader, what do you collect? I’d like to know. Zap me at trhoerr@AOL. com_ (mailto:trhoerr@AOL.com) with news of your collection.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, Summer 2009.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Source prints State of Liberty and Joe Lewis, with literal mailto production artifact at end; retained rather than guessed corrections.
Original source: SD_Times2009_06.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
