1962 - A Sense Of History

As long as I can remember I have been acutely aware of history and our place in it. Family was so important in my life that when I decided to become a working and possibly traveling musician I made a conscious decision to wait for family - I had noticed the two rarely mixed well. Having that historical perspective may have saved more than one heartbreak. Consequently, although saving my childhood collectibles may not have lasted until there were kids in my life after all - it would have been nice to try.

1962 – A Sense Of History

There they were:
Tucked in the back of the top shelf of our recently purchased house: 2 little boxes.

They measured about 2” x 3 ¼” by 7” & no one in our family had seen them before. We were cleaning out the old discards from the previous owner when I found these mysterious boxes containing…what? Standing on my tiptoes I reached back and, catching a fingernail on the edge of the box, drew it forward a couple of inches. Grabbing a firm hold I pulled out the box and opened it. To my surprise I found a box tightly packed with baseball cards. I thought, “These are so old they must be worthless. They’re not even in color.” I paused. Just like the comic books dad and I had discussed a few weeks before, some old things seemed the same as current stuff, but had somehow changed over the years resulting in differences that could put things in a completely different light. Even then I remember being aware that differences in context could completely change the meaning or value of something. The example I was most aware of was the difference in comic book characters during and after “The War”, sometimes called “World War II.” Dad stressed that a character, Prince Nemo, had been a hero in comic books during the war but in my Fantastic Four comics he was a bad-guy. I was shocked and dismayed. I still remember the resulting conversation where dad ruminated people could see things differently if in trouble than they might perceive if everything was good. He said that during the war kids were looking for more good-guys so publishers gave them…more good-guys. I realized right then that the environment surrounding an event, and the execution of the event had direct bearing on both the event and how that event was planned and, perhaps, later perceived. Context was everything! Things that happened yesterday might be acceptable behavior because the world they lived in was different than ours! This came to me fairly early in my life.

“Maybe something as old as these baseball cards should be saved for my kids,” I thought. I had been saving my Weekly Readers, a weekly newspaper distributed to grade-schools for grades 1-3, for my children. As I read these short pieces on current events I was well aware I was living in history. I had figured if my children were as curious as me these would be appreciated. Maybe these baseball cards were historically valuable. At that age although I had a sense of history, I had absolutely no sense of value except intrinsic value. Issues regarding money values were still a mystery.

As I dug through the cards I found a few I recognized. There was Dizzy Dean and Babe Ruth. There was Ted Williams, Roger Maris and Sandy Koufax. There was Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto and Mickey Mantle. Unfortunately the majority of these cards were of players completely unknown to me. I showed them to my dad which resulted in an hour of reminisces about his boyhood, the radio and the Cubs baseball game we had attended together at Wrigley Field with my Cub Scout Troop a couple of years before. My memories of that game were more of the purchase of a chameleon (which died in about a week) and the sights, sounds and smells of the ball-park…but I don’t remember the actual game. I do remember that we were all in Cub-Scout uniforms except dad who was in jeans (cuffs rolled, of-course) and an open-necked shirt. I remember being slightly embarrassed when we were entering the park and I looked around and noticed that most of the other dads were sharply dressed in suits and ties with, in many cases, a fedora to go along…my dad wore a plaid woolen ball-cap. After we entered and found a seat in general seating I wasn’t nearly as sensitive to this as we were surrounded by families and groups of men and boys all dressed like us, with very few as sharply dressed as those I had seen at the entrance. Some of the players I saw that day were right there in that stack of cards, as my dad happily pointed out. As he went through them he would pause and point out a special player or someone we had seen that day at our ball game. I don’t remember any of them…they must not have registered that strongly at the game.

Thinking back I’m sure no one in the collection was black, or negro, as African-American’s were known at the time…something I’m sure I didn’t notice then but, looking back, in retrospect it was too bad the Negro League didn’t have baseball cards. But then, in the long run, if these had been a batch of Negro League cards they would have eventually gone the way of my other collections, including those Weekly Readers. But for now, I tucked them away in my bottom drawer…my junk drawer…and forgot about them.

Eventually I had quite an impressive collection of comic books and various “historical” documents – or what I considered historical documents including some National Geographic magazines and various and other sundry items of interest. I had a collection of some pottery I found buried in the mounds in the woods. All of the neighborhood kids knew of the mounds and often dug in them to make “forts or towers” as we called them. Some of the mounds were deep in the woods and, along with the pottery, I had a big rounded piece of bone I had found buried with it. Thinking back I know it could easily have been a piece of human hip or skull, although at the time I thought it was a piece of deer hipbone or something similar because, after all, people are buried in graveyards and not in dirt mounds that are found in the middle of the woods or, like the other mounds we played on, in the middle of acres and acres of fields we used for our summer playground. In and around these mounds we sometimes found arrowheads, pottery and long, thin chipped pieces of stone that, as an adult, I’m fairly sure could have been Paleolithic stone scrapers or knife-blades. From reading articles about my cousin Dave I know Paleolithic natives lived in our area long before metal knives were available.

Included in the junk box that resided in the back of my junk-drawer was a 12” long “knife” that had a soft pewter-looking blade and a brass handle hand inscribed “ANKARA.” This knife was very flexible and bent easily sideways but if thrust forward, in a stabbing movement, it easily penetrated a full box of Kleenix. After what passed for research in a pre-teen and teenager of the pre-internet 60’s, visits to the Chicago museums and trips to the library, I concluded this dipstick-looking weapon that originated in the Middle East where the word “Ankara” meant “change.” As the definition I read specified violent change I surmised this was the weapon of a middle-eastern assassin. Complete fantasy of course. The handle had originally included a ring at the end of the handle where a line could be attached but which I found broken and deformed. I had located this item buried on the beach were I first thought I had found someone’s missing dip-stick. It was a valued treasure possibly from the cargo vessel that had sunk several weeks before. Part of it’s cargo were museum pieces so I, of course, fantasized I had one of these pieces – no longer of value due to the broken ring.

In this box was also a special arrowhead I had found in my backyard when I fell during a game of tag. Finding a flat stone under my hand, and being the one that mowed the lawn, I drew back to throw it into the field near our house when I felt a sharp point on one end. I drew my hand back and looked that the “rock” in my hand. It was an arrowhead that would seriously rival any similar piece I have seen before of since. It was white stone with hundreds of tiny chips that had formed it into the classic Beaker-style arrowhead style point. It was about 2 ½“ long and about 1 ¾“ wide. It was a little less than ¾” thick. This came to be my 2nd most valued treasure although it had been my most valued possession until I received an authentic 1800’s era German switchblade.

This knife was my choice of a remembrance item from my Grandpa’s collection of assorted junk he had collected over his life. It was being discarded by my grandma soon after his death and she offered each of us one thing with which to remember him by.

I had originally asked for the newspaper clippings and papers through which I once found him sorting through and about which we spent a pleasant afternoon talking. Grandpa had seen, not met, Bat Masterson and Wild Bill Hitchcock as well as Chief Rain-In-The- Face and a couple of other famous native Americans and cowboys, none of whom I now remember. Our conversation about these papers was one of my fondest childhood memories and represented not only my grandpa’s life but the parts of history that he walked through and experienced, often in the first-person. As a teen he had crossed the prairie in a covered wagon and fought Indians with his family and, eventually, became a well-sought-after skilled carpenter. Following his first marriage they lived in a sod-cabin in the Dakota’s until the eventual heartbreak and re-settling of his life after the still-birth of his child and the death of his first wife. Per grandpa’s brother-in-law Uncle Willie, her death resulted from uncontrollable bleeding subsequent to that unsuccessful childbirth. Thereafter he decided to move to the city where doctors and medical help would be more readily available.

Unfortunately my grandma told me I didn’t really want all of those “dusty old papers” and mom backed her up. I was told to find something else.

I remember they didn’t particularly want me to choose the switchblade I found in the back of his desk drawer but a little fussing and whining about not really making my own choice convinced them the knife was an acceptable alternate. I kept that knife for years but eventually lost it in a motorcycle accident in 1969 in which my brother’s motorcycle and I took a quick side-trip into a swamp.

The last item, or items, added to my collection of “historic documents” was a copy of every newspaper I could lay my hands on when President Kennedy was assassinated my freshman year of high school. Wall-Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and the Daily News, the Waukegan News-Sun, the Zion-Benton News. I even had a copy of Grit – the newspaper printed once-a-month and sold by kids (like my brother) that fell for the advertisement on the back of Boy’s Life. I knew, for sure, the assassination was an important event about which original documents would be appreciated. They got stashed with my other collections which had, by this time, become several boxes stacked in my closet. These were the early signs of a relatively-controllable pack-rat.

What happened to all of these “important papers?” Early in 1967 dad was asked to assume management of one of Convection Cabinets biggest accounts: Iowa State University. This was an exciting time for our family: moving to a new place far from our traditional family holdings. Dad insisted the company wait until his eldest child, me, had graduated from High school so within a couple of weeks following graduation we packed a truck and both of our cars and headed out for Iowa City. All belongings were packed solid in the truck and we could get no more in any vehicle when mom showed up with one last box of clothing that simply would not fit regardless of loading and re-loading. After the third re-load mom asked, “Bob, what’s in this box?” “That’s all of Larry’s collectibles.” After a short pause my mother said well that’s all just junk he’s had for too long as it is. We’re going to have to leave it behind.”

I was devastated. No amount of complaining or wailing changed mom’s mind. I had already managed to go through years of collections and trim my belongings down to one large 3’x3’x3’ box. On the bottom were years of comic books, including many I have since seen priced at ComiCon for hundreds of dollars. On top of that were weekly readers and wrapped in my Surf Club jacket and tucked into a corner was my mayonnaise jar of knifes, arrowheads and foreign coins I had gathered over the years. The last items, those things I saw when I retrieved my little jar from the corners of my box were several newspapers. “Kennedy Shot” and “President Assassinated in Dallas” shouted at me from the top of the box as I folded the top shut. The pain was almost physical. All of my years of collecting, some things since kindergarten, were going to be discarded. All of my years of collecting these valuable papers were all for naught. My children might never know the thrill of discovering pieces of history in their own hands. My depression was palatable but I wasn’t the only one forced to leave things behind so with a stiff upper lip I tried to set a good example for my brothers. Eventually, while I was in the Navy, mom discarded my mayonnaise jar telling my dad “These are boy things. Larry’s a man now.” Mom was not an historian.

After all of these years I still often remember that collection with some satisfaction knowing that although my “stuff” is long gone, the attitude of belonging to history has passed honestly from my grandpa and my dad to me.

I am history…so are you.