Tag Archives: Found items

Ripley’s Big Book Believe it or Not!

Memories, Reading, , ,

When I was young and visited my grandparents home in Elgin I loved the room with the books. It was off the dining room and while the adults played poker at the dining room table the kids played with toys or read books in the book room. They had only a few books that kids would like, most were my grandfather’s books with titles like “Have Gun, Will Shoot”.

While I liked the Rupert Bear annual from maybe the 1930s, I always gravitated to the huge Ripley’s Believe it or Not book. First printed in 1929, it held illustrated stories of the strange, the next to impossible, the macabre. In its pages I learned about the man with two-foot-long fingernails, that Saint Patrick was not an Irishman, and I learned about shrunken heads. To this day I think about this book when reading clickbait headlines on the Internet.

My delight in this book was tempered with a small bit of shame. It seemed naughty reading this book and looking at the illustrations which were often off-putting. Close-ups of people, like the illustration of the actor who could make his hair stand on end or the man who buried his head in the sand for 9 hours.

And while thumbing through the book I came across something that I repeated to people as true fact throughout my childhood. I’d completely forgotten about until just now.

Intoxicated actually means "shot with a poisoned arrow"

Maybe every era had its fake news…

Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle

Musings, Places, Things, , , ,

I grew up in a town not far from Chicago. Chicago has several museums and in grade school our classrooms visited them often. My favorite museum was the Museum of Science and Industry. Its exhibits were memorable including the coal mine where an elevator took you “below the earth” (actually you started up high and it only seemed you were far underground) where a train awaited you and took you on a tour of the mine and the, now gone, room of fetuses in glass jars and cross sections of a human body that were preserved between two pieces of plexiglass.

My favorite exhibit, however, was Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. I could stand for hours looking into that exquisite dollhouse at the tiny rooms filled with miniature furniture. I imagined myself suddenly becoming tiny enough to wander through the fairy castle, napping on Sleeping Beauty’s bed in the princess’ bedroom, bathing in the princess’ silver tub, eating at King Arthur’s table in the dining room.

I loved it so much that I bought myself a souvenir booklet describing the dollhouse so I could see inside the dollhouse from the comfort of my own home. I still have that booklet and I still look through it now and then. And still, fifty-something years later, I like to pretend I’m small enough to live in the castle, but now I visit the magic garden and library too.

Return to Sender 64 years later

Friends, Things

My mom went to school with Jackie and remained friends with her for the rest of her life. Jackie had a daughter named Stephanie who was not much older than me. Maybe 2 or three years. We played together when we were young, then Stephanie moved to California. We sporadically kept in touch through letters. Dean and I drove to San Diego the summer we spent in Los Angeles and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant with Stephanie and her partner at the time, and maybe her son. More recently Stephanie and her husband visited us here in Bethesda and we spent some time visiting with her in LA one afternoon. Even more recently we’ve kept in touch on Facebook and through texts.

When my mom died and I helped clear out her house I came across Stephanie’s mom and dad’s wedding portrait. I texted a photo of it to Stephanie and asked if she was interested in it. She said she was so I put it in the pile of things to take home so I could mail it to her.

Once I got home I went through every box I’d brought from my mom’s house and couldn’t find it anywhere; I assumed I’d not packed it after all. I asked my brother to check to see if he could find it when he was in the house. No luck. I asked the estate sales people if they came across it. No luck. I told Stephanie the bad news and I could tell that she was disappointed, but said it was okay.

Fast forward 7 years to yesterday afternoon. I’d previously thought I’d emptied all the boxes of “Mom’s stuff” that I’d hidden under the guest bed, but found one last box yesterday. I pulled letters, photos, newspaper articles and drawings out of the box and found a legal sized envelope on the bottom that contained more photos and a cardboard folder with the logo of a long-gone Elgin photography studio on the front. Inside was the wedding photo of Stephanie’s parents. It’s soon to be on its way to her house.

In addition to that photo, I am also inclosing a 1959 Christmas card with a photo of young Stephanie on the front and a note from Jackie on the back. In it she mentions that Stephanie had been talking about me often. They’d moved to San Diego at some point that year, I think.

Stephanie lost her mother in the past year or two, and her father’s been gone a while. I feel like something has come full-circle — me sending Stephanie the photos and note (and writing a note, although mine is typed and not in green ink).

That’s all.