I got a package in the mail this morning from Brother Mark. It contained two plastic bags of U.S. postage stamps and a letter that read, in part:
“Dad had put away several boxes of stamps years ago in the basement. He put them in old checking account check boxes and sealed them with tape. That was good and it was bad. Good, because it kept anyone from using them, but even though he separated most of the with a piece of waxed paper, the humidity i the basement got into some of them and caused the glue to become sticky.
Bought them in sheets
“Dad used to buy stamps when he went to the post office to pick up mail for Steinhoff & Kirkwood Construction. He would buy them a sheet at a time and he wanted ones that had a block number on them, probably because he thought it might be worth more like that.
“I took them to some folks in St. Louis who appraised them to be worth about $65 [he didn’t say how much more than face value, if any, they were worth]. I didn’t think it was worth selling them for such a small amount to be split three ways [Mark, David and me]. I’ve done my best to equally separate the stamps so that everyone gets a fair sample of what was there.”
Lila and I collected stamps
When I was a kid, I collected stamps, but never had anything that was worth a whole lot, then Wife Lila collected commemoratives for awhile. She checked with Sons Matt and Adam, but neither of them were interested in them, so she was going to offer them up for sale. None of mine were rare, and most had been cancelled, so I don’t think they’ll move us into a better brand of cat food.
I told her the ones Mark sent had no real sentimental value for me, so why doesn’t she just use them on mail. She pointed out that we send very few snail mail letters these days, and, even if we did, most of the stamps are of such small denominations that you’d have to cover the whole front of the envelope with them.
Got any stamp collectors out there? Or snail mailers? (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)
This wicked-looking device hanging in Mother’s basement came from HER parents’ backyard garage in Advance. I can remember seeing it and being fascinated by the grisly tool when I was a little kid.
The way it worked was you would look around your yard until you saw the raised portions of ground where the moles had created runs. You would cock the trap by pulling up on the handle at the top, which would compress the spring and raise the spikes.
After that, you would put the trap straddling the run with the big stakes on both sides, sticking it in the ground just far enough that the flat trigger at the top of the spike platform would rest across the raised dirt. The theory was that a mole passing through the run would jiggle the ground just enough to send the spikes plunging through him.
I never checked for success
I’m not sure we ever deployed the device with any serious intent to dispatch any moles, and I certainly never dug around to see if it had been successful if we had.
If you have a sadistic bent and moles in your yard, I’m pretty sure the trap ended up at Annie Laurie’s Antique Shop.
Wow! I just did a Google search for “mole trap” and came up with a whole bunch of more modern devices for dealing with the rodents. After looking at a couple of videos, I am more convinced than ever that ignorance is bliss. I’m glad I never checked for results.
When I went to pick up my van from being checked out at South End Service here in West Palm Beach, I saw the strongest double rainbow I think I’ve ever seen. It made a perfect arc that lasted several minutes.
I flashed back to my old days at Trinity Lutheran School where we learned about Noah, the Great Flood.and the rainbow God sent as a promise that he wouldn’t destroy the world by flood again. I’m pretty sure some of you folks back home would like to have borrowed my rainbow for assurance over the past few weeks. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)
The Genesis version
From Genesis 9:
11 And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
My non-biblical thought
The second thought I had was, “If someone in West Palm Beach wins the Powerball, I’m going to check his address to see if he lived at either end of that rainbow.
The Palm Beach Post is giving itself an extended pat on the back for surviving 100 years. I logged about 35 years there, stretching from the early 1970s until I took a buyout in 2008. I congratulate the publication on surviving, even if it’s a shadow of its former self. It was billed as “America’s Fastest Growing Major Daily Newspaper” on a coffee mug dated September 30, 1988.
A recent house ad bragged that “The Post’s newsroom has more than 100+ Journalists…” (They must have laid off the copy editor who would have known that “more than” and “100+” is redundant.) In 2007, the newsroom had three times that many staffers, but, who’s counting?
Clatter, clutter and ringing of bells
Here’s what election night looked like in 1976, an era when reporters used typewriters (mostly manual), election results arrived by telephone and were tabulated by hand by scowling reporters and editors keeping an eye on the deadline clock. News came in on a bank of wire service teletypes with much clatter, clutter and ringing of bells.
REAL cut ‘n’ paste
You can see glue bottles scattered all over the newsroom, from an era where “cut” was done with scissors or the edge of a pica pole. The “paste” part was done with homemade paste or – in the case of the upscale Post – rubber cement.
OSHA doomed the “spike”
OSHA must have put an end to another old newspaper standby, the “Spike.” When I first got into the business, almost every desk had a wicked-looking spike attached to a flat base. When you were through with your notes or other paperwork, you’d “spike” them on the sharp thing that looked like a long needle. It screwed into the base so you could remove the oldest stuff from the bottom when the spike got full.
With practice, you could hold a paper flat in your palm, and slam it down on the spike without getting speared as it passed between your fingers. I punctured a finger from time to time until I mastered the technique, but I never heard of anyone falling across a desk and impaling himself on one.
The terminology outlasted the tool. If an editor decided to kill a story, he or she would “spike it,” just like you’d drive a stake through a vampire’s heart.
A photo gallery of characters
I’ve held these photos for a couple or years thinking I’d get around to telling the story of some of the characters who inhabited the newsroom in the days before the office and its denizens were domesticated. The folks who wrote the stories were often more interesting than their subjects. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery. Posties, feel free to leave comments with your memories of this fascinating crew and era.
I got a package in the mail this morning from Brother Mark. It contained two plastic bags of U.S. postage stamps and a letter that read, in part:
“Dad used to buy stamps when he went to the post office to pick up mail for Steinhoff & Kirkwood Construction. He would buy them a sheet at a time and he wanted ones that had a block number on them, probably because he thought it might be worth more like that.
