Trouble Starts with What's That!
This section contains items from my family. Most have little monetary value, but have great personal interest.
While perusing a pile of photos at a local antique store, my wife came upon a vintage picture of a woman wearing a flower upside down. It was striking due to the large size of the flower backed by an equally large fern leaf. There are few things more exciting than finding something you can’t explain. Why would someone wear a large flower upside down and look so happy doing it? As it turns out,…
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Having a pendulum kitchen clock puts you into an exclusive club. It’s like having your name in a phone book or having a Facebook account. There are literally tens of thousands of these out there, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun to clean and get into top notch working condition. They are particularly interesting since they not only chime the hour and half hour, but actually have an independent alarm with a separate winding mechanism….
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While pursuing a pile of old pictures, I happened upon a coat of arms with the family patriarch’s name written in flamboyant script: The Right Honourable William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, Viscount Lewisham and Baron Dartmouth of Dartmouth. This is EXACTLY what my wife hates me dragging home. I was just about to walk away when it hit me the print had a heavy impression around the edges. That only occurs when an impression is…
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I am not sure if this piece is folk art or just a cry for help, but I found this spark plug embedded in a rock amalgamation in a San Diego tidal pool. In March of 2016, my wife and I took a trip to San Diego. One of the beaches we visited had an amazing sandstone labyrinth of tidal pools. Glistening in one of the pools was a tiny gold spec. Of course my…
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As a native Texan, I greatly enjoy old style cowboy music. So when I purchased a badly beaten Decca record by Denver Darling and His Texas Cowhands I was fully expecting standard country songs. Instead of country music, the album is a World War II motivation record sung in the old cowboy style. Since the album talks about fighting the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, Italy), that should put it between 1939 and 1945. Listing of Denver…
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With the digital revolution and the Internet colliding, the legal use and distribution of music is a particularly hot issue. I had not considered how long some of the more nuanced aspects of music distribution had been going on until I picked up a curious looking 78 RPM, Victor Record from 1907. The record was particularly odd in that it was imprinted on only one side and the back was dedicated to a rather lengthy…
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British Navel Assessment Based on American Civil War Battle (Merrimac vs Monitor at Norfolk), 1862 As a child I clearly remember my history book briefly outlining the famous battle between two iron-clad steamers during the Civil War. So when I saw this picture of the Confederate iron-plated steamer Merrimac (aka Virginia, Union) ramming the Union Sloop Cumberland I had to have it. After liberating the one page publication, The Illustrated London News, from its frame,…
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U.S.S. ZEPPELIN Postcard, 1919 (SS Zeppelin, RMS Ormuz, SS Dresden) While flipping through some old postcards in Llano Texas, I ran into a fairly mundane picture of what appeared to be a military transport, the U.S.S. Zeppelin. Pictures of military sailing ships are literally a dime a dozen and I started to pass it by when I noticed the post mark date, June 3, 1919. Knowing that Germany formally surrendered in 1918, this set off…
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The following letter was written by Jack Hill to his mother Bertha “Bert” Hill (my great grandmother) during his tour with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Thanks to the letter and firsthand accounts by others, we really get a sense of the hardships of the Great Depression and life at the work camps. What follows is a transcript and scanned images of the letter along with information I was able to piece together. I was…
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It is interesting what items get passed down from generation to generation. One would think that it would be the things of greatest financial value. I have come to realize that most often a person holds onto things of the greatest personal significance which is in no way related to monetary value. Case in point, this handmade rolling ping was one of the few possessions passed down by my grandmother Edna May Hill Abbott to…
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