WUNDERKAMMER VII
The quality of items I’m
finding in cleaning and sorting is seriously deteriorating – I don’t think I
should continue calling them treasures. However, some of them still have an interest
level (at least to me).
I hope you feel the same
way.
I seldom travel without
learning something.
For the recent
trip, I scheduled 6 separate flights but due to the weather and other factors, I
ended up taking 8 flights. I spent many hours in various airports and spent
lots of time observing other travelers.
It suddenly occurred to
me that I never had a problem retrieving my luggage. At baggage claim, no one ever grabbed my bag tag
to see if it was theirs, and I never saw one that looked “almost” like mine. I thought I bought these Samsonite suitcases
“recently”, but these days they seem to be unique.
Almost everyone seems to
have black fabric bags.
Upon return, I noticed a bag in
my closet full of really old photos. Now THAT one is old.
Help me, dear readers – do you
have luggage like what’s in either of these pictures?
I took both wood shop and metal
shop in high school.
The only thing I
now have in my possession from metal shop is this punch I made on a metal lathe
from an automobile valve stem. I know we did other projects, but maybe I gave
those things away or lost them over the years.
You can get more insight
into the wood and metal shop experience by reading
Ponogram #20, The Normal American Schoolboy.
In about 1964 I wanted
something to keep my fingers occupied, so I purchased a do-it-yourself Rya rug
kit.
I spent many hours sewing and
knotting a 30” x 54” rug and got a great deal of satisfaction from completing
it.
You can see a good 10 minute
video about Rya rugs here.
My parents were recently retired in Michigan and
they came out to California for a few weeks to get away from the winter cold. They stayed with me and that first year, when
they left, I rolled up the rug and sent it with them.
The folks spread the rug in
front of their living room couch and it was there for years until they moved to
a nursing home and put their house up for sale. I rolled it up and sent it back to CA where it
was used constantly until Clae and I separated.
It came with me when we divided
up household goods and is currently covering my collection of logo golf balls.
The rug is 50 years old but still looks pretty good, even though I have been
unable to clean it the way the Rya lady does in the video.
Does anyone remember this
period?
I have around 2000 slides
covering the 60s and the 70s, the pictured Airequipt 450 E F projector, and a
projector screen to view that era of my life. Most of the slides are in rectangular metal
holders, the holders are in metal trays as you can see in front of the
projector, the trays are in cardboard boxes, and the boxes are protected by
9-box plastic containers, safe for the ages.
Some are in other
containers inside the 3M box, while still others are loose. An item on my “to do” list is to scan all of them
so as to have them digitally for sharing and perhaps longer term storage.
These two piles have something
in common.
I need to dispose of
both of them.
While in the Army in
1959, I took some extension courses (don’t ask me why). The Army kept sending me stuff after I was
discharged and for some reason I kept it.
Now I hate to just throw
it all away. The US Army Artillery Museum at Ft. Sill, OK has
agreed to accept this pile and it is on its way to them.
The other pile is about 5” of
forms and papers generated during my divorce proceedings.
Probably 80% of the pile is
disposable – maybe even more – all I really need to keep is the final decree,
right?
The problem is, every time I
start looking at them I get a cramp in my stomach and I end up putting them away
until “later”. Maybe the Artillery Museum will take them as
well.
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Thanksgiving night in 2004 I was very sick.
I called 911, put on some clothes, and waited. The
team showed up shortly, took me to the hospital, and next day I had a colon
cancer removed. You can read all about it
here. The clothes I grabbed were the pictured pair of berms and green striped shirt. The cancer |
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removal was just in time and I viewed the clothing
as “lucky”. I continued to wear that uniform for doctor
appointments, chemotherapy, and further surgeries. At some
point the berms gave out and were retired. Later the shirt
ripped and tattered and was relegated to housework days. Why
do I still have them? They are lucky and hard to release.
I also went to the hospital wearing the pictured
Jockey shorts. One day toward the end of chemotherapy, I
announced that we would have to discontinue the regimen.
Everyone wanted to know why. I explained that my lucky
underwear developed a hole and I simply couldn’t go on without them.
They talked me into continuing with an alternate pair and I finally
agreed. At the end of the regimen, I brought the “holy”
shorts in and the oncologist and several of the nurses signed them.
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Remember the Okidata printer? The
listing at the left is about ½” thick, on continuous form that breaks down to 8
½” x 11”, printed in 1986 on an Okidata printer. It is an
artificial intelligence program I wrote to help the Security Supervisor of a
company to interpret and implement the rules of the Industrial Security Manual.
At the time we did a demonstration for a number of local Security
Supervisors in the Los Angeles area to get a feeling for the value of such a
program. |
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We also contacted various people in the Federal
government and did a demo for them, but it didn’t seem to catch on.
I used it myself since that was one of my responsibilities.
The picture on the right shows the listing of a
Fortran program dated 1971-04-21. That was when I was
preparing to leave Bangkok, so it may be the Fortran compiler I worked on there.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is the sturdy, heavy binder
that protects the listing.
Again I ask, why do I save such things?
Again I hunch my shoulders and reply, I don’t know.
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AFTERWORD
So I scraped together another group of treasures
from my wonder condo. I’m not sure how long this can go on,
but there is still another footlocker to open and there are always mystery boxes
and uncleaned corners to be explored. I plan to intersperse
other topics though, so if you’re tired of reading about my household junk, have
patience.
I get a trickle of pictures from you folks and
always enjoy them. You can’t send too many from my point of
view so don’t hold back. I also enjoy your emails with
comments, questions and discussions. These responses are the
fuel that keeps Pono going!