For over a year I came up empty handed in a number of online auctions for the fancy little 660 calculator from Panasonic.

But one sits smartly on my desk, at last!

I’m thinking of taking it and a thin stack of books on an early Spring stroll and pretending I’m an Algebra-obsessed exchange student in Osaka, circa 1981.

Just seems like the right thing to do.

It’s perfectly normal to get excited at the sight of a flesh-toned Sharpie marker.

Don’t let anyone tell you it’s something to feel ashamed of.

I bought this magnifying glass on-line as a Christmas gift for I wasn’t sure who.

When it arrived in the mail, it wasn’t specifically perfect for anyone I knew. (Except, by default, myself) and so I kept it.

Gold and silver and other metallic-ized gifts.

1. Postalco Jotter Notebook.
I had really needed this as all year I had been scribbling phone numbers and directions on a stupid stocking stuffer from last year: a box of little loose (and easily lost) sheets of paper printed with a light orange graphic of man climbing a cliff or jumping over a river or something (I’ve blocked the beyond-dumbness from my memory) and the words “The will to succeed.” (Yesterday I easily mustered the will to successfully toss them in the trash!)

2. My dog Aesop looks like a fox, so thus this door-knocker looks like my dog.

3. My mother gave me the vintage spoon, along with a story: When we moved from England back to America when I was nine months old, the movers had accidentally packed up my baby spoon and my mom was in a panic about how she was going to feed me during our week long sea voyage back to the states. She said every restaurant in England had these little silver spoons in the standard brown sugar tins set on each table. So she guiltlessly stole one with which to feed me at sea. Flash forward 30 some years and she comes across the spoon somehow in my sister’s kitchen and steals the spoon (once again!) and gives it to me for Christmas.

4. Ultra-chunky pretend nails, perfect only for laying around looking pretty.

5. Another vintage English gift, though not stolen. A stamp sheet cover from the 1940s. Trying to figure out how/where to display it as it doesn’t really fit modern American stamp books.

6. A hunk of Brazilian pyrite now giving gritty glam to the top of a stack of books.

With all these shining, sparkling gifts, my digs are one big disco ball!

Last weekend I was lucky enough to dig through a big box of army issued artifacts belonging to a relative who had served as a Lieutenant during WWII. Little pieces of history to hold in my hands that hinted at both the epic and ordinary routines of an enlisted man.

1. Pre-Packaged Stationery Set for writing your mom, sweetheart, or (apparently) your secret seductress.

2. Front and back of a military matchbook.

3. Look what this book warns: This document must not fall into enemy hands!

4. Four pack of cigarettes.

5. Just some of the pins the Lt. had been awarded.

Included in the box was a letter the Lieutenant’s secretary had written to him a year after the war ended in which she described how hard it was to return to civilian life. How much she missed the camaraderie of those she served with, and the strong sense of purpose. She even lamented the changing styles of women’s fashion she was now forced to select from, instead of her government-issued uniforms.

Again and again in the letter she said how hard it was to “get back into the swing of things.”

I hope she eventually did. I hope she went on to have a good, full life.

Early 1900s German book covers.

I had been watching this on e-bay but, in the end, decided not to bid.

From the auction listing:
“This wonderful designed and engineered Panasonic RL-T500 Translator/Data Center uses plug-in modules to translate between different languages. Today you might smile about the specifications but in 1979 it was a revolutionary piece of technolgy based on AMI’s ROM technology.”

Went down at 25 dolla.

Deployed into real life, removed from the happy blue background of the photo, the device might not have come of quite as cool. I think I made the right choice letting it go.

I’ve been storing adolescent junk in this military foot-locker with my family name printed on it ever since high school. It’s been buried in various basements, unceremoniously, but I’m proudly polishing it up and placing it somewhere sunnier from now on.

Being that neither my father nor any of his male relatives that I know of ever served in the military, I can’t explain the locker’s existence. My Grandpa Rees did serve as a (top secret) lawyer for the U.S. Government in the 1940s (shhh!) … so maybe that has something to do with it.

At any rate, heroically handsome as the trunk may appear on the outside, what it’s been housing deep inside is undeniably dorky: A Janet Jackson tour book, a jellyfish motif Swatch watch, and a shoe box’s worth of notes my b/f/f had written me in 10th grade.

Presented for your snooping pleasure is a 17-year-old message she’d written me covering such diverse topics as my pre-adult chest hair and which Algebra teacher we should register for. (BTW – I went by my middle name of Scott until I was almost 21.)

‘Round where I live, there’s a trio of surplus stores called Ax-Man Surplus that offers bin after bin of obsolete odds ‘n ends. You might not need 250 doll legs, or 75 calculators shaped liked Kentucky, or half a dozen mousepads with Mr T.’s face on them, but it’s life-affirming to know there’s someone out there who will nab up that crap, and gladly.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure after all, and nestled next to the tacky glow-in-the-dark travel thermoses, there’s also an awesome assortment of cleanly-designed and perfectly-packaged products from years gone by that, with some patience and a finely-tuned eye, transform Ax-Man into a Minnesotan version of the style-savvy Salvor Kiosk.

Last Saturday at Ax-Man, with a stupid grin on my face, I swiped up:

- 2 U.S. military pins = 1.45 
- evaporating dish = 2.50
- 1980s police training shorts = .95 
- metal clasp wristlet = .45
- German golden bullet = 4.95 
- 2 French military arm bands = 1.50 (watch out, Chris Martin)

Never has spending sixteen bucks been such a blast.