I wasn’t paying too much attention to Eric the auctioneer as he peered at a ring in his hand. He was selling jewelry, and I had already looked casually at the carousel of jewelry on the table and…
Month: November 2015
At auction, I’m always finding items that touch me or cause me to stop. Sometimes, I will buy them; other times, I just snap a photograph to view later. Today, on this day after Thanksgiving, I’d…
A hot-dog cart to start your own street business
Posted in Businesses, and food
Now that’s something I don’t see very often, I thought as I approached the hot-dog cart among the vintage and antique furniture at the auction house. It looked as if it were fresh from the factory, without a…
“I think it’s cool,” I heard a woman say excitedly behind me. I turned and saw two women who could easily have been searching for furniture to fill a new apartment. They were looking at a…
Guess the current equivalents of these items from the past
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Kitchen, Military, Music, and travel
When I first saw the Western Union telegram, Jerry Butler started singing in my head: “Oh, Western Union man, send a telegram to my baby Send a telegram, send a telegram, whoa Send a telegram…
The words “Inaugural Committee” were in a neat script on the oversized envelope, making it clear that the content inside was official. The envelope itself was the faded off-white color of aged paper, so I knew that…
I was pulling three bucks out of my wallet to leave a tip for the waitress when I saw the $1 bill. Someone had stamped a message in red on the front of it. I was…
Antique kitchen and household tools have a style to them. The tools I use today in my own kitchen are pretty simple and utilitarian, and no one would mistake their design for art. They were made…
Signed Robb Armstrong ‘JumpStart’ comic strip
Posted in Art, Black history, and Comic books
We all watched raptly and in awe as cartoonist Robb Armstrong drew the famous husband and wife duo and their children from his newspaper comic-strip “JumpStart.” This occurred about 12 years ago, when my organization…