The tiny moccasins were both cute and crude, but I was drawn to them by the bright yellow tag hanging off them. The moccasins had been mailed unwrapped to a woman in Delaware, and I found…
Month: February 2017
The mottled and dirty metal box was shut when I approached it at the auction house, but I noticed the words “Fragile” and “Eggs” on the soiled lid. The top also held an address label and two…
Survival kits no remedy for headaches caused by ’64 Mississippi activists
Posted in Black history, civil rights movement, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Politics
At first, all I could see inside the box were packets with a black outline of a city’s skyline. So I was obviously curious about what was in them. I pulled one of the packets…
At some point, I’m sure, the little girl’s clothes had been neatly folded and lovingly placed in the suitcase. But by the time I came upon them at auction, too many hands had unfolded and…
The room was packed as tight as a group of defensive linemen laid out on top of a quarterback. It had taken the auction-house staff days to set up the seemingly endless tables of still-in-their-box…
Snuff, a slap and life inside 1800s rich family’s home
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
The newspaper clipping had turned yellow with age, but I was drawn to it by both its appearance and the headline on the article: “50-Cent Turkeys Graced Tables of Rich in 1815, Old Diary Shows”…
It was beginning to feel like an invasion – the non-threatening kind, though. First, there were the cute pedal cars, a rainbow-colored mass of little engine-less vehicles that crowded rows of tables two months ago at…