The pictures on the front of the paper fans reminded me of postcards. One showed men in suits and boater hats eyeing sunbathers on a beach from a boardwalk at the Jersey shore. Another showed…
Category: travel
When I first say the group of hotel “Do Not Disturb” signs in a tray on the auction table, I was surprised and curious about why someone would bother to take them. But the more…
A lovely doll steamer trunk with a Victorian feel
Posted in Children, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Personal items, and travel
When I first saw the small trunk sitting atop a glass case, I thought “treasure chest.” It was black all over with stained wooden planks and tiny round nail heads both decorating and holding the…
Someone may have kept the two bright sunshine-yellow and forest-green road guides as a way to remember their travel adventure. They’d gone to the Delaware Motor Club office in Wilmington, DE, on June 25, 1947,…
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…
First look at copy of Negro Motorist Green Book
Posted in Books, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and travel
The book looked much smaller than I had imagined. I guess I was expecting something with more volume and heft, given its enormous importance in the lives of African American travelers during the 1930s-1960s. The…
I bought the cardboard box of books for “The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar.” There were a half-dozen or more old books in the box but I only wanted that one. I was afraid…
It was always a chore for me to try to figure out the mileage from here to there by consulting a travel atlas. I recall pulling out the map book, looking at the “Mileage and…
The card was advertising free moonshine tastings somewhere in Tennessee. It showed a bright red Mason jar of whole cherries that looked more like canned fruit than illegal whiskey. I’d never heard of or seen…
A Gideons Bible in my hotel nightstand
Posted in Books, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, history, Religion, and travel
I was searching the drawers for a notepad to write something when I pulled opened the drawer to the nightstand in the room at the Charlotte, NC, hotel. There, placed neatly and squarely next to the…