It was not an altogether altruistic decision. I had a few hundred books. My friend Nancy Olson has a store that sells books. But more importantly, she has a foundation that organizes an annual sale to benefit disadvantaged children who don't have books.
After five years in a storage unit, the books, collected over more than a half-century by me and my parents, needed to do some good, and this seemed a fit. It also seemed to the 58-year-old donor a grand idea that Quail Ridge Books volunteers would pick the books up and haul them away. And so, in about an hour on a recent Thursday evening, they did just that. You can buy these and other books if you wish on Oct. 1 in the parking lot near Quail Ridge in the Ridgewood Shopping Center. It's the Books for Kids drive.
But as these very nice people (I'll not use their names in deference to their privacy) hauled the boxes out, I glanced around the unit to see what else was there, as another worthy cause is to benefit from the various "stuff" (not necessarily junk) that resides therein. Then a very strange and to tell you the truth kind of scary thing happened.
I bumped my toe on a torn cardboard box on the floor which I very nearly had handed to my happy crew. But then I realized there were no books in it, and the box was marked, "Fragile, Jim, important." I suppose I'd done it myself or my late mother had, five or six years ago when the packing of the books took place. In any event, the contents had been forgotten.
I had no "Antiques Roadshow" visions here. Still don't. To my knowledge there are no certifiable antiques in my home, and the various knick-knacks I own are more the type of things that would be called "interesting" by an expert just before he said, "But of course they are not very valuable." That means: "This is junk. Now hop on the turnip truck."
When I jostled the box, out rolled a round, clear plastic paperweight. On the front, in the plastic, was an etching that said, "Delegate, Democratic National Convention 1960." Underneath that was a replica of one of the most popular souvenirs of the presidential campaign that year, a shiny and tiny replica of PT109, John F. Kennedy's World War II boat. His signature was in fake gold beneath the boat.
There were hundreds of these handed out, I'm sure, but this was special to my father, who covered the convention for the then-Knight Newspaper group and watched part of it from a seat in the convention hall that was only a couple away from Jacqueline Kennedy.
A cool thing that makes for a pretty good story.
Then there was the framed program of some kind on a heavy paper, pasted on the front of a dark blue background. The light was fading a little, so I put a flashlight on it. It was the schedule for the 1956 National Governors Conference in Atlantic City, N.J. Nice conversation piece.
Later a friend looked it over and pointed to the upper left corner. "What's that?" she asked.
"Oh, that ..." I said. "That's an autograph from ... oh, mercy." It said, "Best Wishes, Joe DiMaggio." I remembered the story, which was that my old man and some other newspaper guys covering the governors' meeting were in a restaurant, and they spotted the Yankee Clipper, Marilyn Monroe's ex-husband, sitting across the room. They handed him whatever they were carrying for an autograph.
I remembered then, for the first time in a long time, how much fun my father had when I once showed him a letter I'd gotten from some minor TV star. "That's good," he said. "Did I ever show you this?" He won.
Underneath the DiMaggio autograph was the best treasure of all. My father had sent off for copies of his World War II medals many years ago, mounted them himself in a frame, covered them in glass and hung them in the master bedroom for 30 or so years. He'd typed, on an old Underwood, the label pasted inside the frame: "15th Weather Squadron, 5th Air Force." The medals were mostly standard issue for those who served, like him, for extended periods of time overseas. In his case, overseas was in the Pacific Theater.
I'd forgotten about the paperweight, and the DiMaggio autograph, and been downhearted at the loss of the medals. And then, there they were in an instant, memories restored. Now they live at the bank, but I visit. Welcome back.
