Day 54: My Much Missed Muson

I have been going through cards and letters in the past week or so. If you have ever sent me a letter or given me a card, there's a good chance I still have it. Or at least I did until last week. I am keeping any cards with letters written in them, handmade or drawn ones, or sentimental ones, eg, those from people no longer with us, but I am enjoying looking though them all before I throw the majority into the recycle bin.

There are a lot of them:

That was just a small selection; I should have piled up the whole lot!

I will show some of the more interesting cards later. But this post is about the box that some of the cards had been stored in, for many years:

 You can play a tune or make the strangest sounds in the galaxy!

 The story behind this: at the end of summer 1979, Magazine played three nights at the Whisky, and I was hanging out with the band the second day when someone came to interview them. Whoever it was described the MUSON, which you could purchase for around $25 at Toys R Us, and everyone was intrigued. The journo came to the Whisky that night with one each for Dave, Barry and John. And the next week I ran down to Toys R Us. Mary Rat got one too, and I think Jill Jordan might have. I remember carrying mine around to shows at the Hong Kong and King's Palace. It ran on batteries, so you could play it anywhere!

It even had a drum machine! Technically it was more a sequencer than a synthesizer; you could not play much of a tune on only ten keys - which were not polyphonic (meaning you could not play more than one note at a time) and everything had to be in the key of C major (no black keys) - but the sequencer worked brilliantly and the sounds were ... well, out of this world!

 So why am I not showing you the real thing? Well, about a month after I got the Muson I went to England for several months and I took it with me, without the box to save space in my suitcase.
 

Thinking I could buy another one when I returned to the States, I gave my Muson to my friend Simon in London. We lost touch for many years but even though we found each other via Facebook a few years ago, I have not found out if he still has the Muson and if it still works. I somehow doubt it!

As you must have deduced, there was not a Muson to be found at Toys R Us or anywhere once 1980 rolled around. I have never seen one on eBay either, and I have been using eBay since the mid 90s when they had all those weird salamander URLs and no photos. I have only seen a couple mentions of it on web pages. But if anyone knows of one that exists, do please let me know!

Day 53: Excavated Christmas Lists

This one's a doozie, folks.

Discovered today in my father's bedroom where they have been residing since sometime in the 1970s. Neither one is mine; the first is my brother Kurt's, the author of the second one wishes to remain anonymous. I am sorry to say that no information is available as to what each person actually did receive that Christmas, although it seems for my brother that my (thrifty) father probably went for the $1.99 orange nerf football. (And I seem to remember one kicking around the house for a while, until Daisy the cock-a-poo tore it apart; she loved to destroy Nerf balls of all types.)

This list would have been written in 1976, but I'm not sure why he added in 1776; was he hoping for a Spirit of '76 time machine? The page numbers refer to that year's Sears catalogue. Unless you have one on hand, we'll never know what the three objects on page 422 were...

"Please NO POLKA DOTS!
One color or so per scarf only please.
Pale colors as opposed to bright ones."

(You can tell this is not MY list!)

"Please, be sensible and remember what color her room is."

Day 52: Stuff On and Around the Piano

I haven't taken a photo of the piano itself. I'm kind of sentimental about it; it was my mother's from before she got married in the late 50s. I took my first piano lessons on it (from Mrs. Callahan, starting at age 6) and I pounded those keys around three hours a day in the mid 70s, in a bid to become the new Keith Emerson. But when UCLA's School of Music rejected my nerve-wracked audition (Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition, which I knew backwards and forwards), I slammed the cover shut. The last few times I tried to play that piano it was so out of tune and I was so out of practice that I became depressed.

It obviously would be even more out of tune now and probably affected by the damp problem in the family room, but I haven't done anything about contacting a charity to take it away cause it's covered with objects that would look silly or forlorn on the floor. I have already shown you a few of them in "Some of My Own Stuff Part One", but here are some more:

Limited Edition Vanna White doll surrounded by some of my mom's bowling trophies. (I myself have never won a trophy for anything, though I have won a Halloween costume contest, many pub quizzes and once was crowned Miss Gazarri.)

A better view of Vanna...

When you learned a number of songs or advanced a grade, you would be awarded with a composer from Mrs. Callahan. Hey, that's like a trophy, isn't it? I had a lot more than these two but they are the only ones remaining on the piano. I used to pronounce their names "Chop in" and "Beat hoven" until I knew better.

Beethoven always looked so stern. I figured he must be pissed off, not being able to hear his own music.

Even a sexy Misfit cozying up to him does not change his expression...

Yes, it's Pizzazz of the original Misfits, along with the somewhat-boring-in-comparison-except-for-that-jacket video director, Video.

This is a small handbag I bought at the World's Largest Gift Store in Las Vegas in 2000. It's not very practical as a handbag, but I guess I can stick the composers in it when they go into storage.

 I prefer old-fashioned snowdomes/shakers/storms, with snow and images of foreign places but they are getting harder and harder to find. I don't buy many these days. My brother gave me this one for Christmas a few years ago.To its right you can see a German dwarf dude with his head out of water that my German pen pal gave me in the 70s.

I'll leave you with Batgirl. She moved off the piano to the bar, in order to make a call and play a few rounds of pachinko next to the lava lamp. She must have become a bit overly excited as her mask is askew.

Day 51: Mid Century Modern Doll Houses

Long gone are both my groovy and colorful Barbie modern town house (complete with a hanging swing chair) as well as the wooden doll house my father once made for me (along with the four-poster pink canopied bed that Barbie's too long legs stuck out the end of), but the following items were lurking in the back of my closet.

Many people might remember Mattel's Thingmaker. You poured Plastic Goop into metal molds and cooked them till they turned to firm rubber to make insects (Creepy Crawlies), Flower Power daisies (Fun Flowers) or horror characters (Creeple People). But not many people probably remember the Dollymaker. (Note: After I wrote that I checked eBay, and Mattel apparently revived the Dollymaker in the early 80s. It seems my kit (which I no longer have) and the house below are extremely rare. But so rare I doubt anyone wants them!)

I have not come across any rubber dollies (or rubber clothing!) I made, nor any bugs or flowers, but I found my Dollymaker doll house. Here's the path to the MCM front door:

And an aerial view:

Another view:

Strange there was a toilet when you couldn't see one on American TV!

 

I do like the sunken living room...

Next up, a Skediddle Kiddles Pop-up Town. Yes, a town with only one house. (At least they aren't claiming to be a city, JC...)

The Skediddle Kiddles all had different contraptions in which they travelled. Therefore they needed roads. And a helicopter landing pad! (But don't ask me where the latter is...)

 
Maybe it's on the roof, which flips open to reveal a sundeck.

 Let's take a look inside...

Quite a fabulous lamp atop that television console... Matches the roof!

 And oh, that floor!

Day 50: How to Be a Butterfly and Moth Collector Part One

First you need a butterfly net. Even for moths sometimes, to catch them on the wing. These are my father's final three nets, which I gave to a collector friend of his.

It is illegal to collect butterflies in National Parks, so when my father would see a ranger coming, he'd stuff the net up his shirt. Somehow he never was caught.

My parents' old clothes hamper (yes, they did replace items once in a while) resided in the garage, filled with moth collecting stuff: old sheets, black lights and extension cords. Moths are also attracted to regular white light bulbs and my dad had his favorite rural post office lights and old phone booths to check, and our porch light bulb was never yellow.

Moths are also attracted to certain scents; there was a brand of aftershave that mimicked the scent of female moths of certain species and that's the only brand my dad ever wore. (Never around my mother; only around moths!)

Moths would sit on the white sheet (thinking they had made it to the moon I suppose...) and my dad would scoop the ones he wanted into one of his "killing jars." Unfortunately I do not have one to show you as my brother threw them all out. But here are some instructions in case you ever want to make one: https://www.uky.edu/Ag/Entomology/ythfacts/4h/unit1/mkjar.htm  And contrary to the advice in these instructions, my dad's killing jars contained cyanide. He used to bury the jar of cyanide in the back yard of the Gardena house under the drain pipe. I used to like to show the poison skull and crossbones to my friends.

LATER: I have found a photo of my very young father at work moth collecting. I believe this was before collectors started using ultraviolet light; he is just attracting them with a lantern. But that sheet could well be one of the ones in the color photos below!

Also if you look closely, he has a killing jar in his hand...

After the moth or butterfly was dead (very quick and I'm sure it was a more pleasant death than being eaten alive by a lizard) you put it in a plastic box with some kind of softening agent and after that it was pinned with its wings spread and paper strips over the wings on a wooden mounting board. I can't show you these pieces of equipment either as they are also gone, but here is my father's trusty microscope:

In the early days my father did not mount his specimens. He kept them in glassine envelopes, or folded paper. These two drums were filled with thousands of these envelopes.

Several weeks after they were emptied and all those specimens given away, I found two more boxes full of these envelopes.

I spent a lot of time sifting through them. Where's Mint Canyon?

More to follow in part two!

Day 49: More Stuff of my Father's

My father never traveled without his briefcase. And he traveled a lot, especially after he took early retirement from Hughes.

His metal flip-down desk at which he sat using the foot of his bed (this was mainly before my brother and sister moved out, as after that he had both a den and a "bug room") was similarly covered in stickers and photos, but my brother ripped them down before I could take a photograph.

If you're a big or tall man who likes 1970s vintage geometric print nylon shirts, get in touch! I'm selling this shirt of my dad's on eBay. I don't think he wore it much as it's in pretty good condition.

This is my father's childhood teddy bear. He has been in the same spot, next to the Pachinko machine, for the last couple of decades, or longer. I used to put some Elvis shades (which I was given for my 1999 birthday at Gracelands Palace) on him, but somebody kept removing them, and then they disappeared altogether! He's still celebrating Mardi Gras, though. (That's me to the left of his shoulder.)

This framed photo of The Band, with a newspaper clipping in the corner, hung next to my dad's closet, and then in the Bug Room, for many years.

 My father drank his coffee black, and drank it all day. Hence he preferred plastic mugs, as the handles wouldn't get too hot. He used this one for a long long time.

 This one he took in the car. I got him a similarly shaped Starbucks travel mug, which he used daily for the last five years of his life, but he never once used the lid. Lids were for sissies.

I gave him this flexi-disc for his birthday in the late seventies. There were only a limited number of names available (on sale for ten cents!), but one was Ron. It's not the traditional birthday song; it's cornier. I will have to record a video of it; I know a few other Rons...