Day 116: Open that Desk Drawer!

 (I'm back! Many apologies for the long long gap between posts. I have many more photos of the house to write about, but today I took some new photos as I was going through a couple of small boxes. They contained the contents of my parents' desk drawers from John Street. (And some items would have been in those drawers since the Gardena house!) Let's dive in, shall we?

Scissors! These three are so familiar to me. The first pair was my father's, in that desk drawer since before I was born I reckon, although I don't recall even seeing them since I was in elementary school. The middle pair were my mother's, from the early seventies. And the third pair were around almost as long, and were the ones my dad used till the end, to cut apart those tiny labels for his moths.

Every desk drawer needs a box of paper clips! This one has four, including that Tiger Brand. I wonder if "Millions Daily" are still sold!

More staples - we've got all kinds of staples, including a box of the type for my tiny (long gone) "Tot" stapler.

My mom was a gunslinger, a staple gunslinger that is. This was her piece, and the very one which I borrowed when I was aged ten, to fasten something to a tree in my back yard. When I pulled on a stapled string I nearly put my eye out! But I survived. And the gun survived. There are still plenty of staples in that $2.59 box!

While we're on the fascinating subject of fasteners, who remembers brads? We've got plenty!

No burrs! (What are burrs?!) Completely safe for school children! What a relief!

"Reinforcements! Reinforcements!
I could use a strong rear guard..."

(I don't think that this is what the Sparks song is about...)

And if you cannot remember what reinforcements were used for, see below. This box was a steal at 19 cents!

The object on the right is part of a notepad given our by the carpet company at which my mother worked before I was born. It's perforated; you write a note and rip it out! Wow! Can't stick it anywhere though.

Though not always!!! Sometimes you had to double up. And they would always stick to your fingers!

Still life: a pen knife showing an African scene, made in Korea, a square 5 cents from the Netherlands (now they just have boring Euro cents), an unknown plastic object, a modern colored paper clip, safety pins of various sizes, Habitat for Humanity hammer, two hat pins (ouch!), a button, a plain keyring and a dirty pushpin; what more could you want?

More miscellaneous objects: a sand-filled fridge magnet, a strap to who knows what, a made in Korea necklace and some hopscotch chalk, perhaps was mine.

One of my dad's many magnifying glasses. (A necessity for examining micro moths.) And a carved letter opener that stayed in the drawer; he normally used this one that had a real deer or antelope hoof on it. That creeped me out. I just used my fingers.

More Dad stuff. I'm surprised he never used these 10-cent stamps (must have been for post cards at some point.) The NWF decorative stamps from 1997 are probably newer, and the moth on the bottom is just a cut-out picture.

And what have we here?

Why, it's butterfly potpourri!

A fine selection of paperweights. Do people still use paperweights? Do they have paper to weigh down? I had a resin kit and made a couple of them in the seventies. Maybe they will pop up in another box.

JL were my mom's initials so someone must have given her this thing, which might be a letter opener. Then again, it doesn't have a point; does anyone know what it is? The pin on the left would be hers; she was a Sunday School teacher. The thing on the right is a button of some sort.

And the last thing was the most puzzling item. The little guy has wire wrapped around him. And he's really little - see below. The button is about the size of a dime!