Day 27: Butterflies and my Parents

My father collected butterflies (and moths), and my mother collected or at least bought butterfly objects. Or decorated the house with the same. There are more butterfly things than ever these days, so I have carried on the tradition. However, it was my mom who put up this wallpaper back in the 70s, as well as the metal butterflies.

I think this wallpaper, in her bathroom, was from the late 80s. But that tulip lamp was always there.



I had seen this book on the living room bookcase for years, with its scotch-taped slip cover, but when I took it off the shelf this card fell out.

The book was published in 1957, the same year my parents got married.

 Love those fonts!!! Why don't they make cards like this anymore? The "Fly to me" bit seems very appropriate.

Here's the inside. My mom later signed all her cards and gifts to my dad as "Madame X", but I never knew she had started this early.

Day 26: Odd Things Around the House Part Two

I think my sister took this salt and pepper set, which we found when going through boxes and cupboards, and might have belonged to my grandmother. I don't remember ever using it, but I love it. The dog's tongue is a spoon.

We found these giant oil drums in the storage area under the house. They were filled with moths, of the collected kind, hundreds or thousands of them in paper envelopes. I will write more about the details of moth collecting in a further post. I put the empty drums by the front door, and I liked the way they looked there, but they disappeared over the holidays. I think my brother might have taken them, but I haven't remembered to ask.

This was one of my father's favorite posters. I think he and my mother bought it on a trip to Denmark. It was last hanging on the side of a filing cabinet near the foot of his bed; it would have been the first thing he saw every morning and one of the last things he saw on his last day. It was a bit battered as it had never been framed, just taped up, but not as badly as this; my brother ripped it down and I rescued it from the recycle bin to take a photo.

I was not the only person to rescue things out of the recycle bin. This purple folder once contained a purple floral stationery set. It was sent to me as a gift from my East German pen pal in the late 70s. I used some of the writing paper and envelopes, though it was pretty cheesy. The remaining paper had yellowed so I threw the whole lot in the recycle bin when I was visiting one year. My father fished out the folder and used it for well more than a decade. He might have used the paper as well; he was known for writing most of his correspondence on hotel stationery. Anyway, I found this among his papers and snapped a photo before I returned it, once again, to the recycle bin.

Some papers relating to my grandparents were found in this Knott's Berry Farm box.

Day 25: The Puzzles of my Father Part One

My dad loved jigsaw puzzles. He always did, but once he took early retirement from Hughes Aircraft at the beginning of the 90s, he could devote all his free time to his moth and butterfly collection, his newfound interest in television, and solving jigsaw puzzles. He had one going most of the time, either on a card table in the den (my brother's old room) or on a huge board atop the bumper pool table (and yes, we have a bumper pool table; it has been covered up since the late 70s; hence no photo of it yet, but it's all in order, so any offers considered!)

He always completed the borders first and in later years would keep all the border pieces together in a baggie within the box. Sometimes he would appreciate my help but if I placed too many pieces he tended to get mildly annoyed. (Though sometimes it was addicting!)

He gave away most of the earlier puzzles but there were still a lot left, and this is only the first installment.

Although this boat scene has a lot of detail and not an overabundance of blue sky, it would not have been one of his favorite puzzles. He and I liked the same type the best, with lots of little pictures within the big picture. He must have been hard up for more interesting puzzles in May of 1999, February 2004 and March 2007.

Whoops! I made a big mistake. I was going to edit what I wrote about the previous photo, but decided just to amend my assumptions here. this puzzle was indeed a favorite, as it was also worked in February 2001, 9 April 2002, and 3 May 2009, and here we also are given the full dates in the other years: 24 February 2004, 19 March 2007. Most importantly, all pieces are here!

 

This was more his style; there are certainly a lot of little pictures within a collage of stamps! However, it only had two rounds, in February 2005 and October 2006. He preferred puzzles with at least 1000 pieces, you see.

Like this one (displayed on my mom's Eames chair.) I might have even given it to him for Christmas in 2003; I do remember working on it one time.

This must have been in January 2004 (completed on the 8th!), as I wasn't here on 14 April 2002, 10 October 2006 or 28 September 2008.

Not all the dates make it to the outside labels, but only the most recent date is really relevant when choosing a puzzle from the shelf.

Here's another 500 piecer. My dad liked doing the borders but if the content was too "samey" he might drop it in favor of a more interesting puzzle.

This puzzle was a gift from a fellow butterfly collector, probably at Christmas 2004.

And although he certainly would have appreciated the gift (you can see the Christmas gift tag), my father, being a Lepidopterist, was a bit annoyed by inauthentic butterfly specimens. His eyes would have been more frazzled than dazzled by the colors and patterns shown here. He also amended the puzzle size, as you can see here, from 20" x 16" to 20" x 25".  (That's quite a difference!) [Oops! I realised later that 20 x 25 was not referring to inches, but to how many pieces made up the height and width. Silly me!]

Day 24: Stuffed! Part One: Bear With Me

My sister and I had a large collection of stuffed animals. I found two huge boxes of them in the storeroom under the house. Some fared much better than others.

 This poor one-eyed bear only wanted to be loved, not forgotten for many decades!

Shall we disturb the sleeping bear?

Once awake and out of the box, this guy is filthy but happy-go-lucky...

 

 Many types of stuffed bear eye disease can be seen.

 

If I'd had him a few years later, I would have named him Bowie.

Oh look! His eyeball was merely turned around!

 

 This panda is a bit threadbare, but otherwise in pretty good shape.

 

He even can sit up on his own!

Pandas aren't really bears, and neither are koalas. This one's from Down Under so does not know which way is up.

And apart from some missing claws, this one's in pretty good shape!

Day 23: Boots, Notebooks and Witch Shoes Etc.

There is a storeroom under the house. It's not quite a crawlspace, but it has got a dirt floor and some vents open to the outside. My father built a shelf upon which I stored a bunch of boxes of old books, and it seems every time I came for an extended visit, my mother would pack things I left behind into a box and stick it in the storeroom. I have been going through all these boxes, some of which are time capsules from various years.

I have a good collection of blank notebooks, partly because ones I know that I have purchased seem to have gone missing. I found a couple dozen, in pristine condition, in this box, which my mother packed and labeled around ten years ago. But what in the world are witch shoes?

Oh! These were once my favorite boots, EVER!

 

Here I am wearing them, in 1992:

However, the downstairs of the house developed a quite bad damp problem in the 1990s. Since then I have had to use moisture collectors in the closet of my room, and one of these contraptions became so overly full of water that it spilled onto the floor of the closet, soaking these (very soft leather) boots. Tragedy!

 They curled up just like the Wicked Witch of the East's feet!

I could not bear to throw them away as I thought there must be a way to salvage them.

I tried to clean them with some kind of leather nourisher to no avail...

I guess now it's time to say farewell.













 In the meantime I opened another box which my mom had stuck in a different part of the storage room - a damp part - around the same time.

Those were three of my favorite pairs of footwear! The silver Mary Janes on the left and the black Chelsea boots on the right I barely got a chance to wear before they disappeared. (I got both pairs here in LA around the time that they halved the amount of luggage you were allowed to take abroad; hence I had left them here!)

However, the lace-up boots in the middle had a good long run. I bought them in the spring of 1985 at Hobbs in London and wore them constantly for more than twenty years. They were completely caked with mud in Glastonbury in 1987, though they scrubbed up well afterward. I did not attempt to save any of these shoes though; just took these photos and said goodbye.

Day 22: Odd things around the house Part One

Many things in the house have not changed since we moved in back in June 1972. But some odd things were already in place when we moved in.

When you walk in the front door, you are confronted with a work of art by the artist Daniel Gluck, who used to live across the street. At the moment this piece is decorated, ready for a tiki party; that's my fault. And it's also my fault that I just wrote that and now will not be showing you a photo, as I cannot locate the ones I am sure that I took. That will come in part two...

However, moving into the dining room area, you will encounter the space-age VOICECASTER Intercom and radio sharing system.

I cannot tell you how many hours I wasted when we first moved in, trying to get this thing to work. It never did, and it never will. I tried again, twice, last week, but all you can hear is loud static on the radio, nothing for the intercom.

Here is one outlet, in the upstairs bathroom, next to the toilet. As it is fewer than twenty feet away, it makes more sense to just shout, or knock on the door, anyway.

The other outlet is downstairs (the house was built on a hill, so you enter upstairs and the rest of the house is below), but just at the bottom of the stairs, so again, yelling at the top of the stairs was the best option. That's what my mom always did, anyway. (My room and the family room are downstairs.)

Downstairs, not far from the intercom, you'll find this clock on the wall. It has been there since 1972, and has never worked. Never. I guess this work was not guaranteed. I think it used to read half past six until my father taped both hands. Now it is eternally five o'clock, the cocktail hour, or the crack of dawn, your pick!

Let's venture outside, shall we? Right outside the sliding glass doors you will find this on the wall. It was there when we moved in and I have no idea what building it is directing. When was the last time you saw a Gulf service station, or the last time you called a gas station a service station even? I have seen some visitors staring at this, very puzzled. But rest assured, you are NOT here. I suppose we do have a fireside lounge (or two, actually) but sadly, no coffee shop or crow's nest.
 

 Much more to come in part two, but I will leave you with my contribution to quirkiness. Let us go back upstairs to the living room, where the sofa purchased in 1984 (Hey, it actually is in quite good condition for being more than thirty years old!) lost one of its legs way back in the last decade of the previous century. On a visit here I stuck Jane Austen in place, and Bob's been your uncle ever since. Her beat up anthology was exactly the right height. Thank you, Miss Austen!