Things I wanted for Christmas but never received, part I

A POGO STICK.

Ever since I was a kid (who was obsessed with Commander Keen, a reference which might go over the heads of some readers) I have wanted a pogo stick. I was always shot down. With hindsight, this was probably a good idea on the behalf of my parents – first of all, I would have killed myself. Secondly, where do you find pogo sticks nowadays?! I guess some of them have ended up here, so we’re your best bet.

(And if you want to purchase the above pictured pogo sticks, you can click here.)

It’s too bad, though – I could have ended up as cool as this guy (ahem):

The many faces of Santa Claus

(Just a note: if you love Christmas, and the thought of its traditions being trampled on raises the bile to your throat, you might want to skip this post – this is just a goofy parody and is definitely not to be taken seriously.)

It’s nearing Christmas time. For most retailers, this means snowy Christmas displays complete with trees, garlands, wreaths, stockings, lights, ornaments, fake snow, candy canes.. and don’t get me wrong, we’ve got all of that as well. But what most retailers DON’T have is a selection of bizarre and ridiculous Santa Clauses from around the world.

One could easily track Santa’s development from birth to death here. Allow me to demonstrate:

Here, Santa Claus springs forth from his leather chrysalis. Impetuous and bearded, he emerges with no hesitation or reluctance regarding the task which has befallen him: bring Christmas cheer and gifts to good boys and girls, or DIE TRYING.

Despite the mocking jibes and hoo-hahs from his contemporaries, Santa is cool and collected in his early years, never one to let the pressure get to him.

In fact, he even has time to bust out a sweet lute solo for those so inclined. Santa briefly considers maybe taking a year off from Xmas School to, y’know, travel Europe with his lute on his back, just go where the road takes him, and really FIND himself, y’know? .. but reconsiders and recommits himself to his task.

Finally, Santa has come of age – stalwart, determined, and focused.

But the road gets to poor Santa, and he regains the weight he had lost at the peak of his adolescence, spurred on by his wife’s fattening cooking. His face sinks, his demeanor changes, and – strangely – him and his wife both are stricken with bouts of rosacea. Here, we see the two in the midst of one of the many domestic disputes which could come to encapsulate their relationship.

Finally, Santa gives up. Stricken with diabetes, osteoporosis and a bad case of lumber lung, Santa spends his time alone wandering his ice cave on the top of Mount Doom, ringing his dinner bell incessantly, mourning the premature loss of his reindeer, and dispensing terrible gifts to whomever will bear his twisted stories.

Merry Christmas!

Yours ’til Hitler wins

Every once in a while, I find something in the Antique Mall which absolutely floors me. This letter is one such item. Read for yourself:

H.M.S. Pincher
27/6/44

Dear Lewis,

Many thanks for your letter, I’m sorry to be so long in replying but at the moment we are doing our stuff pretty hard over the other side & I’ve only once been ashore since D-day. As you know the Minesweepers are the first ships in and out of the thousands of ships engaged, this ship was actually the sixth off the beaches. I have a spare photograph of her I thought you might like.

I was talking to Jean on the phone today & said I had a letter from you – she’s very well and in good health, although I haven’t seen her since we got engaged in January. However I hope to get a little leave shortly and trot up to Edinburgh again and it can’t come too soon!! What is it you Scotch have that makes the English come up to Scotland so often?

Have met quite a number of your naval chaps these last few weeks – we were alongside a Canadian destroyer about a week ago and the officers came over in our mess for a drink.

Can quite understand what you mean by the noise going off when you least expect it – that’s all we’ve had recently. We were shelled by Jerry coastal batteries the day before yesterday, they got a straddle at extreme range the first salvo. Still we were only shaken up a bit & no one was hurt, they hooked at us for about twenty minutes til we laid a smoke screen.

I still can’t get over that first day at the beaches when we moved about as though we owned the place – it’s a bit tougher over there now, but not as bad as I expected it to be (touch wood).

Glad to see you managed to get some leave & I hope you enjoyed yourself & managed to find some English beer. It’s been a job to find that over here these last few weeks – as soon as it arrived from the brewers it’s mopped up; not in the Royal British either. Do you remember that session we had in there?

Hope all your folks in Canada are well & that the farm is OK. Jean said that her cousin Billy had been up for a weekend. I haven’t met him yet but hope to before long.

Well I have to pipe down now, I want to catch up on some sleep – I haven’t had a proper night’s rest for about a week and I’m due on watch at midnight. Look after yourself.

Yours ’til Hitler wins,
Cliff

Unbelievable. This, right here, is the reason why I love history.

Idiot boxes (of the past)

Televisions have become incredibly amusing. And I’m not referring to the shows, but to the actual devices themselves. Let’s face it – we have an almost fetishistic connection with our televisions. We speak openly of “LCD 1080p HD” — in any other context, complete gibberish — with no trace of irony or jest whatsoever. They’re upheld as status symbols — the more of your wall it devours, the better off you must be. (Or maybe not). And recently, we’ve entered this brave, frightening new world of THREE DIMENSIONAL television.. which is just a repackaging of the red/blue-glasses technology you used to get in comic books and cereal boxes. But hey, the more dimensions you have, the better off you’ll be, right? It’s all slightly ridiculous.

Now, with this in mind, it’s interesting to see some of the vintage televisions we’ve got in store. And although the technology has advanced dramatically, maybe not a lot has changed in terms of their role as status symbols in the past 60 years.

This one certainly has that ’50′s vibe. But it’s interesting in that it seems to be designed for portability – just look at the handle on the top in that first picture. The progression of the technology is fascinating – first, it was fashionable to try to condense televisions as much as possible, to make them accessible and portable in whichever setting you’d like. We’ve since completely reversed that – now, if your rumpus room doesn’t have a flatscreen TV the size of a pool table mounted on your wall to blast out “Toddlers and Tiaras” in perfect movie-like quality, you’re missing out, pal!

This one seems to have anticipated the idea of a family entertainment centre, complete with record player and AM radio. It is in working order, though you can see by the photo above how yellowed and burnt-in the screen is from constant use. All those reruns of Amos ‘n’ Andy must have done a number on it.

This one is the really cool one – the mighty Philco Predicta. Many people view it as the archetypal ’50′s television, though they were notoriously prone to fail and very slow to sell (they were considered “too radical” at the time). This would certainly be a status symbol in the same way as a modern 82″ inch flatscreen would be nowadays – it’s gaudy, it’s flashy, and probably unnecessary. But as a relic of the ’50′s, very cool – especially considering that this model would drive Philco into bankruptcy in 1960. Looking at this now, I have to wonder if 3D televisions will end up in future antique malls as gaudy, flashy, unnecessary items. What do you think?

We’re not United Cycle, but

.. we do have an excellent assortment of vintage sports equipment.

Unlike the modern equipment that you buy at United Cycle nowadays, this equipment is heavy – and built to last. Those pads could comfortably stop a bullet, much less a hockey puck. And if you’re not a fan of composite hockey sticks, we have a lot of the (now old-fashioned) Sherwood sticks – certainly a lot more durable than the new composite ones. Not to mention baseball bats, baseball gloves, goalie sticks, catchers’ masks, footballs.. and that’s before you get into more obscure sports such as discuses (disci?), shotputs, bullwhips for horse racing, old boxing gloves, rapiers (for fencing), snowshoes, skis, and much more. They might not be the best for modern competitions, but they’re certainly built to last, and gorgeous to look at and play with.

Primitive gaming

Check out our new, improvised professionally showcased Nintendo display:

We’re going to be showcasing a different game — and possibly a different console as well — every week for customers to come in and try. Unlike a lot of the old PC games, which require a lot of different (and often obsolete) components and parts to get working, consoles such as the NES are great because they’re so simple to start up and play. And what better game to first showcase our console display than the game that actually skyrocketed consoles to mainstream popularity?

The NES certainly isn’t the only console we have in store – we’ve got the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Saturn, Genesis, Sega Master System,G amecube, Colecovision, and my personal favourite, the mighty Intellivision.

 

I’ll tell you right now - you’ll NEVER get that kind of excitement from an Xbox or Playstation.

Guns guns guns guns guns

I’ve noticed that the last few things I’ve written about have had a sustainable theme – reusing old bottles, armadillos being used for purses, etc. In order to avoid typecasting myself, here are some guns.

First of all, a disclaimer. The firearms that we sell here at the Antique Mall are classified as antiques – that is, you do not require a firearms license in order to purchase them. For a firearm to be classified as antique, they must have been manufactured before 1898, and they must not have been designed to fire rim-fire or centre-fire ammunition (essentially, they can’t be able to fire readily obtainable modern ammunition). Our firearms all fall under this classification. However, just because one does not require a license to purchase and own these guns does not mean that one should treat these guns with any less care than you would a modern one. They are not toys. They still need to be displayed according to regulations. And – if for whatever reason you decide to try to fire live ammunition with these guns – it is likely that the gun would simply explode due to its age. It could cause you serious harm. Simply put, they are NOT safe to operate; the age of these guns does not make them any less dangerous. For more information, please see the RCMP guide on antique firearms.

Writing about these guns is a bit strange for me simply because I had assumed I wouldn’t want anything to do with them. However, if you travel back in time to when I was eight, all I wanted was to be James Bond or Dirty Harry or Indiana Jones or something. Just like any middle-class kid, I suppose. Then — if you were to follow my path — you grow up a little and discover that guns might not actually be the most bad-ass thing on the planet.

I’ve heard an argument before that if we were properly educated about guns, if we treated them as tools rather than weapons (as they used to be in the “good ol’ days”) the amount of gun-related crime in our society would drastically decrease. And I can certainly understand that argument to an extent — that of guns-as-tools — when examining these old Colts (and the one Remington). They’re in great shape, but you can tell that these weren’t simply decorative pieces. The handles on them are slightly scratched; there’s a bit of wear around the serial numbers; they certainly haven’t been sitting on a shelf for the past 150 years. In fact, the Remington (the last photo pictured below) was said to have been used in the Klondike Gold Rush – but as a tool or a weapon, who is to say?

I’m still torn as to how I feel about them. I think I’ll stick to our Sniper game in the lobby.

Bottles of the world

These glass bottles — beer, pop, ginger ale, orange soda, root beer, you name it — are scattered throughout the Antique Mall. I love looking at them because each one has an individual quality to it, an individual character which you can’t get from plastic.

I like them for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s amazing to me how someone must have decided decades ago that these objects held artistic value, and decided to hold on to them. Can anyone say that about a plastic bottle? It’s doubtful. It’s certainly hard to imagine someone collecting plastic bottles in the same way as this thirty years down the line. The variety of colour, the different shapes, the intricate decals.. this is the sort of thing you could actually display on a windowsill, or maybe as a vase.

Plastic bottles are obviously targeted for recycling – that is, to be melted down for conversion into other raw materials. These bottles are meant to be reused. Unlike plastic bottles, these maintain their essence as beautiful, individual objects (i.e. not something spewed en masse out of a chemical plant) long after their the end of their “original” use. And isn’t that the whole point of recycling? To reappropriate and reappreciate items which have outlasted their original purpose? With these bottles, you can do exactly that while acknowledging part of our cultural history.

A brief history of boot sales

Tomorrow (Sunday, August 14th) we are having a boot sale out in our parking lot. The term “boot sale” originates from Britain, where items would be sold out of the boots/trunks of the vendors’ vehicles at an impromptu market. It begins at 10 and ends at 4.

Here are some gentlemen enjoying an early Edmontonian boot sale (cars not pictured):

 

(Any similarities between this photo and our actual boot sale are strictly coincidental.)

The London charivari

Here’s something you don’t see every day – several copies of the magazine which actually pioneered the use of the word “cartoon”, Punch.

Again, as with a lot of the stuff I write about, a full history of Punch would be far too much to cover in a simple blog post like this one. Needless to say, however, Punch magazine (like the Punch & Judy shows it was named after) has had a massive effect not only on British culture but on Western culture as a whole. It was founded on July 17 1841 – a year before the inaugural edition of the Illustrated London News, another weekly illustrated magazine which - along with Punch – would revolutionise Western media by integrating print and illustrative journalism. While the ILN focused primarily on reporting the news in a straightforward manner, Punch took a much more satirical and humourous perspective towards world affairs, as the 1895 The History of ‘Punch’ describes:

“So Punch—who for many years past has set up as the incarnation of all that is best in wit and virtue—is a scholar and a gentleman. He is, moreover, on his own showing, a perfect combination of humour, wisdom, and honour; and yet, in spite of it all, not a bit of a prig. It is true that when he donned the dress-coat, and “Punch” and “Toby” put on airs as “Mr. Punch” and “Toby, M.P.,” he became milder at the expense of some of his political influence. Yet what he lost in power he gained in respectability, as well as in the affection of his countrymen. He appealed to a higher class, to the greater constituency of the whole nation; and remembering that a jest’s prosperity lies in the ear that hears it, he transferred some of his allegiance from pit to stalls, and was content with the well-bred smile where before he had been eager for noisy laughter and loud applause.” (4)

With that said, I’m not certain that a lot of the cartoons hold up nearly 100 years later:

Since the particular Punch magazines we have in the mall date to about the 1920′s, there are some pessimistic and cynical editorial comments (“All the cinemas in Warsaw have been closed because people are unwilling to pay the heavy tax. Locally it is regarded as monstrous to have to pay through the nose for an evening at the movies after a busy day’s revolution”) as well as some gorgeous Art Deco illustrations:

And, also, an example of popular ’20′s medicine:

These magazines are in pristine condition considering their age. If you’re looking for a genuine example of the types of things we now associate with the Roaring Twenties, look no further.