WWII Junk from my Father's Father
Today, my parents came to town to help me celebrate the last day of my week-long birthday extravaganza by taking me out to some of my favorite kinds of places: the flea market in Waterbury, a church tag sale, and an army surplus store. I didn’t get anything, except for a hummus wrap, but my father surprised me with an amazing box of my grandfather’s WWII junk. He was an airplane mechanic, so his job was to keep our boys in the sky.
The most interesting thing is his mess kit. He scratched into the metal the names of all the countries he was in: Okinawa, Guam, Japan, Africa, France, China, Italy, and India.
An altimeter from a Japanese plane.
The Pilot’s Flight Operating Instructions has some great illustrations and photographs I’ll have to steaaaa… appropriate some day.
The nameless, faceless head is modeling a lovely pair of headphones and a throat microphone.
There are also postcards, matchbooks, photographs, random tools, and newspaper clippings I haven’t completely gone through yet.
All these recent junk acquisitions make me think of one thing: more shelves. Magpie… Pinky… quick, jump in the jalopy… to the hardware store! Oh right, they’re closed.
My father also got me a first aid kit that was blessed and hand packed by Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. I really needed one of these because I tend to get injured often. Plus, it came with cool biohazard stickers that I could put on the sandwich bag that contains my thumb if I cut it off with my jigsaw.
And my mom made me my annual birthday pie (cake is so bourgeois), which I should start working on now. The photo may look bad, but I assure you the pie is not
I usually don’t look forward to my birthday or do anything for it, but this whole week has been great: I met up with someone almost every other day to go to junk, antique, and used clothing shops; ate a lot of food; didn’t accomplish much, but I did build a few things; spent very little time in front of the computer; watched a lot of movies; slept a lot; and forgot what an alarm clock sounds like. Alas, all things must end and I have to go back to the real world of waking up at a specified time, interacting with other humans, and work. I haven’t thought about work all week, which is good because it’s going to be busy — crap, I just thought about it.
Filed Under: Birthdays + Junk Finds + Presents + WWII
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Holy Squeezebox!
This afternoon, Molly stopped by to give me one of the coolest birthday presents I’ve ever received and something I’ve always wanted: an accordion! Wow, thank you very much Molly. I promise to give it a good home and play it often.
What’s even cooler is it was made in a country that no longer exists since a little wall came down: German Democratic Republic, which is or was more commonly known as East Germany.
Magpie isn’t too thrilled about the accordion. She’s still hiding under my bed from when I played it a few hours ago. She’ll get over it.
A Cherry of a Package
This morning, I finally made it to the post office to pick up a package from Miss Cherry. Inside the box, excessively wrapped in pink and black duct tape, were a number of lovely birthday surprises. Thank you Miss Cherry.
