Nostalgia - Snails

"When Mr. Peter Knoppert began to make a hobby of snail-watching, he had no idea that his handful of specimens would become hundreds in no time. ... 'I never cared for nature before in my life,' Mr. Knoppert often remarked - he was a partner in a brokerage firm, a man who had devoted all his life to the science of finance - 'but snails have opened my eyes to the beauty of the animal world.'"
That's from the beginning of one of Patricia Highsmith's short stories about humans and snails, this one being "The Snail-Watcher", the other one "The Quest for Blank Claveringi" (both of which you can find here (although there are two versions for "The Quest")).

Highsmith loved snails and kept hundreds of them as pets. She took them along to parties sitting on lettuce in her handbag and she smuggled them into France in her bra because she didn't want to leave them behind in England.
I read both of her snail stories at a young age in an anthology, but "The Snail-Watcher" impressed me more, and the image my mind formed of the ending has its own little room in my head jumping out every time I see a snail.
If you know the stories, you can imagine why. Have I mentioned it being a horror anthology?

There are other snails in my childhood memories, like the freshwater snails in the ponds of the park near my home.

We used to walk around on the walls and look for snails (we always left them there in case you wonder). From what I remember, my guess is that they were great ramshorn and great pond snails. There were fewer of the ramshorns, and I was convinced that this made them the Queens of the Snails, so it was very exciting to see one of them.

Left: Great ramshorn snail
Right: Great pond snail
Picture by Se90 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Of course, we were also fascinated by land snails (not slugs, they creeped me out, especially after a big rain when the path up to the woods was covered with them, it looked like an invasion). The most common one you see here is the garden banded snail, but it was special to find escargots (which we call "Weinbergschnecken", literally "vineyard snails").
My friend and I once found two of them in the street and decided to put them in a safe spot in a garden, but the garden owner was outside and told us not to dare, so we left them on a wall (although they and other kinds of snails are no pests!). Afterwards, I worried a lot about their fate for quite some time, thinking we should have found a really safe spot. Sorry, little snails!
I would also like to apologize for being one of those annoying kids who sometimes poked your eyes to see you pull them in and for picking you up by your shell, we didn't know that it can hurt you.

Actually, I haven't seen any escargots in the wild in years, but snails kept inspiring me in my creative journey, in wire wrapping, needle felting, and bead embroidery.

And then there is Nelly of course.
Nelly came in two colors, blue and brown with spots, and a size of 10 cm. In the 60s, Steiff had a few designs that were only produced for a short time - 1961 to 1963 for Nelly - and were quite unusual for cuddle buddies.

Beside Nelly, there were for example bats and colorful spiders (and I could still cry over the story the lady from the toy store told us about not being able to sell them and throw them out instead of candy during the town's carnival parade, argh!).
When the ex and I got our first Steiff price guide, we immediately knew we wanted to have all of them, not for their rarity, but because we thought they were really cute (I still think that).

Nelly is made from cotton velvet with faux leather underneath and has a painted rubber shell and rubber tentacles/feelers whose ends were prone to break off as you can see on one of them.
Isn't this little pair adorable?

Did you notice something about them, though? With those shells they are no land snails and I never thought about that until today. I wonder why Steiff made that choice.

There you have it, my snail memories.
I spared you one when I inadvertently ste.... nah, let's forget about that.

Nostalgia - Memories of writing

A while ago, an American friend and I started talking about school memories. The starting point had been my mentioning that my handwriting had seriously deteriorated since I mostly wrote things by hand that only I needed to be able to read and that I wanted to go back to my fountain pen, mostly for letters, after I have been neglecting it lately.

From the fountain pen we got to differences in our school systems (of course I can't list all of them here).
Something that never ceases to surprise me when I see it in a TV show or a movie are pencils in US schools. Not that we didn't use pencils of course, but not for as long and not as much and definitely not in tests. As far as I know, pencils are still not allowed in tests here.
The following is such an American picture to me (as I don't know which other countries also use pencils). I honestly can't remember if I ever did a multiple choice test in school at all. From what I read and heard they are still hardly used in German schools, but you find them at universities.

Picture by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu via Unsplash

I can't remember for sure in which class we started learning to use a fountain pen in the early 70s, but at first we had a plastic slate and a white pencil like the ones in the picture. The times of real slates and slate pencils were already over then.
These are not my original slates, I found them at the fleamarket (as you can clearly tell from the condition) and the pencils are new. Much to my surprise both plastic slates and pencils are still available and are also still used, mostly in the first class. I guess this old dinosaur had expected kids to start writing on tablets right away these days 😉
If you wrote on a slate that was still wet, your handwriting would get all fat and "creamy". I doubt I was the only kid ever playing around with that effect, but it was discouraged because it wore the pencil down more quickly.

Surprise - cursive writing is not all the same everywhere and
at all times. This is how I learned it in the olden days. 

The back - either with squares for numbers or empty for drawing.
As you can see, I'm a pro in both.

I found quite a bit of debate online on German pages about when to start teaching children how to use a fountain pen. There are even some schools - although they really seem to be the minority - that start in the first class, others let children use the slate for some things, but also paper with a pencil, then a rollerball, and the fountain pen follows in second or third class. "Ink killers" are usually not allowed.
My father had bought my first fountain pen for me and even got it engraved with my name which made it really special for me as my name was never on anything, due to its spelling.

It was a red "Pelikano" and I hadn't been aware that the red color - which was meant to appeal to the girls more than the blue one - had only been sold since September 1970 which was when I started school. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still tucked away somewhere here, but it wasn't fit for writing anymore. Should I find it, I'll add a picture.

In my time, you either had a Pelikan or a Geha pen (both German brands at the time) and you defended it to the death. The death of the fountain pen, I mean. Seriously, you can still read accounts of throwing matches to determine which brand was better! Less violent was arguing about the colors (Pelikano blue or red, later also black, Geha green) or about the fact that the Geha was the first one to have a viewing window (which I still find ugly because it disturbs the flow of the pen for me and yes, I know I'm talking about a "school pen") and a reserve tank.
I can't remember any matches in my own class, but there was a certain rivalry. Don't forget, we are talking about elementary school kids here.

While those two certainly made up the bulk of pupils' pens at the time, though, there were other brands as well, my sister for example had an Artus Prinz.
All of them had cartridges, I don't think I knew anyone who still used an inkwell then. You could use the Pelikan cartriges in a Geha, by the way, but not the Geha ones in the Pelikano. Pff. Made the Geha kids feel so special, but they gladly borrowed cartridges from us if theirs were empty 😉
I also remember my English pen pal sending me some cartridges, but I couldn't use them because they were too long. I don't know anymore what kind of pen they were meant for.

These days I use a Parker. I'm not a fan of fat ballpoint or fountain pens to write with (but sometimes to look at) and have always preferred the feel of a slim Parker in my hand.
It has a cartridge/converter filling system and I use a converter with ink bottles. It reminds me of my teenage days when my friend and I hung out at the office supply store (I wrote about us buying sealing wax there before which is part of my writing memories, but I don't want to repeat myself here). They had Pelikan ink bottles back then with different colors of ink. I have always enjoyed writing in other colors even in school and back then I wanted all of those bottles so badly - those expensive little bottles, sigh.
Nowadays I'm much more sensible and know how to limit myself meaning I only got "Intense Black" and "Tender Purple". Eight years ago! I only ever used my fountain pen for scribbling a short thank you when I sent off one of my jewelry pieces or on rare cards I wrote. Now that I have pen pals again, I finally have an excuse to buy more.
There's just one problem with ink and me, especially when I'm filling my Parker. I'm terrible at it. The last time I had to walk around with two nails rimmed in purple for three days because the ink just wouldn't scrub off! A small price to pay for being elegant enough to use an inkwell 😂

My handwriting has changed just a tad. At least
it's a little better with a fountain pen than a ballpoint.

For some extra nostalgia I'll show you how we learned to read and spell in my time. This so-called "Lese-Uhr" = "reading clock" was made by a local manufacturer for "learning aids and school games", E. Kuhlemann.

There were several versions over the years, but I can't tell you the time period when they were actually used in school (it ended sometime in the 70s, though, as my (not so) little brother didn't use it) or where exactly, but from a talk about them I know it was definitely not in all of Germany - different states, different rules - but also not just in my state.
I could already read when I started school, so I don't remember how helpful the clock actually was, but we did have fun with it.

This was the one I had. Blue plastic with
print letters. It's the one that is still rather
easy to find today, usually in quite good
condition and even with the original paper
jacket which had instructions how to use it.

I had only seen this one in museum pictures
for years, it's the older cardboard version
(which belonged to a school, there's a stamp
and inventory number). There are a few
differences from the newer one, like the
colored letters for example or the cover picture. 

This is a newer version with cursive
letters. There's no jacket, but two sheets
with explanations and exercises for the
teacher with synthetic teaching methods.

There were also big ones for the teachers which came in both cursive and print letters as well.

Picture via Wikipedia by Pomona under CC BY-SA 3.0,
taken at Museum Schönholthausen in Finnentrop 

Saarländisches Schulmuseum
This one is almost 3 feet high and made from
hardboard and coated cardboard.

And of course I have to end this post with my wax seal ... For those who hadn't seen it yet, do you recognize the image?

Forever borrowed

The other day I saw this cartoon on Instagram.
If you can't follow the link, this is part of it: "I borrowed your sister's book, but she left for home this morning! She won't be back for ages! I basically stole it!". "Oh, that's fine. Every book lover has at least one forever borrowed book."

Ouch. Do I really have to be reminded of that over and over again?
It's true. I have two forever borrowed books and after over 40 years I'm still feeling bad about it.

In this post, I told you about Kontakt, the German-American Friendship Club I was a member of for a few years.
Another member brought his stepson J along on some of our outings. Once he invited some of us for an evening and J showed me his books (he was such a flirt, but three years younger than me, not that you get the wrong idea here).
Two of them didn't quite seem to fit in as they looked pretty old. J pulled them off the shelf and told me he had got them from his father. Are you beginning to understand why I'm feeling bad?

Because that's when I saw they were children's books and saying that I had never read them in English - just stating a fact, honestly - prompted J to insist on lending them to me.
I should have fought harder to refuse, but I didn't.
Not because I thought I was going to keep them, but because I didn't know when we'd meet again. At that point, the club didn't meet as regularly anymore. Members had moved on to other bases or had left the Army, then we got a new club president who brought new members in, group dynamics shifted, not necessarily for the better.

As it happened, that was actually the last time J and I should ever see each other. Plans were made in the club, plans were cancelled, and the next thing I heard was that J and his family were gone.
Without the books which were still with me.
Now you may wonder why I didn't try to find out where they went. I did my best, but by then I wasn't in "Kontakt" anymore which made things harder as you couldn't just walk on the base of course. I would have had to find someone who knew J's family, but I didn't even remember his stepfather's last name if I had even ever heard it. I don't know if it would have been easier the other way round or if J even tried.

It's not as if I thought about them every second of the last 40+ years, but seeing them when I was at my children's book cabinet gave me a pang of guilt.
For years I told myself that J cherished the books because his father had given them to him, but you know something? Frankly, I don't even remember after all that time if he really said that or if I automatically implied it because that's the way I felt about gifts. And I only thought about that now that I'm writing about it.
"My father gave them to me" didn't necessarily mean that he read them to his son as a kid. It could have been just an explanation for two old books on the shelf. On the other hand, him having kept them could express his feelings for them.
Whatever the truth, I can't help it, I have them now. After overthinking this thoroughly as is my habit, I think I'll just go back to feeling guilty.

But - there's always a but - where did these books come from? Are they even the books?
Oops, more overthinking.
Actually both books seem to have come from British used bookshops or even from one shop as the handwriting in the price pretty much looks the same, not that it's not possible J's father bought them there, but at least that wouldn't make them family heirlooms.
Of course they had to get to that shop somehow. One has a name written in it (who was Ellen (I have the last name and yeah, I did a quick search)?), the other one came from a school.
Which then reminded me of the book we found in our old attic eons ago and which belonged to my elementary school library aaand which I can't remember ever checking out, so I'm just going to blame my sister for that one to keep my guilt in check.

How about you? Do you have any "forever borrowed" books? If so, how do you feel about them?

From my children's book cabinet - Finchen

Last June I told you about wanting a living Kasperle when I was five years of age.
It seems I have a thing for living dolls unless they are named Chucky (I have never watched that film).
Lisa-Marie Blum had studied art and graphic design in Berlin where she lived with her husband who was also artist and graphic designer. When they lost everything in the war, they moved back to where Blum had been born and later to Hamburg where she became a children's book author and illustrator, but also published poetry and prose.
This book, first published in 1960, tells the story of a lovable living doll, Finchen.

Finchen is more 70 years old. She has been Ina's doll for five years, but before that he belonged to her grandmother Gabriele.
Although she complains about her old-fashioned name Wilhelmine-Josefine, Ina tells her nothing about her is old-fashioned. She has new arms, new legs, a new dress, even new hair which looks like a blowball.
Only her wooden head with the bright blue eyes is still old and knows so many stories.

One of them is about the time Gabriele and she went to the harbor. Leaning over to see the galley of a fishing cutter, Finchen fell on the deck and the cabin boy told Gabriele to get down and get her back herself. Then the fisherman showed her all around, so when leaving in a hurry - we learn later that her uncle had come to visit - Gabriele forgot Finchen and the cabin boy only found her when the cutter was already at sea.
That's how Finchen met the "Klabautermann" (a good-natured ship's goblin who can also be mischievous like all goblins). He gave her a pink shell belonging to another doll, "Blauer Mohn" (Blue Poppy), and told her she needed it to come to life again.

The fisherman sent Finchen home in a parcel where - Klabautermänner know these things - Blauer Mohn had been the gift Gabriele's uncle had brought her from South America, and indeed a shell was missing from her necklace.
Finchen, however, became sick before she had a chance to give her the shell, and when she was well again, Blauer Mohn had gone. She had been sent to someone who wanted to draw her and write a book about her before giving her to a museum.

So the search for Blauer Mohn begins at the local museum where Ina meets Stefan who invites her to come play with his model train. At his place they meet Nora, the landlady's niece.
Finchen invites the two children over promising to tell them the story of Blauer Mohn, too.
When they come home, Ina's father, an anthropologist, has returned from his trip to South America and destiny has it that he has brought a picture of the girl Schneeblüte and her doll. It's Blauer Mohn!
But if she's in South America, how will they return the shell to her?

The next day, the children go to the river and swim in a little cove. Finchen is resting under a little tent Stefan has made for her when suddenly a seagull lands next to her carrying the Klabautermann! He's angry when he hears that Finchen still has the shell, but luckily she has secretly brought it along.

The Klabautermann says he'll give it to his friend who's also an anthropologist and who'll travel there. And because kobolds know these things - had I mentioned that before? - he can tell her exactly what will happen and Finchen can pass the story on to her friends.
How his friend will travel on the river with a canoe, how everyone in the villages along the river already knows that he's bringing the shell to Schneeblüte. How he comes to the village and an old woman attaches the shell on the necklace and then ...
"Blauer Mohn feels the shell, breathes, moves her beautiful head, and raises her hand towards the stranger".

I loved that part as a child. There's nothing like a happy ending, right?
Actually, the book wasn't mine. It belonged to my sister and I bought my own copy many years later at a fleamarket. When I asked her if she remembered when she got hers, she had a look because in those days we often put our name, address, age, sometimes even the class we were in in books. Not in this case, it only had her name.
After a short pause she asked me about the illustrations in my copy and I said they were black and white. Hers weren't.

She hadn't remembered that she had colored most of them with crayons or felt-tip pens and, for extra artistic flair no doubt, also had added patterns to some of the pictures, for example on the bedding or on clothing.
What confused us a little was that there were notes on a few of the pictures which looked like school marks to us (we don't have letters here, but numbers ... 1 is the best, 6 the worst). We have no idea what the N. after the 1 could mean, though.
These are the little surprises I love so much about old books. You'll never know what you find!

What I also liked was the publisher's note at the end.
It explains how many people are involved until a book makes it into a child's hands - papermakers, illustrators, graphic designers, printers, and booksellers, but also the men (remember, it's 1960!) from the postal service and the railway - but that not all names can be listed except the author and the publisher.
It goes on to invite the children to write to the author at the publisher's address and tell her what they liked, but also where they would have done something differently. Isn't it nice that they encourage them to say their honest opinion?
They also promise more or less that the author will answer and send a real autograph.

It makes you wonder how many letters Lisa-Marie Blum got, doesn't it?
Have you ever written to an author?

Nostalgia - Slip casting

Did you know I'm a fan of the "Great Pottery Throw Down"? No? (I only mentioned it in this post once, so I'm not surprised.)
Did you know that I always wanted to try pottery throwing, but somehow it never happened? No?
But did you know there was a time when I did a bit of slip casting? Also no? Well, get ready to be surprised.

The story starts with "Kontakt" and "Kontakt" starts with the German-American Friendship Week.
There used to be a US Army base in my town. Once a year they celebrated the Friendship Week in summer which was basically like a giant open house, so people could get to know the base. On the last day there was a big fireworks display.

It was a mix of a small fair with a large beer tent where you got American style food (including tacos and burritos 😉) or could ride a mechanical bull, tours through the buildings on base, but also presentations.
One of those was a make-up demonstration on a stage. My two friends decided that I was the one to go up there. I remember having a veritable Mount Vesuvius on my nose at the time and not feeling up to it, but they insisted (we were all teenagers, you can probably imagine the scene).
While the poor make-up lady did her best to cover my nose and worked with brown mascara and soft rose tones because of my age (why do I still know that and also that I wore a warm jacket I called "The Monk" because of its hood and a loooong hand-knitted scarf despite it being summer?), my friends were addressed by someone from Kontakt. In the end, one of my friends said she'd like to go to a meeting and I went along and we became members (to improve our English, but let me put it that way, we definitely improved our knowledge of cursing in English).

We did all kinds of things, from playing minigolf to outings in the area, Christmas market, barbecues, movies, bake sales, a memorable Halloween that I wish I had pictures of, and more.
And we went to a slip casting course at the rec center which was my favorite.
What is slip casting? In (very) short, you have slip or a clay slurry which is poured into a porous plaster mold. After a layer of clay has formed as the mold absorbs the water, the rest of the slip gets poured out again, and when the clay has firmed up enough, the parts of the mold are removed.
Then of course comes glazing and firing.
I loved it. They had so many molds. Very popular among the Americans were the huge beer steins, but of course we started small. In fact, we never got to the really big pieces which I always regretted although I did not want a stein.

We started with little figurines most of which I gave away and some of which came back to me eventually, such as these little ladies that had been standing in my mother's shelf.
The blonde one must have had a tumble because some glaze came off her hair and she lost half an arm. It really doesn't make sense to keep her around, but for now she still reminds me of the time she stood on my mother's shelf.

The pup and the snail were my very first pieces if I remember right because they were small and the easiest ones. They went to my grandmother.
One club member trained as a porcelain painter back then which you could tell easily as all her pieces looked so much better than those of us others. The snail was my first one and I struggled with painting on the eyes, so after scraping them off more than once, I asked her for help and she gave it that squinty look.

Then there are the Buddhas.
I actually made three of them. One of them went to a friend of the family. I still remember her laughing and saying "At least one man who's smiling at me." I know she kept him on her book shelf for at least a few years.

These two are my own.
The standing one wasn't supposed to be, but as you can see he has a problem.
 

The workshop had big shelves for storing all the pieces during their different stages because of course people couldn't be there every day to do the painting, glazing or even to pick up their work.
One night someone broke into the workshop. They broke the door open so violently that it crashed into one of the shelves. I don't think they ever found out who it was or why they did it. There was nothing of monetary value there unless someone knew of a black market for clay and used molds. It was probably just vandalism.
Some of the pieces like several huge steins were broken completely, sometimes part of them survived, for example one stein lid. We were quite lucky because we didn't have anything big that a lot of work had already gone into, but my Buddha was one of the victims. The workshop manager told me to glue it, probably because she felt sorry for me. The hand was lost, though.

I wish I could also show you the stein lid. It looked like a wizard and I had admired it before, but the mold was in high demand and there was no way for me to just cast the wizard. The lady wanted to make a new stein and asked me if I would like to have the lid. Just the staff had broken off, so of course I accepted.
That was when our club president went back to the US, though, and the club changed a lot with the new one. Unfortunately, we never made it back to the workshop, so the wizard lived in one of my cabinets unfired. To be honest, I don't know where he is now, maybe he broke when we moved, maybe he's hidden away in a safe spot. If I find him, I'll add a picture.

Then there's the cup. I never used it to drink out of because I didn't trust my glaze, but I had pens in it.

It's the one piece that shows my "signature" best. We got assigned numbers to distinguish who made what and I added my trademark cat and my name.

So that was my "career" as a potter.
It being so short is the only excuse I have for having been lousy at it. No matter how hard I tried or how few or many layers of glaze I put on, there were spots where I just failed miserably to get them even.
My tired little lady doesn't have a real neck because glaze has collected under her chin, my snail has the same problem on her house.
I still see myself sitting at the future porcelain painter's house trying to get an even blue on the Buddhas. I was hopelessly in love with the royal blue and hopelessly bad at using it.
I'm sure I could have learned, but it was not to be although you can tell I had already improved a little from one Buddha to the next.
The best pieces colorwise were the cup - I actually wanted the sky to be like that although it surely could have been done better -, the third Buddha (not blue) and (if I remember that right) a pup and a little lady for my other grandmother which didn't make it back to me, so you'll just have to take my word for that! 😉

Random Saturday - Purple and green

If you expect something about color coordination in art or fashion, you're wrong, sorry. This is just another post about memories which is inspired by a post written by Nicole from Huisvlijt, "Kringloop Tristesse".
I don't speak Dutch, but from the Firefox translation I get it's about a water can that a school class gave to a teacher and it ended up in a thrift shop still with that tag on.
No idea how it is in other countries, but in my time gifts for teachers were not a big thing, at least not in my school. So I asked a teacher I know how it is today, and he too said that it happens, but not often.

We had one teacher, however, who got several gifts from part of the class, and that was a running joke.
One of my classmates loved the color purple and wore it a lot and said teacher didn't like purple. I don't know what the exact reason was, but he once told my classmate jokingly that purple wasn't a color, but a punishment.
So of course our whole row decided to give him something purple. My friend was a former baker's daughter and good at baking herself - how I loved her Christmas cookies! - and suggested a marble cake, but with purple and pink food dye. It was a big hit (I have no idea if our teacher ate any of it, though).
Anyhow, from then on, he always got something purple at the end of the school year. Nothing big of course, just to keep the joke alive, and we always tried to make it something useful or consumable, so it wouldn't take up unnecessary space.

One year, another teacher said jokingly how much we "spoiled" him (they had become a couple although we didn't know it yet at the time) and another friend of mine told her to pick a color. She said green. That friend did macrame and knitted socks like crazy - it was the 80s and a lot of pupils knitted in class - so she made a beautiful pair of green socks as a Christmas gift, much to our teacher's surprise but also delight.
So from then on we had to get something purple and something green.

Picture by Konevi via pxhere

I even kept the tradition running for several years after leaving school. A lot of my school friends left town to work elsewhere or study, but I lived at home during training as a librarian and my teachers didn't live far from me.
One time, my teacher handed me a little parcel saying "ok, so sometimes purple can be beautiful if it's on the right thing".
It was a framed picture of a purple Porsche (he had a vintage one himself, not purple but red). I don't know if I still have that picture somewhere, but I remember it really made me laugh back then.

Picture by Alex Ifti via Unsplash

So yeah, that's my little story of an "apple for the teacher".
Is it common for children to give their teachers a gift where you are?

Random Saturday - Diaries

A while ago, I saw an Instagram post with a few pictures in which several people had shared bits of their teenage diaries. It made me cringe, not because of what they wrote, but because I had come across my own diaries the other day when I looked for something else.

I got my first diary when I was 12. During vacation, I spent a few days with my closest school friend and we were out and about a lot. One day we walked to the next little town to visit another school friend and on the way we discovered the window of a little shop.
I wonder if those kind of shops still exist in some villages and small towns. It's practically one room where you can get about anything, from pencils to magazines, glasses to figurines, lottery tickets to diaries.
Yes, there were diaries in the window and we spontaneously decided to give each other one because that's what best friends did instead of buying their own.

Do they look familiar to you? They were from Shanghai und I was surprised how many people seem to be looking for them.
There were two sizes, this is the "Shanghai diary 112" (the other one was 110), they came in all kinds of colors and different motifs. They also had notebooks and even recipe books like that (it said on the spine what it was).
They had lines, the left pages had an orange edge with a sun and flowers, the right ones had trees and mountains in pink. At least, that was the case for all of mine, maybe there were some with other pictures.

From the age of 12 to 24 I had three of those diaries and filled about two and a half of them. I wasn't a very regular writer and there were huge gaps at times.
It was so surprising to find them because in my memory I had disposed of them a long time ago. That was not the only time my memory had failed, it seemed.

I started with the one I had abandoned because it was the shortest one. It was from the time when I was training as a librarian and then began working which was also how I met my ex. So yes, it was all very much pink glasses and love songs in the air back then 😉, but there were no surprising memories, so the shredder did its work.

Then I turned to the first one because I figured there would be a few things in there I didn't remember and I was right about that.
Early teenagehood was a relatively carefree time. I wrote mostly about friends, what we did, what we ate, what we bought, where we went. The rest was filled up with talking about school and that once again I hadn't practiced enough for my violin lesson.

The second diary, however, is full swing puberty and it was downright embarrassing to read about my being awkward (that's a euphemism) and pining for one or the other boy (or young man as I grew older). Reading it made me cringe so badly 😂
Some of those memories had been shoved into a small cabinet in a cobwebbed little corner of my mind and that's where I decided to put them back into.
Just imagine I'll get famous after all - stop laughing - and someone pulls out that diary after my death, I would roll over in my grave! Okay, I wouldn't want anyone to read it, famous or not.
So yeah, into the shredder it went.

There were some redeeming features, though. I stood up against racism (for a friend), I was not self-centered (or infatuated) enough to not contemplate the state of the world (and of course worry about it), and I was there for friends. 
It was a relief to read I wasn't a complete idiot, just a teenager.

After abandoning my diary at 24, I never picked one up again. I have always been terrible with even keeping up notebooks and calendars, so it's more of a surprise I even wrote that much.
The only thing I regret in that regard is never trying to write a dream journal. My dreams are wild, but hardly ever embarrassing, I think they would have been a much more fun read - most of them, anyway. I'm not going to start that now, though.

Do you (still) have a diary or your diaries from your past?

Random Saturday - Travelling books

In my post about "Little Nicholas" a few days ago, I said that my personal copies of the books had a story of their own.
Here it is.

The year is 1994 and it's two days before my birthday.
We three sisters happen to take the same train home after work and my oldest sister has my birthday gift in a bag which she just picked up from the book store on the way to the train station.
The commute from Bad Cannstatt is about 30 minutes. We talk, we laugh, we get off the train ... that's when my sister notices she has left the book bag on the train!
It's too late to hop back on, so there are only two things to do now, 1. go to the service center and try to have them contact someone, 2. hope that no passenger grabs the bag and decides these are nice books to have.

Losing or forgetting something on a train is a game of chance. Some people will give it to the conductor, so it ends up at the railway company's lost and found (and in an auction if no one claims it), but some go the "finders keepers" route or at least contemplate it (I've seen it myself), and some just ignore it.
The service clerk told my sister they would contact someone at the end of the line and have the train conductor check the train in case they hadn't already found the bag by themselves.
If the bag were there, they would then take it back on the next possible train and drop it off at the service center where my sister would be able to pick it up the next day.

Luck was on our side and my sister picked the bag up the next day.
To celebrate it, she drew a little picture in each book to tell the story.

From left to right - my sister A., yours truly, and my sister B.
There's a lot of detail, from A.'s braid to my long hair worn open
and B.'s bob, but also A.'s typical backpack, my shopper and
B.'s purse, and of course the book bag saying "Stehn", a book
store that doesn't exist anymore today.

What I love most about this picture are two things.
There is the company Hengstenberg which will be 150 years old
next year and produces vinegar, pickles, mustard, etc.
Nowadays there are only offices in that building, but it's still part
of the region's history.
Also, this is still one of the old trains. It's actually possible that we
did ride on one of them because the new double-decker trains
were only just introduced around that time.
Can you see us in the last window?

 

Oh no! We got off the train at home, but the bag is still on there!
Our shocked faces never fail to make me smile 🙃

Tell me without words how the books went back from Geislingen to
Göppingen. Did you notice the speed lines?

The service center of the Deutsche Bahn (which also doesn't exist
anymore because they lost the contract for this line some years ago
and because they expect everyone to be their own service people,
anyway) on the day before my birthday. You can tell from the
clock A. and I took our usual train at the time and oh what
a miracle, it was on time, too!

I think the drawings really make these books extra special. Do you think someone in the future will be holding them in their hands eventually, wondering what all of that was about ...

From my children's book cabinet - Mr. Mysterious & Company

I don't know if it was the same in your family, but some books seemed to be around forever.
The book I want to talk about today was one of those which was a surprise for me when I pulled out my copy because it's definitely not the family copy, and not just because there's a sticker with a stranger's name in it. I seem to remember that ours looked much more battered, probably no surprise in a big family.

It's Sid Fleischman's first children's book, "Mr. Mysterious & Company", about a travelling magician and his family, and only as a grown-up when I found one of his other books, I became aware how much more he had written, not just children's books, but also screenplays, novels for adults such as detective or adventure stories, and books about magic.

I know I loved this book as a child, but I haven't read it forever, so who knows if the magic is still there (pun intended!). Let's find out together.

Mr. Mysterious & Company - that is the Hackett family with father Andrew Perkins Hackett, Mama, uhm, whose name is never mentioned, and the children Jane, Paul, and Anne.
With them are Hocus and Pocus, the horses pulling their wagon, and Madam Sweetpea, the cow who determines their travelling speed, and some rabbits.
Set in 1884, the book tells the story of the Hacketts travelling through the country with the destination of San Diego where they finally want to settle down.

On their travels from city to city, they entertain people with their magic show in which each of them has their own role, the father as Mr. Mysterious who makes a chicken give milk, pulls rabbits out of hats and shows slides with the magic lantern, Mama on the piano, Jane as the Sleeping Princess floating in the air, Paul as the all knowing Great Sphinx, and Anne is the living doll in the enchanted dollhouse.

There's more to their life, though. Mama, who used to be a teacher, gives them school lessons, but they also have adventures.
They have an encounter with grumpy Jeb Grimes whose dog they have found for whom Pa gives up his golden watch. He's so smart they re-name him "Professor" and he even gets his own part in the show because he loves rope jumping.
They help a sheriff catch the thief called the Badlands Kid who stole Grimes's gold.
They get to ride a high-wheel bicycle when they meet a wandering newspaperman and his family who are on their way to found a new town.
They use the magic lantern to chase off horse thieves (more on that later).
Pa tricks some farmhands who have locked up a judge who has sentenced one of their friends to jail for stealing cattle.

And then there is of course Abracadabra Day.
It's the family's secret holiday. As the children don't have much chance to misbehave, they each get one day they are allowed to be bad or pull pranks without being punished for it, but you can't announce it beforehand.
Paul uses his feet to untie the knot of the rope holding Madam Sweetpea to the wagon.
Jane pins up her hair during one of the shows although Mama says she's too young for that.
Anne catches ten frogs she lets loose during a show.

In the end, they make it to California. The thought of never putting on a magic show again makes them all sad, but on the other hand they are also happy to settle down. Jane will be able to have friends for longer than a day, Paul will help Pa on the farm, and Anne might be able to take the ballet lessons she has been dreaming of.
Then they meet Big Jim Norton. He plans to open a theater and asks them to put up a show once a month and Pa says yes.
"By gosh and by golly ... It's a bargain. Why, we could declare it a kind of Abracadabra Day. Once a month - magic for everyone."

This book is from 1962 and of course it feels aged in parts.
There is a "cigar store Indian" in one town which unfortunately hasn't been unusual for much longer than that, and the horse thieves mentioned above are Native Americans.
One Goodreads review, for example, said there are other books that don't "perpetuate and normalize racism". To be honest, I think that's taking it too far. It is said that Mama has met good and bad Indians, there are no derogatory names ("Indians" was still used at the time), and they are not the only ones who pose a threat in this story.
What I personally disliked most about this part of the chapter was the illustration going with it.
I think if you read the book to a child, you could either skip that part or use it for a little history lesson.

It probably really depends on the child, though, if this is a fun story telling it a bit about the olden days - like the newspaperman explaining how you can make a city by setting up a newspaper first and attracting people that way - or if it thinks it's a boring story.
I think it's still a bit of fun.

Los Angeles Times,
CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Fleischman wrote the book for his own children Jane, Paul (who also became a writer), and Anne, by the way, and dedicated it to them.
In fifth grade, he decided to become a magician. After the war he finished college and first worked as a reporter, then went into writing fiction which led to him becoming a Hollywood screenwriter.
Writing "Mr. Mysterious & Company" for his children made him get into children's books, but he also never gave up magic completely.
"They didn't understand what I did for a living. Other fathers left home in the morning and returned at the end of the day. I was always around the house. I decided to clear up the mystery and wrote a book just for them."

Fleischman liked to incorporate history, folklore, and of course magic in his books but also humor.
The Sid Fleischman Humor Award, whose first recipient he was (among many other awards including the Newbery Medal), is given each year in his honor by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.


Sources:

1. Sid Fleischman website
2. Mr. Mysterious & Company on Goodreads

Nostalgia - My Stacey

It's not the first time I have told part of this story which began on Christmas, but within another post and with a terrible picture.
This story led to my collection many years later, so I think it's worth telling it right.

Christmas Eve 1970 - you know we give gifts on the 24th here - an excited little girl waiting for the living room door to open.
A brand new doll's pram awaited me and hand sewn clothes for my chubby doll.

Little Cat was an ingrate, though, I'm afraid to say. Her older sisters got Mattel dolls, and since little Cat has always been a sucker for miniatures (which hasn't changed to this day), she was fascinated. The small shoes, the tiny buttons and zippers ... Cat started nagging like only a five year old can. She annoyed her sisters wanting to look at their dolls.
And when she had nagged long enough and had probably driven everyone nuts, she was finally promised that she would get her own Mattel doll as soon as the stores were open again - on the 27th.
That can't have been fun for my family. I can't really remember, but I'm sure all I could think of was when it would be the 27th at last, and I probably wanted to go first thing in the morning.

When I was able to really reflect this years later, I felt kind of bad about it.
Yes, only kind of because I'm still really happy I got my doll, but 1. we didn't exactly swim in money and 2. my mother must have been so very disappointed at my reaction after sewing those doll clothes herself. How could she not have thought what a rotten little brat I was? I would have in her place.

Nevertheless, she took me to the store on the 27th and I got my first Mattel doll.
I have a very vague recollection of the floor of the toy store we went to - the "Fässler" - (name changed after my sister's memories 😉), but I wouldn't be able to tell you if I picked the doll and the two outfits myself or if my mother did. I couldn't even say if my sisters were with us and gave their expert advice on the matter (there will be another post eventually on how to become an expert at the time).
Anyhow, my doll was - I should say is because she's still part of my collection of course - a Stacey with platinum blond hair.
My sister also had a Stacey, but with red hair, and I hope she'll forgive me for telling you that she poked me by saying that my Stacey was old because she had grey hair. Siblings, huh?
I loved my Stacey and I played with her. This poor girl had to go through a lot. A five year old doesn't have the dexterity to dress and undress her fashion doll without irreversible damage. I guess that's why I had got a pram.

Stacey's head turned yellow over the years and she has a sweaty face. That's not my fault, it's something that happened to a lot of vinyl dolls from that time. I could try to have her restored (or try it myself), for example with new skin paint, but I figure that she just aged together with me.
She was the first one in my collection - which I didn't know I would have -, she was bought as a toy, not a collector's item, and amazingly, she survived. It feels wrong to think about changing her, almost as if I had plastic surgery (and I don't "paint" my skin, either).

Oh the stories this poor little lady could tell ...

Her sickly face color is not her only problem. Even washed her hair has never been like new again.
As someone *whistling innocently* made her walk to the library (which I had set up in an armchair, completely with handmade call number tags) a lot by banging her feet on the ground a little too hard, she eventually lost half a foot.
Many years ago, my sister (the other one who got an (ash blond) Summer Sand TNT Barbie that Christmas) sewed an evening dress for her, but she can't wear heels with that because of her foot. Instead she's wearing a pair of vintage white lace-up boots.
 
She's also missing a finger, it broke off from putting bracelets on her wrist too often.
Do you remember that the two parts on ballpoint pens didn't necessarily screw together directly in the olden days? Often there was a little metal ring in between, in silver or gold. There were really thin ones and the wider ones. The thin ones were easy to put over her hand because you could bend them easily and then you would just bend them back on her wrist.
It was not that easy with the wider ones and bending Stacey's pinky often enough led to it breaking off eventually.

Another very typical problem for dolls that were played with are neck splits. Imagine a little girl constantly ripping the head off to put clothes or handmade necklaces on her doll (now I know how to make small necklaces with hooks) and pushing it back on the neck, it's a miracle the splits aren't worse. You can glue those neck splits, but you know my fragile relationship with glue.

Stacey was a so-called TNT doll - Twist'n'Turn - meaning she could not only turn her head from sideways, but also her waist. She also had bendable legs.
Stacey was introduced in 1968 as Barbie's British friend,  part of the "British Invasion". She brought the spirit of Mary Quant and London's Carnaby Street with her - a true "mod" doll.
She came in two versions, both manufactured only until 1971 which is a real pity.
There was the Talking Stacey who spoke in a British accent and came with a side ponytail and bangs in platinum blond and red (also called "Copper Penny").
The TNT dolls also had blond or red hair. The 1968 TNT had a side part and little curls at the forehead and sides, her ponytail was in the back.

A beautiful 1968 platinum TNT Stacey - no yellow face! - with open hair wearing
the "Suburban Shopper" dress (#969, 1959 - 1964) without accessories 
and with blue closed toe heels instead of white open toe heels.

The 1969 to 1971 TNT had short hair with a side part and flipped up ends, but if they are played with and have been combed, and depending on the amount of hair (which wasn't always the same), that could turn into quite the hairstyle.

"Copper penny" Stacey - also with a yellow, but not a sweaty face - wearing
"Sleeping Pretty" (#1636, 1965) without the accessories, one open toe heel is
missing its pompom which is not unusual, but a pity.

All of them smile showing their teeth, they have rooted eyelashes and blush on their cheeks.
They are popular with collectors not only for their beauty, but also because they weren't on the market very long.

There were two Sears Exclusive gift sets for Stacey, "Stripes Are Happening" (#1545, 1968) and "Stacey Nite Lightning (#1591, 1969). These are the only outfits with a "Stacey" tag inside. Sears Exclusives are beautiful, but were unfortunately not on option for little German girls.
Stacey also appeared on several cases, either alone or together with Barbie, and once with Barbie and Francie.


Sources:

1. Sibyl DeWein and Joan Ashabraner: The Collector's Encyclopedia of Barbie Dolls and Collectibles. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1994
2. Sarah Sink Eames: Barbie Doll Fashion, Vol. I, 1959 - 1967. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1994
3. Vintage Stacey Dolls 1968 - 1971. On: Fashion Doll Guide


Stacey/Barbie/Francie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel in any way.

P.S. If you worry about my baby doll, there's no need to. She was taken for walks outside in her new pram and she wore her new clothes, too. When she finally broke (she kept losing her limbs because the plastic wore out), my teddy bear, who has about the same size, inherited her more unisex kind of clothing.
Ok, so that's no reason for behaving like a spoilt brat, but I apologized for it often enough over the years 😂