The Rose Bowl Flea Market

Yesterday, my wife and I finally did something we have been talking about for years: we went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena. The flea market is held every second Sunday of the month and is one of the most famous flea markets in the world. There are over 2500 vendors and attendance is usually 15 to 20, 000 people.


Since it was our first time, we really didn't know what to expect. We got there at 8:00 and there wasn't much of a crowd yet. We got a good parking place in the "free parking" area. There is also a "Preferred parking" area where you have to pay. There are different admission charges depending on what time you want to enter: express admission is $10 for entering at 8:00am or you can wait until 9 and pay only $8. My advice is to pay the $10 and start at 8. You can beat the crowd and find the best bargains that way.

The market has an area for new items and an area for antique and used items. We were only interested in buying antiques and we were quickly overwhelmed with an unbelievable selection of items from row after row of vendors that seemed to go on forever. The first item I bought was a 1950's Grundig tube radio for $30. It was in very good shape and the vendor told me it worked but there was no electrical outlet to test it so I gambled and bought it anyway. (It does work and sounds great.)  Valerie bought some salt and pepper shakers and then quickly snatched up some Blakely iced tea tumblers and vintage ceramic chickens for a decent price.

Over the next 4 hours we wandered up and down the aisles looking at things such as mid-century furniture, vintage clothing (there are tons of that and it sells like hotcakes), art pottery, dishes, old typewriters, antique advertising items, military stuff... you name it, it was there. One vendor was selling old movie posters and he had hundreds of them. There was a large Easy Rider poster on display with a price of $300. Another booth was selling 1950's girlie calendars from local Southern California businesses. The funniest thing I saw was a life size wax figure of Indiana Jones which was done so poorly that the only way I recognized him was his hat and the whip in his hand. 

We found some great stuff but not everything was a bargain and not all the vendors were willing to negotiate. Valerie had her eye on a 1950's kitchen canister set but the price was $160 and the dealer was only willing to go down to $140. I spotted a beautiful red Zenith tube radio which I would've gladly shelled out $50 for but the firm price was $150. A great price for a collector but not for a dealer like me. Besides the Grundig, I also bought a couple of old telephones and 2 cameras. My best bargain of the day was a McCoy cookie jar in the shape of a cast iron stove for $8. Valerie made some good deals on glass items.


After 4 hours, we were ready to go. Although it was October, it was over 90 degrees and we were tired from all the walking. I don't believe there is any way you can see everything in one day. The amount of stuff was mind boggling.We will definitely be back in the future. 


If you should ever go, here's some free advice: bring sunscreen and some kind of container on wheels to carry your stuff. Also, bring your own bottled water or be prepared to pay $4 for a bottle. Get there early and wear comfortable shoes.

The Face of Courage

 Last night I watched a show on the History Channel called "102 Minutes That Changed America". The show was a collection of videos shot by witnesses in New York City on 9/11 from the time the first plane hit the World Trade Center until the collapse of the second tower. There was no narration, no interviews, no commercials...just raw footage spliced together from people who just happened to be there.

Right after the first tower collapsed and the dust had started to settle a little, there was a group of firemen walking towards the rubble. The camera panned across their faces and the look of shock and disbelief was unmistakable. They were beginning to realize that a lot of their friends and fellow firemen had just lost their lives. But they picked up their equipment and started walking anyway. They didn't know what they were going to find, they knew the second tower could collapse on them at any minute but they kept walking anyway. With hundreds of panicked people running by them in the other direction, they kept walking towards the biggest nightmare they had ever encountered.

These men showed us what true courage was that day. They put their lives on the line after seeing first hand what the cost might be. Sometimes, saying a simple "Thank You" just isn't enough.

The Thomas W. Streeter Collection of Americana

Thomas Winthrop Streeter was born in 1883 in Concord, New Hampshire. He received a B.L. degree from Dartmouth College in 1904 and an LL.B. degree from Harvard Law School in 1907. He practiced law until 1917 when he moved to New York and began a career in business and finance. He retired in 1939. Although successful as a businessman, his claim to fame was in a different field altogether; something most people consider a hobby.
 
Thomas Streeter began collecting books on American history at an early age. He attended his first auction in 1920 and at that time became determined to collect books on "beginnings", books relating to first explorations of states and areas, first settlements, and cultural foundations in the form of significant issues in individual colonies and states. While serving as chairman of the board of a Texas based petroleum company from 1923-30, he began to acquire books, pamphlets, broadsides and maps relating to Texas history during the period of 1795-1845. This particular subset of his collection eventually became the largest private Texana collection ever compiled. His interest in Texana led him to compile and publish the authoritative three-part (five-volume) Bibliography of Texas, 1795-1845 in the years 1955-1960. After the work was published, he sold his Texana collection of nearly 2000 publications to Yale University where it became part of their Western Americana Collection. 

But, like I said, Texana was only a subset of his collection. Streeter's personal library of Americana eventually surpassed all other American private libraries. Upon his death in 1965 the library consisted of some 5,000 volumes ranging from discovery and exploration to first books in each of the American states. One of the earliest items in his collection was Cosmographi Geographia, a geographical study printed in Venice in 1482 which contained a rare map and greatly stimulated exploration. Early maps and atlases were an important part of the collection. There were also broadsides, pamphlets, treaties...anything that would shed light on the discovery, exploration and settlement of North America.

The Streeter Collection was not a collection of "high spots" of history, nor was it a collection of books that were bought on impulse. Streeter was very selective in the items he bought and each item in the collection had a definite purpose. He was well known to booksellers of important works across the country as well as libraries great and small. He made pilgrimages to libraries from coast to coast carefully jotting down titles that were new to him and combing over case after case of special collections. Decisions on what to add to his collection were not made hastily.

In accordance with his wishes, after his death, the collection was sold off in a series of seven auctions at Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York City from 1966 through 1969. The catalog for this auction was printed in a set of eight volumes including an index and has become an important bibliography and reference source in its own right. Over the course of three decades, Streeter had painstakingly cataloged his collection, making notes of provenance and significance and the descriptions of the auction items were prepared using a carbon copy of his catalog which was contained in eighty-seven loose-leaf notebooks. The total selling price for the 4,421 lots was $3,104,982.

In the introduction to volume I of the auction catalog, Lawrence C. Wroth wrote, "These books and broadsides, maps and pamphlets show us the whole panorama of a great nation in birth and growth, tell us the wonderful story of its birth through colonialism and of its own colonialism rampant across a continent, of good deeds and bad, of courage, of frustration. Here in these materials is the stuff not of a single epic but of a hundred epics." Thanks to men like Thomas Winthrop Streeter, our past has been preserved for future generations to study.

Presidential report on exploration of the west dated 1806

Illustrated map dated 1849

Pat Garrett's "Life of Billy the Kid" dated 1882

Who Says You Can't Go Home?

Who says you can't go home?
There's only one place they call me one of their own
Just a hometown boy, born a rolling stone.
Who says you can't go home?
                            Bon Jovi

In June, my high school in Ruidoso, New Mexico held a combined reunion for the classes of 1973-1980. There were close to 300 people who attended, including spouses of classmates.

I've been to all my reunions over the years but this one was different. There were several people there who had never been to any of their class reunions in the past. Maybe it was because so many classes were combined or maybe it was because the event was so well planned, I don't know, but I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in over 30 years. 

Jeff Elliott, Rick Mound, Me, Stan Cape

Over the course of 4 days, we talked about the past, laughed at our memories, told lies, met family members and drank beer....a lot of beer! We tried to hold back the tears when we looked at photos of our classmates who have passed away or learned of friends' parents who were no longer with us. You see, in a small town when you make friends in school, their parents and family become a big part of your life as well. We talked about people who weren't there, wondered whatever happened to what's-his/her-name, checked out ex-girlfriends and wondered "What if I'd have married her?" And then we drank some more beer.

 Me, Sean Mound, Jeff Elliott

 

Some of the class of '79

"It was always summer and the future called
We were ready for adventures 
and we wanted them all
And there was so much left to dream
And so much time to make it real"

                                                                Meat Loaf

 

 My friend Stan and I, 2010

...and in 1979

 Steve Cox, Jay Raulerson and Me

 Frosty Lathan at the Saturday picnic

Getting ready for the Saturday night banquet

Jeff Elliott, Lori Wright-Iannucci, Rick Mound, 

Cindy Mound-Yenson and me.

In the movie Stand By Me, the writer, voiced by Richard Dreyfuss, writes, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" (In my case, it was 18 but you get the idea). It's funny that when you haven't seen a good friend for such a long time, when you finally do, you pick up right where you left off. That's what we did. It was a great weekend. We are planning on having another reunion in 2013...maybe we'll drink some more beer! In the words of Rod Stewart:

May good fortune be with you
May your guiding light be strong
build a stairway to heaven
with a prince or a vagabond
And may you never love in vain
And in my heart you'll always remain
Forever young, forever young.

The Kosciuszko Squadron

This is the true story of a group of the bravest men you’ve never heard of. These men were American aviators who volunteered to fight in the Polish-Russian War of 1919-1920. None of them were of Polish ancestry but they fought with such bravery and heroism that they were awarded Poland’s highest military honors. Three of them died defending a country they had no ties to.

 The story actually begins 143 years earlier during the American Revolutionary War. A 30-year-old Polish army captain named Tadeusz Kosciuszko arrived in America and volunteered to fight in the newly formed Army of the United States. He was assigned to the staff of General Horatio Gates as a colonel of engineers and distinguished himself as a brilliant combat tactician. He later served under General Nathaniel Green where he led an attack against a British foraging party on James Island, South Carolina in 1782, in what was considered to be the final military action of the war. In 1783, Kosciuszko was awarded with the official thanks of Congress and a brevet commission of brigadier general. He then sailed back to his native Poland and became a commander in the Polish army.

 Flash forward to 1919: World War I had just ended but the newly restored Republic of Poland was under attack on two fronts. In the north, the Bolshevik Army began a push to occupy Poland in an attempt to spread their Communist ideals westward. In the south, the newly independent country of Ukraine took over the town of Lwow. The citizens of Lwow fought and died bravely in house-to-house fighting and eventually regained control of their town.

A young American Air Service officer, Captain Merian Coldwell Cooper, who was now a member of the American Relief Administration, was dispatched from Paris to attempt delivery of badly needed rations to Lwow and the surrounding district. Captain Cooper had fought bravely from the air during World War I and was shot down behind German lines in 1918 and spent the remaining weeks of the war in a German prison hospital. For that mission, he was recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross, which he respectfully declined. In a letter to the chief of the Decorations Section of the A.E.F. he wrote, “I realize it would be unjust and unfair for me to receive any honor consideration which the six other officers who fell in flames in the same flight, and so died, did not receive.”

Captain Cooper’s experiences in Lwow convinced him that Poland was in desperate need of military assistance. He resigned his commission from the U.S. Air Service and offered to join the Polish Air Force. Back in Paris, he began recruiting other American pilots who had not yet returned to the United States following the Armistice. He enlisted 7 other pilots who all signed a contract for service with the Premier of Poland, Jan Paderewski. The unit was unofficially dubbed the Kosciuszko Squadron in honor of the young officer who had fought so bravely for the United States. On September 16, 1919, the squadron boarded a boxcar posing as Red Cross guards and began their long journey to Warsaw. A 143 year old debt was about to be repaid.

Captain Cooper’s volunteers were soon joined by 3 others and were assigned to the Seventh Fighter Squadron stationed in Lwow. The Squadron’s name was officially changed to the Kosciuszko Squadron and was placed under the command of Cedric Errol Fauntleroy, a 28-year-old A.E.F. pilot from Fayette, Mississippi. Before the Americans arrived, the Seventh Squadron had received a shipment of a dozen Albatros D.III airplanes. Before this shipment, the Polish Air Force had been forced to scavenge parts from abandoned German hangars and literally put together one plane at a time using parts from many different planes. The squadron began training in the Albatroses and after a series of setbacks which included the death of one pilot in a crash, a fire which destroyed some of their equipment and an unbearably cold Polish winter, they began flying missions in January of 1920. The first few missions consisted of delivering messages via airplane to the advance base of the Polish forces some 80 miles away. However, the bad weather in January and February caused several crashes and a fire started by Bolshevik saboteurs almost totally destroyed the air base on February 4^th which resulted in the loss of a plane and a spare engine.

 The squadron did not participate in actual combat until April, when the base of operations was moved to a location closer to the fighting. A flight of five Albatros D.IIIs attacked a Red Army encampment on April 9 and the squadron now had their appetite whetted for what lay ahead. From that point forward until the end of the war, the squadron consistently engaged the enemy despite adverse operating conditions, which included a lack of spare parts, food, equipment and even pilots. On July 13, Captain Cooper’s airplane never returned from a reconnaissance mission and he was presumed dead. His fate was not known for nine months. The squadron played a major role in the climactic phase of the war when they engaged Bolshevik forces during the battle for Warsaw, which allowed Polish troops to gain the final victory. An armistice was signed on October 18, 1920, which technically ended the war, but the Kosciuszko Squadron continued to fly reconnaissance missions over the disintegrating front lines for several more weeks. 3 pilots lost their lives in the fighting: Captain Arthur H. Kelly, Captain T.V. McCallum and Lt. Edmund Graves. All of the surviving pilots who served in the active fighting received Poland’s highest award for valor, the Virtuti Militari and the Polish people erected a shrine of honor in the cemetery where the 3 dead pilots were buried.

There was one unfinished piece of business: the fate of Captain Cooper who was, for the second time in his life, presumed killed in battle. However, on April 26, 1921, nine months after disappearing, Cooper showed up in Riga and reported for duty to the Poles. Cooper then told his amazing story of survival. His plane had been shot down and he was captured behind enemy lines by Cossacks. He managed to convince them that he was a conscripted soldier and not an officer of the hated Eskadra Kosciuszkowska. This saved him from an immediate execution. He gave them a fake name and was thrown into a Russian prison camp where he suffered from hunger, freezing temperatures, hard labor and eventually developed typhus. He managed to escape from his guards near Moscow while on a railroad work detail and with the help of two Poles who escaped with him made his way back to friendly territory. On May 8^th, Cooper was reunited with his Kosciuszko Squadron comrades in Warsaw. The squadron was officially demobilized on May 11. Captain Cooper returned to the United States and became a movie producer. His screen credits include “King Kong”, “Little Women” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.” He died in 1973.

My source for this article was the book Flight Of Eagles by Robert F. Karolevitz and Ross S. Fenn, written in 1974. The book was pieced together from diaries, logbooks and personal papers of the men who fought in the Kosciuszko Squadron. I read the book several years ago and have often wondered what motivated these men to do what they did. Did they want to be heroes or did they just enjoy the adventurous life of a pilot? Whatever the reason, they deserve honor and respect for their accomplishments. Hopefully, their story will inspire others to fight for “lost causes” and to do their best to help those who can’t help themselves.

A Texas Legend

I've been going to estate sales for about 8 years and buying things to sell on Ebay. A few years ago, I went to a sale in Phoenix on a Friday morning. I was looking through a utility room on the outside of the house and picked up an old helmet. It was made of some kind of hard plastic (almost like fiberglass) and had a leather lining. On the front, there was a logo: a big W inside a circle. At first, I thought it was a motorcycle helmet. When I paid for it (a whopping $5), I asked the lady who was doing the sale if she knew what the logo was. She said, "The woman who lived here was married to a man named Bill Waggoner back in the 50's. His family owns the largest ranch in Texas." OK, so the W stood for Waggoner but why would they put their logo on a motorcycle helmet? The helmet had a manufacturer's tag on it so when I got home that night, I started Googling the company name. (How did we ever do any research before Google? Oh yeah... we went to libraries! I wonder what ever happened to those?) I found out that the company that made the helmet started making fireman's helmets in the 1930's and then made boat racing helmets in the 1950's. Aha! It was a boat racing helmet! Cool! But why would a Texas rancher have a boat racing helmet? So I began Googling "Bill Wagner" which brought up tons of useless information. Finally, I tried the alternate spelling "Waggoner" and the results I got were absolutely amazing!

Bill Waggoner was actually W.T. Waggoner II whose great grandfather established the Waggoner Ranch 13 miles south of Vernon, Texas in 1849. It is still the largest ranch in Texas under one fence. He was a larger than life character and always wore a ten-gallon hat and a couple of six-shooters (not real) on his belt. Bill apparently became bored of being rich and powerful and went to a hydroplane race (the APBA Gold Cup Regatta) on Seattle's Lake Washington in 1955. He was immediately hooked and within a year he had formed his own racing team and became a powerful presence in the sport. He hired the best designer/team manager in the sport - Ted Jones, and 2 inexperienced drivers - Russ Schleeh and Bill Stead. Between 1956 and 1959, Bill's team won twelve races and two National Championships. He began with 2 boats: SHANTY I (named after his wife Mary Beth whose nickname was Shanty) and MAVERICK. SHANTY I was the National High Point Champion in 1956 and established a world record for a 3.75 mile competition lap at 115.979 miles per hour on Lake Washington. In 1957, SHANTY I crashed during a test run on the Potomac River, nearly killing the driver, Russ Schleeh. The first MAVERICK caught fire and burned in 1959 and a new MAVERICK (U-00) won Waggoner's second National Championship that year.

At the end of 1959, Waggoner's team was at the top of their form and a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately Bill developed a series of illnesses at that time and died in 1962. His widow, Shanty, continued to live in their upscale Phoenix mansion until her death in 2005. She hung onto a lot of Bill's racing memories and many of them were sold during her estate sale that Friday morning.

Getting back to the helmet: Armed with the knowledge I had gained about Bill, I listed it on Ebay with links to several websites that told his story, one of which had photos of one of his boats with the same logo that was on the helmet clearly visible on the boat's hull. During the week it was listed, I became aware that hydroplane racing fans are just as crazy about their sport as any NASCAR fan. The number of watchers went into the low 100's and the bids went up and up. It finally sold for just over $1000. The man who bought it was an ex-hydroplane mechanic who knew Bill back in the old days and had amassed a huge collection of boat racing memorabilia. He was thrilled with the helmet and told me he was going to send it to the Hydroplane & Race Boat Museum in Kent Washington as part of a display.

I have sold a lot of items on Ebay over the years but none of them had as much historical significance as the helmet. And Shanty Waggoner, if you're reading this from heaven, I want to say Thank You for not throwing out all of Bill's stuff when he died.

Really Bad TV

So you’re lying on the couch watching TV, flipping through the channels and all you can find are boring, stupid shows. So you put on your rose colored glasses (you know…the ones that make the past look so much better than it really was) and you say to yourself: “TV shows were much better back when I was a kid!” Well, I hate to burst your bubble but …no, they weren’t. Television has been plagued with really bad shows almost from the time it was invented back in the dark ages of radio.

Several years ago I bought a book called Bad TV, The Very Best of the Very Worst. I take it off the shelf and thumb through it every once and a while just to remind myself what it was really like back before Al Gore invented the Internet. The sad thing is I used to watch a lot of these shows and I LIKED THEM!! I don’t agree with a lot of the shows the author thought was bad. For example The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, and The Beverly Hillbillies are listed in the book but everybody knows those shows are shining examples of television at its finest. However, some of these shows are really out there and it makes me wonder what people were smoking when they came up with them. The book lists shows from the 1950's through the 1990's including variety shows, music videos, game shows, dramas, kid's shows, made for TV movies, sitcoms and infomercials. Here are some examples:

My Mother The Car, 1965-1966 starring Jerry Van Dyke. A comedy (?) about a man who finds an antique car in his garage and can hear his dead mother’s voice coming from it continuing the guilt trip she put him on before she died. There are lots of Jewish mother clichés and in one episode she gets drunk on antifreeze. This must have been before schizophrenia was discovered. The show only lasted 2 seasons.

The Ugliest Girl in Town, 1968. An amateur crossdressing man gets a job as a female model in England so he can be with his girl friend. Probably inspired by the movie Some Like It Hot. The only good thing about this show was the theme song which was sung by the Wall-o-Bees and if you ever listen to it, it will get stuck in your head for a long time, so you have been warned! Tom Hanks had a TV show in 1980 called Bosom Buddies which was also about men posing as women but it was a little funnier.

Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, 1975. Not to be confused with NBC’s Saturday Night Live, this was an ABC variety hour which paired the gruff, cynical Cosell with guests like Siegfried and Roy, the Bay City Rollers, Charo, John Wayne, Barbara Walters (singing) and Shamu the killer whale. Did ABC think America would fall in love with Cosell if he were taken out of his usual role as a sportscaster? Didn’t work. Everybody still hated Cosell.

Mary, 1978. Mary Tyler Moore tried to make a comeback in a variety hour accompanied by Dick Shawn, Michael Keaton and David Letterman. Out of 16 shows produced, only 3 were aired. CBS flushed away $5 million for this fiasco.

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, 1970. This was a Saturday morning cross between The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and The Monkees only with real chimpanzees. The chimps were spies for A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil) and they also had a band called The Evolution Revolution. They wore crazy wigs and hippy clothes and had names like Mata Hairi and Commander Darwin. How could that not be funny! Lasted for 17 episodes.

So the next time you get tired of watching Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives of Orange County, go to YouTube where you'll find a lot of these shows (or at least parts of them) still bouncing around cyberspace for your enjoyment and astonishment thanks to Al Gore.