Good luck

Post Valentine

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This one is sneaking in just under the line after Valentine’s Day. It is what I gave Kim for Valentine’s Day this year.

Some years here it is just a heartfelt card, but this year I was digging around on eBay and buying a few vintage cards which you have seen in prior posts (here and here) and this was one little prize I found. It’s a simple design, a bright red heart with this wonderful little cat attached, with silly white hearts drawn around the outer edge.

Of course the little metal cat attached to the top Stanley (the recipient of this card) had the good sense not to take it off. The poem reads:

To My Valentine
If you love me
you’ll love my CAT
And see that it’s befriended;
So if I hear you saying “Scat”
I’ll know my chance is ended.

Back of the Valentine.

The back reads, To Stanley S. From Madelaine and Dorothy Haskel (?) And we see this bit of twisted wire that sticks out the back, securing the cat charm to the front. I sort of love that two sisters sent this and I like the last name initial too – was there another Stanley in the class perhaps? Which, if either, sister did Stanley like best? Was the two sister approach to hide the real affection of one? One wonders.

Front of the keychain.

Then, I was cruising around Instagram and one of my favorite folks in Texas (@curiositiesantique or www.getcuriosities.com) put this little gem up and I grabbed it. Kim is an inveterate collector of (lucky) heads up pennies on the sidewalk and so this with a penny embedded within seemed just right for him. It is a lucky keyring which promises, Keep me and never go broke around the outer edge and, in case that wasn’t direct enough, I bring good luck at the bottom.

And the back!

The penny has a date of 1972 so we will date it to then. On the back we discover its real missive, Nick V. Caputo County Clerk Essex Vote Democrat. Turns out he was the Essex County (NJ) Clerk from 1961 to 1991. He was known as the man with the golden arm which had something to do with always drawing the Democrats for the first position on the ballot, the odds of which were 1 in 50 billion! Huh. (For those of you who are curious about this, and perhaps understand it better, you can read more in an article from the Jersey Globe here.)

Someone liked it enough to keep it all this time and it made its way down to Texas. It is back here in the tri-state area though, bringing my sweetheart luck and prosperity.

Out with the Old…

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I am kissing 2023 good-bye today with no regrets! Pushing that year right out the door and hoping for a better ’24. In full disclosure, there’s nothing about the early days of ’24 that are giving me much comfort that the year will be new and improved, but hope springs eternal as they say.

This marvelous item was a Christmas gift from Kim. I thought he presented exactly the right amount of optimism to look forward to the New Year. We’re a bit partial to elephants at Deitch Studio and I have written about one or two particular ones before – a box I bought for Kim and a toy he found and restored. And most notably a box Kim hand painted for his mom many years ago which until very recently lived on my desk at work. (Those posts can be found here, here and the Deitch box here.)

Another elephant post was this bank from July of 2022, Remember to Save. Pams-Pictorama.com.

I have a long-held desire for an antique, large, stuffed elephant on wheels – of the kind a small child would have ridden around the house. I have come close a few times but the timing hasn’t been right. One of these days though. It’s good to know that there will be space for it here in New Jersey when the time comes – our New York digs are a bit tight for such an acquisition.

Nonetheless, this little elephant seems like quite the find. He emerged from a cabinet at the Antiques Center here in Red Bank. (There was also an acquisition of a very nice small cabinet and a metal dog – more to come on those.)

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

This fellow is made to secure a box of matches, a match safe of sorts. He’s brass I think and marked Austria. There’s something sort of rollicking and raucous about him, like he couldn’t be having a better time than sitting on our matches. He’s leaning back on his front legs, trunk well up in the air – for good luck for those of us who believe. The holder has holes on the bottom and I am not sure what those are for unless it is to help get the matchbox out.

I’d like to think this is how I am going to tackle ’24. Sense of humor hopefully intact and ready for a rollicking good time!