Tuesday Treasure: California beach-towel

This beach towel is a souvenir of a 1962 vacation to California I took with my mom when I was a kid. I was only seven, so I don't remember a lot about the trip, but vaguely recall my mom buying this towel from a souvenir stand on the street somewhere.


California was an exotic place to a kid from Michigan and I thought I was pretty cool for having been there. For the rest of my childhood I enjoyed taking this towel to beaches and pools, and also used it frequently as a bath towel.

It was always stored in a chest of drawers built into my parent's bathroom. As an adult I'd occasionally come across it there and it would fill me with nostalgia.

This is one of only a few things I saved while cleaning out my parent's house in 1999. Since then I've kept it folded up in a plastic tub of mementos. It's very thin, faded, and ragged around the edges, but it's amazing to think this towel is nearly 50 years old! What a funny thing to have kept for so long.

Tuesday Treasure: argus 40 camera

This camera belonged to my mom and is the camera she used to take my childhood photos.

It's also the camera with which I snapped my very first pictures when I was a kid, and later used to learn about f-stops and shutter speeds.


Made in Ann Arbor, it's body is made of Bakelite, and it used to have a leather case, a neck strap, and a flash attachment, but those are long gone.


To take a photo you'd open the hood, hold the camera at your waist, and compose the shot by looking down into the large square viewfinder.

My mom stopped using this camera sometime in the 60s when "Instamatic" cameras became popular. For the rest of her life she owned a series of crappy cameras that were never anywhere as near as special as the argus - none that were saved the way this camera was, so that it now sits on a shelf in my living room.

Sometime when I was a teenager I picked it up and started playing around. When it doesn't have film inside, you can open the back and see what happens as you click the shutter at different f-stops and shutter speeds - a great visual learning tool.

Another fun feature of this camera is that you can take two, or more, photos without advancing the film if you want - meaning you can take arty double-exposures.

I love this camera and wish I could still take photos with it, but 620 film is a little hard to come by these days. (Though I was surprised to learn it wasn't discontinued by Kodak until 1995. )

Here's a photo of me taken with the argus when I was three:

Tuesday Treasure: Celery dish

This is one of my most treasured treasures. About 25 years ago or so I was in an antique store in Kalamazoo with my friend, Nancy, when I admired this celery serving dish. I thought it was beautiful and unique and I especially loved the three little salt servers that came with it.



Much to my surprise Nancy went back the next day and bought it for me! I think it was for my birthday, but I really don't remember for sure. In any case, I was delighted. I often fall in love with lovely things like this, but never buy them for myself.

I love this dish as much for it's beauty as for the reminder of Nancy's thoughtfulness and friendship. But I also love it because it's such a nice reminder of Kalamazoo, which is known as the "Celery City," and is the place I always think of as "home."

The story goes that a Kalamazoo pioneer from England brought some celery seeds along with him, and that Dutch settlers eventually began cultivating it in the rich black muck along the Kalamazoo River. Before long the celery Fields were flourishing and it was not uncommon to see peddlers selling celery on the streets of Kalamazoo.



Today, California is the nation's top celery producer, Michigan only ranks fourth, but you can visit the Celery Flats Interpretive Center to learn all about the history of celery farming if you're ever in Kalamazoo and really want to know.


For more about Kalamazoo click : here

Tuesday Treasure: Rocket bank

I've decided to begin a new feature: Tuesday Treasure.

On occasional Tuesdays I'll photograph and write about my most treasured objects, many of which I've just recently taken from packing boxes where they've been stored for the last few years.

This is my rocket bank:

I especially love my rocket bank because it's one of only two toys that survived my childhood. Everything else was thrown away!
I didn't realize it till years later when I wondered where all my toys had gone. I thought they were in my parents basement, but it turns out that every time my dad got fed up with the junk down there, he'd just throw everything away.

Also, sometime in the early 70s, my mom gave my Barbie collection to my cousins - an act I'm still a little pissed about. These were classic Barbies from the early 60s! My Barbies! What a shame.

But at least I still have my rocket bank. It works by pulling back the little bomb on the side, loading a coin in the slot, and then pushing the red button which causes the bomb to shoot the coin into the bank .

What remains of a sticker on the top of the bank once said, "Karmazin employees Credit Union." My mom was an employee of Karmazin, so I'm assuming she got this bank as a perk for opening an account, or something like that.

I'm guessing I've had this rocket since sometime in the mid-60s. It has "ASTRO MFG. Detroit" and a patent number stamped on it, so I wonder if it was unique to the Detroit area?

I doubt it's worth much as a collectible, but I do hope it might be passed down and appreciated as a family heirloom of sorts some day - and not just thrown away as junk!