The Astonishing Stories Simple Things Could Tell

Union Station is all excited at the Big Boy coming May 4-6th, but not just because it's one heck of a hunk of metal.

It's the stories it could tell. That thing hauled loads from Evanston to Ogden for years. Wouldn't you love to have been in the yards when it came through?

At the time lot of folks were, and probably didn't give it a second glance. When you go to the airport do you marvel at an airplane able to carry 400 or more people?

No, but it's pretty nifty.

And 200 years from now folks will look back at that antique and think, "people actually got into those things?"

So it is today. The objects I've pictured here are themselves are fun, but it's their stories that really make you wonder.

My good friend Maurice Greeson has started fixing fountain pens -- he only has half a dozen hobbies already, he musta got bored -- so I dug around and found some of my old thrift/antique store finds for him to practice on.

This one, a Parker, I bought because I like Parker Pens. It didn't work. When I unscrewed the head from the body bits of dried rubber and a long piece of metal fell out. "Oh well," I thought. "It looks cool."

As it turns out, Maurice had no problem.

The bits of rubber were the remains of a little rubber bladder that used to hold ink. Those little bladders are still made, so he ordered one. The bits of metal were what remained of the spring that squeezes the bladder when you push a button on the end of the pen.

Those, too, are still made. A couple of dollars, a bit of loving care, the pen works like new.

I did some digging and found it's a Parker Duofold, made about 1926. Parker had just discovered how to make pen bodies out of colored plastic instead of hard black rubber. This green model, called Jade, was the hit of the season.

Maurice apologized for not being able  to clean the brown tone the body had taken. "Not to worry," I said. "That's brown from thousands of uses by someone. Wouldn't you love to know what that pen wrote?"

Indeed. Typewriters weren't common in 1926, and expensive, so it probably wrote letters, checks, notes, everything. A Parker was a better pen, more expensive at perhaps $7, so a businessman probably owned it. He used it to sign contracts, for certain.

Love letters? Hate letters? Post cards from somewhere exotic? The thing could tell me someone's whole life it I could get it to rewrite everything I'd probably need a gallon of ink.

Same thing with this camera -- everyone knows I have a thing for Leica cameras. This is a very early one, the 64,973rd ever made. It rolled out of the factory in 1931 and was, according to the Leica company's excruciatingly detailed records (they ARE Germans) sent to a camera shop in Berlin.

Wow. Berlin in 1931?  

The Weimer Republic was on its last legs, some mouthy little failure of a painter named Adolph Hitler was rabble rousing through something called the National Socialist Party. Jews were still able to live normally, but not for long. In 1933 someone set fire to the Reichstag, Hitler took power promising law and order, and the rest you know.

Leicas then, as now, were the tool of serious professional photographers and the rich. Was this one owned by some party functionary? A news photographer shooting riots and political unrest? Or some guy who took snaps of his kids parading down Unter den Linden?

We'll never know, but it's fun to imagine.

As you can guess, I have a hard time getting out of antique shops. There are stories everywhere, and don't I wish I knew them.