Ah, the joys of collecting stuff. It's an obsession I never grew out of. I collected stuff in the 60s, and I'm still collecting stuff today. Just ask my wife who can hardly step foot in the basement without having a panic attack.
But today, it's mostly stuff I'm planning to sell. In the 60s I had no intention of ever letting go of my collectables.
The following is a list of most of the stuff I collected in the 60s.
Stamps, matchpack covers, coins, comic books, records (45s and albums), baseball cards, trading cards, bullfrogs, turtles, and snakes.
I won't spend much time talking about coin and stamps. They were boring things to collect, and I'm not sure why I bothered. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
A few years ago I ran across a small book of mint stamps from my youth. Thinking I might have the opportunity to make a few bucks, I called some dealers. To my dismay I found out that they not only didn't increase in value, some had actually decreased in value.
I found it rather odd that a 5 or 10 cent stamp would only be worth 3 cents today. Apparently, they're worth more on an envelope than in a stamp collection. My mother was bewildered last Christmas when she received a card in an envelope with eight 5 cent stamps on it's cover.
Matchpack covers. I had tons of these and I didn't even smoke. They were easy to collect because they were all over the place. It seemed like everybody past the age of sixteen smoked back then. If the packs still had matches in them, they were no good. They had to be match free. Still no problem. You could find them all over the ground (littering was much more acceptable back then). There was a great variety of designs and pictures on those covers, and I'd be willing to bet they're worth more today than stamps are.
Comic Books. I've always enjoyed reading, and there wasn't anything better than a comic book on a hot summer day. They were cheap (a dime a pop), easy to read, and quickly fogotten about when it was time for a pick-up baseball game.
My favorites early on were Dennis the Menace, All the DC superheroes, particularly Superboy, Superman, and Batman. I also liked Blackhawk comics, also on DC.
I also had Davy Crockett comics, Tarzan comics, and some Disney stuff. Later on, I got interested in Marvel comics.
The Marvels I remember most fondly were their monster comics. They were issued under the banners of Tales of Suspense, Amazing Adventures, Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, and Amazing Adult Fantasy.
They had some great monsters with names like Monsteroso, Sserpo, Gruto, Manoo (it seemed like these monsters liked their names to end in O), Gargantus (Garganto must have been taken), etc.
Not long after that, Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, Thor, and other Marvel superheroes made their presence. They were great and I had them all.
Not long after I went into the Army in the summer of '66, my stepmother tossed them in the trash. I guess I should have hidden them better. 'The Fantastic Fours' alone would have probably subsidized my retirement.
Records. On Saturday mornings in the late 50's and early 60's, I never missed The Buddy Deane Show (see LET'S TALK MUSIC for more on Buddy). Saturday mornings would feature the top twenty countdown for the previous week. I'd sit in front of the T.V., pencil in hand, watching as he went up the list from 20 to 1. If a song appeared on that list that I didn't have, I'd beg my father to get it for me.
Later that day, after I wore him down, my dad would drive me to the Radio Music Center on Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore. They simply had the best selection of 45s around. Once there, the owner, who went by the name of Froggy, would supply me with my musical fix.
In those days it was all about 45s for me. I could have cared less about albums. Those times would come later. My goal for those short few years was to have the complete Buddy Deane Show top 20 each week and, thanks to the patience and the wallet of my father, I succeeded.
Later on in the decade, 45s took a back seat to LPs, but I still picked up the occasional 45 right up into the 1980s.
Baseball and Trading Cards. Any boy (or girl) who collected baseball cards in the late fifties and sixties knows a few things. There was always at least one player card that you needed to complete your collection that was impossible to find because, for one thing, all your buddies were looking for the same player. Lots and lots of duplicates, quite often more duplicates than originals. Then there was the hard, almost unchewable, cardboard like gum that came with the pack. I could spend a lot of time just talking about that crappy gum, which was more of a weapon than a food product. I saw one of my pals almost blinded when one was thrown his way.
Anyhow, the duplicates were mostly used for pitching. Pitching was when you throw cards at a wall and the closest card to the wall won the cards (leaners were the best). Unfortunately, after a few days of pitching, most of the cards were so bent up and frazzled that they were only good as coasters.
After a while, I became more interested in trading cards. My favorites were Mars Attacks, the western Roundup cards and my personal favorites, Davy Crockett cards. About ten years ago I could have bought a complete set in mint condition of the original greenback Crocketts at a collectors convention for $120. I thought it was too much money at the time. I'd hate to tell you what they're going for on eBay today.
Bullfrogs, Turtles, and Snakes.
Many years ago I made the mistake of telling my wife I collected snakes as a boy. She didn't touch me for weeks after that, and made me shower twice daily on top of it. I sincerely believe she would not have married me had I been dumb enough to give her that information while we were dating.
Early on I collected tadpoles. My grandmother would take my brother and I to various ponds nearby where where the bullfrogs congregated. There, with the help of small nets and cups, we would grab up some tadpoles. The bullfrogs themselves were elusive devils and very hard to capture. The good thing was that after a few short weeks, the tadpole would become a bullfrog. The bad news was that bullfrogs were noisy as hell with their croaking and such, especially late at night when one's parents are trying to sleep.
Needless to say, our bullfrog collecting was a short lived venture.
A few blocks from my house was a small stream that ran between the many blocks of row homes. A friend and I were tossing stones in that stream one summer morning when one of the big rocks at the stream's bottom began to move. It turns out it was a full grown snapping turtle. Being naive (and a little dumb) I picked up the monster by the tail, I carried the snapper back to my house and deposited it in my backyard.
Some of my friends came over and I guess I started to show off a bit. I began to tease the already pissed off reptile by waving my hand in front of its face. With uncanny speed it leapt up in the air and grabbed my thumb in its massive jaws. Out of fear I flung it off of me before it could get a tight grip. Even so, it took off my thumbnail. I imagine it would have taken my thumb had I hesitated.
Soon after, I took the thing back to where I found it and let it go. I wouldn't doubt that the nasty creature is still there today still looking for thumbs. After that I stuck with box turtles.
One of the cool things about collecting snakes was scaring my stepmother's friends with them. My stepmother would invite the same group of friends over our house every month for cards. And every month I walk walk in on them with a snake wrapped around my neck. Even though they must have known it was coming, they would still scream and panic and try to jump out of the dining room windows. Eventually they decided to meet at another house, but it was fun while it lasted.
At one point, much to the chagrin of my father and stepmother, I had as many as ten snakes in my room with me. I had all kinds; corn snakes, florida king snakes, hog nosed snakes, garter snakes to name a few. Back then they would ship them straight to your house from Florida. Of course the more common ones I caught.
One summer day my father took me and my brother to a place outside of Baltimore called the Rocks State Park. There, while my father fished in the large stream that ran through the park, my brother and I scouted for turtles and tadpoles.
My brother, who was a bit farther downstream, began to shout loudly. I ran to see what caused the commotion, and saw the tail end of a water snake slither under a rock in the water about three feet from the shore. Being reckless (and, yes, a little dumb), I reached my hand under the rock and grabbed a slithering coil.
When I raised myself up, I saw that I had the snake by its tail. I held my arm straight out. The snake was almost as long as me; its head touched the ground. As I watched, it drew up. Its head traversed up its body until it got to my wrist where it proceeded to bite me.
My father had witnessed all this and was now running toward me shouting to drop the snake. It didn't take much encouragement. Once the thing bit me I dropped it like a hot potato, then watched it calmly shuffle back into the water.
I noticed that my dad had his knife out. He suspected that I'd been bitten by a cottonmouthed water mocassin, which were, and still are, quite poisonous. Luckily I avoided the knife by displaying teeth marks on my wrist as opposed to two fang marks. But I learned my lesson that day and from that day forth I always looked to see that a snake was none-poisonous before I grabbed it.