My Own “Vintage” Postcards

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Along with the money in that honeymoon album, there were several postcards purchased as souvenirs. The first ones I bought were of the Tokyo Tower, as our first stop on the trip was Japan. I don’t know why I bought so many of them. Maybe they were on sale, or maybe I was just thrilled to be there.


Of the 5 countries we visited, I only have postcards from three of them. The other two are just singular cards that came from the Philippines and Taiwan. Jeepneys were just the way to get around cities. They were born post World War II from the Jeeps the Allies left behind. Driving into Taipei from the airport, we saw this large ornate building off in the distance, but as it turned out, it was our hotel.

Money, Money, Money

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In the scrapbook of our 1978, 5-country, honeymoon trip there were, from each country, a laminated page of spare change and sometimes paper money we picked up in each place. They weren’t professionally done, just two sheets of clear plastic stuck together. All the raised edges of every coin had some sort of green goo. This is probably from a chemical reaction between the metal and glue. All of the bills were impossible to separate from their plastic cocoons, except some of the bills from Taiwan. The ones that survived were the ones that were stuck between 2 other bills, so they stuck to nothing.

I don’t have the inclination to clean all the coins. But they might be worth something, as they are all from the 70s, and there are even some coins from Hong Kong while it was still under British rule. The bills from Taiwan are in yuan, and now their currency is in Taiwan dollars. Maybe I could take them to a coin dealer and see if there might be interest in buying any of this stuff.

Wild Blue Yonder

Another day and another photo album gone through. This one was a mix of things: photos and souvenirs of our 17-day honeymoon trip to Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong & Manila. Also some photos from our visits to Saipan and some random Guam photos, including a couple of airplane photos. But the two really nice photos weren’t mine. One shows two EA-3Bs flying in formation; the other is looking through a cockpit window of a third. I’m speculating that they were done by the VQ-1 squadron photographer. The prints were slightly fading, but endured living inside a photo album from 1978 a lot better than my snapshots.

Hi Mom!

I went through a couple more photo albums today. These were from the 1980-82 era. A lot of visiting family on three coasts: northeast, south, and northwest. Not many saveable photos; just scanned about five. There were a couple visits to national parks, one that I thought I had visited and one that I don’t remember visiting.

After visiting Carlsbad Caverns, I wondered just how many of our national parks I had visited. I came up with 18 of the 63, with 3 being questionable. The Everglades was a question until the second photo album from Florida vacations, where there were 20 or so bad photos of swamps and an alligator under the title card reading Everglades. The one park I didn’t remember was Mt. Rainier in Washington State. Must have been on a visit to big brother Jim’s place. So as it stands, it’s nineteen, with two of them being questionable, but I’m almost positive about Acadia in Maine.

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is iffy. I know I never went up in it, but I’m kinda sure there is a photo I took of the Arch. I do remember St. Louis is where our practically new 1974 Honda Accord’s clutch went out. It was towed to the local Honda dealer, and after hearing our story, they stuck us in next, and we were back on the road in a couple of hours.

Mom at the Meadowlands

But the surprise find was one of my mother. It was taken by a Polaroid camera, and I never owned one. She’s sitting in a booth in the Meadowlands cutting up a cake. Was it her birthday? Was it her last day working at the restaurant? I’m not sure this would be in the early 80s and how did I get it?

Thirty Years Ago…

It was a totally lost weekend. I was out once on Saturday to get my latte and walk all of half a mile before returning home to park on the couch. Sunday I didn’t even make it out once. Mostly on the couch with some seat time in front of the PC. There was a lot of Olympics, scrolling to find something to watch, and sometimes actually watching a movie.

Today I got up, rode the bike for 30 minutes, finished a jigsaw puzzle, picked up the latte, and walked for about a mile. At the end a guy came up and asked how I liked the GTI. He had a Golf R (the high-zoot version), but when it was totaled, he replaced it with a Hyundai Ioniq 5N. We chatted about wrapped cars and other things before heading in opposite directions. I did a little retail therapy and bought a couple new jigsaw puzzles.

I went through two different old-school photo albums, and it is amazing how few pictures were worth saving. Ended up scanning in only 3 pictures from 1993 +/- a year.

Magic

Grandpa’s Old Truck


The GTI returned today from the wizards at PDX Wraps, where they were repairing my “backing into a post” bump in the night smoothed over. They said they were going to have to rewrap the bumper and patch a spot near the spot where bumper and body meet.

Unlike Grandpa’s Old Truck above, the GTI looks like it did when it came out of PDX Wrap’s garage the first time. When I got home I took a look at where the patch was supposed to be; there was nothing there. Did they manage to heat that area up and stretch the vinyl to cover that spot up? Or was it sorcery?!?

Sorcery

Twenty Years Ago…

From the 2006 Volume 13 Issue No. 3 of the Masters Miata Club newsletter, The Driver:

13th Anniversary Dinner

Date: Saturday, February 11th
Time: 6:00 PM
Place: La Maison
Attending: Bill & Bonnie Baugh, Brian & Donna Bogardus, Gail & Miller Butler, Carol & John Haff, John & Jackie Nicholls, Cindy & Stacey Timmerman, Bobbie, & Dave Winkler and Anita Wylds.

La Maison is rated as one of the top 10 restaurants in Augusta and is housed in a renovated 1850s house on Telfair Street. We were given a nice room on the second floor that was just the right size for our group. There was a fireplace along one wall, and we asked our waiter if he could light us a fire to take the chill off the room. He told us it wasn’t a working fireplace; sure enough, there was a tapestry covering the opening, but he would bump the thermostat up a notch or two.

Water, tea, and coffee were included in the meal price, but everything else was cash bar. When the waiter asked if we wanted tap or bottled water, we opted for the latter, so everyone got bottled water. Little did we know, until the check came, that the fancy bottled H?O from Germany or wherever was five bucks a pop.

Of the three entrée choices, most opted for the fish or the steak. We only had one taker on the chicken dish; probably everyone else was scared off by the “stuffed with goat cheese” line, but Gail said it was great. Everyone said their food was great. The only complaints were that the food could have been hotter (probably more a function of trying to serve 15 people at the same time than waiter incompetence) and the chocolate mouse dessert was a little dry.

Partway through the meal, the tapestry covering the fireplace opening flopped to the floor, and a small furry creature was stirring in the corner of the fireplace. It must have been a mouse moving around that knocked the cover loose. Someone jumped up and recovered the opening, and just to be sure, we placed Denny Smith’s empty chair up against the tapestry. Needless to say, our mouse floor show was the talk of the rest of the evening.

After the meal Brian went over and pried back the top of the cover, figuring a nice mouse picture would make a good web gallery entry. Turns out it wasn’t one mouse, but two baby bats. He quickly closed the opening back up. Imagine if those little things had come flying out of there during dinner!