SHOW AND TELL

My sister, Judith, for some years convened social groups at the nearby Community Centre.  The participants were senior citizens, some with strollers, some of them accompanied by carers, some on temporary release from their assisted living.  And many were quite active, in body and mind, and thank you for asking!  The range of activities at the group’s meetings was as wide as imagination permitted and circumstances allowed.

 

On one occasion I was a guest speaker, and took along for a session of Show and Tell a collection of bits and pieces from a lifetime of accumulation - “memorabilia” is today’s buzz word.  Since my bits and pieces were typically as venerable as the members of the group there seemed to be instant rapport, and as the items passed around the group any description or explanation by me was soon overtaken by nostalgic elaboration from the participants.

 

So, here’s a sample of what the “oldies” reminisced about.  By the way, Judith has borrowed the collection a couple of times since, and used it similarly.  There has been no need for my attendance!

 

A Pocket Chess and Draughts Set

 

The playing board of the Pocket Chess and Draughts Set is held in a pocket-sized leather wallet.  Printed on the front of the wallet are the words “With compliments from British General Electric Co Pty Ltd”, plus the further inscription “WE SUGGEST YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SEND THIS TO YOUR BOY ON ACTIVE SERVICE”.  A number of the miniature chess and draughts (paper cut-out) pieces have survived, but neither set is complete.  Printed beneath the miniature board are the words: Patent No 1732/41, so I’m assuming that the set dates from 1941.

 

The leather wallet is somewhat rubbed, and the centre crease of the cardboard playing board has split a little from continual opening and closing, but it’s perfectly functional……..apart from the missing playing pieces!

 

A little mystery:  the “pieces” are in a small envelope which has printed on it some “how to use” instructions.  These describe the board as having slots in each of the 64 squares for the vertical insertion of the paper pieces - but there are no such slots.  So, this board and these pieces do not go together, and somewhere, somehow, there has been a separation, followed by a merger of convenience. 

 

Cut-throat Razor

 

I find it hard to think of a cut-throat razor without simultaneously thinking of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeny Todd, sub-titled The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  The Sweeny Todd story dates from 1846 and has resounded in fiction, theatre and film.  In brief, Todd is a Fleet Street barber who slits the throats of his victims while shaving them, then drops their bodies through a trapdoor to the establishment of his colleague, Mrs. Lovett, who turns the fleshy parts of those victims into the meat pies sold in the accompanying pie shop.  This story has undoubtedly given cut-throat razors a bad rap; but think of the generations of men and barbers for whom the cut-throat was not only a la mode but the only method of shaving.  The safety razor with disposable blades was not invented until 1901.  The cut-throat razor was not feared by its generations of users, although it was invariably handled carefully.

 

The pictured razor was a gift from long-time neighbour, Lydia Guest, and had been owned by her late husband, Ern.  I have few biographical particulars of Ern Guest, and am not resilient enough to tackle the vortex of enquiry that an Ancestry.com search would entail.  Suffice to say that Ern Guest served in the First World War, and that the razor is engraved with the word ERN and the date 1914.  The blade also has the curious engraving: ERN’s HAMBURGRING.

 

When a razor was marked as Hamburg Ring it indicated, apparently, that the razor was a full hollow ground, or “singing” razor.  It may have been manufactured in Sheffield, not necessarily in Hamburg.  This razor, however, also carries the words WALD-SOLINGEN plus an eagle motif, establishing its German provenance.  Moreover, the somewhat battered but nevertheless stout cardboard case has the words MADE IN GERMANY.  And whomever has arranged for the word ERN to be engraved on the blade also had his name impressed into the case.

 

Solingen is known as the “City of Blades” and, today, has a population in excess of 150000.  The city is the home of the Deutsches Klingenmuseum [German Blade Museum] with its collection of scissors, knives, blades and razors.

 

Castlemaine/Maldon Train Ticket

 

Back in the day every train traveller was issued with a ticket for every journey, and the ticket office held pre-printed tickets for every combination of origin and destination, and for first- and second-class, and for special excursions.  So, along the network – particularly the city network - there were huge numbers of blank tickets ready for dispensation.  At the point of purchase they were stamped (equivalent to franking the stamp on a letter), thus designated as good for the one journey only.  There are few items more ephemeral than a spent railway ticket, hence to some they have collectability.  Add to this the universal adoption of today’s pass-card and other technologies, and former railway tickets have an historical appeal.

 

The train line between Castlemaine and Maldon, commissioned in 1884, no longer provides a traditional passenger and goods service: the passenger service ceased during the wartime 1940s, and the goods service closed in 1976.  But community agitation triggered the creation of the Victorian Goldfields Railway, a tourist train, with historic steam engines.  Everyone is a winner!

 

I do remember travelling on the tourist train some years ago, and that must be where the pictured ticket originated.  I can’t accept that it dates back to the 1940s or prior.  Not that anyone with half an eye [what a curious and evocative expression!] would be in any doubt after examining the ticket.  Sure, it has no date stamp, but it has the word “Excursion”, and the heading “C. & M. Rly” – so, even that half eye must see this as a clue to the Castlemaine and Maldon tourist service.

Spurtle

 

Take it from me, and take it from Wikipedia: “A spurtle is a wooden Scottish kitchen tool, dating from the 15^th century, that is used to stir porridge, soups, stews, and broths.”  This one has no markings, hence there’s no way of knowing its age – but it’s not 15^th century!  And it’s not Huon pine, so I can’t claim it for sure to be of Australian origin.  Furthermore, it may never have been used to stir porridge - certainly never around here!   It does seem a little gruelling to research the evolution from stick to spurtle, so there’s nothing more to say.

 

Indian Ink (or India Ink)

 

It’s hard to know where to start with this one.  Indian ink has a number of artistic applications, often underpinned by the fact that it is waterproof, and does not bleed once dry.  Hence, it is agreeably useful, for instance, for black tattoos.   I learn that its non-artistic uses are far more numerous, ranging through the fields of pathology, microbiology, ophthalmology.  And, “in 2002 NASA patented a process for polishing aluminium mirror surfaces to optical quality, using India ink as the polishing medium”.  See the Wikipedia entry on India ink for its full history and uses.

 

While that on-line article points out that India ink “is permanent, unchangeable in colour, and almost indestructible”, nowhere does it refer to the use of Indian ink to mark identification on to garments and items of laundry.  This is the application that is familiar to me and to earlier generations.   The “Directions for Use” pamphlet has a warning re handkerchiefs: “These articles are specially liable to be taken into use after marking without being first properly washed.  They must be washed with soap and water in the usual way, and they must then be ironed or aired before the fire…..”  There are several other instructions, presumably to ensure the permanence of the marking.  I note that the box of ink that was shown and told prefers the name Marking Ink

 

There was a time – within living memory, because I can remember it – when Indian ink was a standard household and office item.  I venture that today it is a rarity. 

 

Phonograph Needles, in Tin

 

My grandfather, Fred Andrews, was a lost soul during his years of exile in the city.  He was a county man: he’d been raised, and worked, on his father’s farm; he had his own (wheat and sheep) farm for more than 30 years; and he had a final few years back on the farm.  But there were some in-between ”lost soul” times down in the city.  He lived with “us” [my parents’ family] for a while, above the business in Richmond.  He helped where he could – his baked rabbits for sale in the delicatessen were a specialty – but he had endless time to fill.  In doing so he frequented the senior citizens rooms at nearby Richmond oval, participating in endless life or death cribbage games.  He also frequented the auction rooms down the road, more than infrequently returning home with some must have item – once it was a crate of well-past-used-by-date bananas.  It wasn’t all folly, however, because one day he struggled home with a table-top wind-up gramophone, plus about a dozen records, for me!  I tell you, that machine and those discs took a beating.

 

For those unfamiliar with the 78 rpm shellac discs of the years before the arrival of the 33 1/3 rpm microgroove discs in the early 1950s, the salient point is that the combination of heavy playing arms and the coarse surface of the disc meant that the gramophone needle “wore out” – typically after a few playings.  So, the needles had to be replaced; and the gear of every record-playing enthusiast included a stock of new needles.  Hence the show and tell item.

 

It is a tin of gramophone needles.  Not your everyday product though – these are a top brand, Columbia.  Columbia was one of the early names in recording history, dating from 1917 in the UK.  As the labelling indicates, these Columbia needles were also branded Duragold; hard to imagine why.  The needles are described as SEMI PERMANENT, with the somewhat deflating afterthought EACH PLAYS 10 RECORDS.  This little tin is beyond cute but, given that it would never have left a cosy indoors environment, it’s hard to explain why it has been invaded by rust.

 

The old gramophone disappeared long ago, the records too, both (thankfully) superseded by later innovation…..although buried in the grooves of those old discs were some surprisingly hi fi sounds – which technology superior to the steel needles was able to retrieve.

 

Arm Bands

 

Silly me!  I thought these ancient men’s shirt arm bands were an old fashioned way of regulating the length of a man’s shirt arms….back in the day when business shirts typically had double cuffs, and were fastened with cuff links, and when the fashion was for longer sleeves to show half-an-inch of sleeve below the cuff of the jacket, then the arm band kept the sleeve showing the required amount of cuff.   And now, with the falling away of the fashion for double cuffs, for cuff links, and indeed for jackets, so the fashion for arm bands has also fallen away.  

 

I’m sure that’s true, confirmed by the show and tell reaction to these arm bands as a thing of the past. 

 

 But their day is not yet done: they have emerged as a fashion item for the female sophisticate.  And they are now Sleeve Garters.  “Sleeve garters are the fashion accessory you didn’t know you needed, they are a must have investment accessory that offer styling options and solutions to our most common wardrobe dilemmas…..”  Okay, what are they?  “Sleeve garters are an elasticated metal band that are used to shorten your sleeves and hold then in place without having to get your garments altered, saving you both time and money!”  Really.  Doesn’t this make them a patch-up for a garment that was ill-fitting in the first place?  No, “You can shorten the sleeve of a garment for a more relaxed look to make it suitable for day time wear or let the sleeves down for a more dressy evening look.  This allows you to instantly alter your garment to suit the occasion without the cost or commitment of permanent alterations.”  But, I’m still concerned that the arrangement will look makeshift.  No, “Simply place the garter over your sleeve, pull up the sleeve to your desired length and adjust the material over the garter to discretely disguise it, no one will know it’s there.  Unless they have read the advertisement.

 

Tilley’s Timid Joe Dog Soap

 

In the time before Coles was a supermarket giant it was a variety store giant, its shops purveying a variety of stuff, but not food and drink.   From its foundation in 1914 it trumpeted the mantra of fixed maximum price for its goods – “Nothing above 2 shillings”, for instance.  As the years went by the signage was prone to change as the “nothing above” amount changed.  Evolution is an unstoppable force: Coles introduced ready-made foodstuffs for the busy housewife, and then small electrical appliances, and then cosmetics. The “nothing above” marketing ploy was gone by 1950.  Moreover, by the mid-1950s the conversion to self-service stores was under way, as was the new focus on foodstuffs.  Coles was morphing into today’s grocery giant.

 

But back in 1950 the variety store format persisted in the Bridge Road, Richmond Coles store – two wide front doors opening into two broad aisles the length of the store (joined by a cross-aisle at the far end); shopping displays along the outer side of each aisle, and a central shopping display between the two aisles; and all merchandise displayed on counters sloping towards the shopper, the counters divided into myriad sections for the numerous “variety” products.

 

It was in this Aladdin’s cave of possibilities, limited only by the budgetary constraint of what was in my pocket, that I sought a Christmas present for my father; and I lighted on this cake of soap – not very large perhaps, not very colourful, but it had a picture of a dog on its wrapper and, in any case, it’s the thought that counts!  It turned out to be the best joke of Christmas, although the part of the story that I don’t remember is whether I was happy to share in the joke or whether I was the butt of the joke.  We had no dog at the time, so I was unable to attempt some passing off explanation – the key words on the wrapper, which I had overlooked, are undoubtedly “dog soap”.  Seventy-plus years on and I’m looking at the wrapper; and I learn that this is not a product to beautify your dog, it’s for “eczema and skin eruptions”. 

 

The soap was never used, and here it is. Furthermore, checking the net I find that Tilley’s dog soap is a product still available, and that there are satisfied customers of 50-plus years standing.   

 

By the way, that same Christmas I bought for my mother a bottle of sherry from the licensed grocer along the street.  He was initially hesitant to sell to a child, even though it was for a good cause, but he knew my folks.  He was apparently prepared to take the risk of licensing law prosecution and the scandal of the accompanying publicity – anyway my money was good.  The sherry provided a certain amount of Christmas Day mirth to counteract the ignominy of the dog soap.

 

Fijian Cannibal Fork

 

Yes, you read correctly.  This object originated in Fiji, and it is clearly a fork.  As to “cannibal”: well, there’s no point in being coy.  This is a fork with which to eat human flesh.  It can’t be disguised that until the Christian missionaries talked them out of it, Fijians of old were cannibals.  Not in the sense of your average householder coming back from market with a couple of choice cuts for the kids, but in a ritualistic sense – the eating of the flesh of tribal enemies by tribal chiefs.  And accompanying the ritual feast was the belief that the chief was too holy to handle the flesh of the dead, so the meat was served to the chief on the fork without touching the chief’s lips. 

 

These ethnological, but nonetheless macabre items, appear in the collections of many museums, but how this particular item surfaced in my show and tell collection is a mystery to me.  There are a couple of chips in what appears to be very hard wood, and two of the prongs have lost a centimetre of their tips.  And there’s the mystery of the loop hole at the top of the handle…..this is anything but an everyday implement, so why fashion a hole for carrying it on a thong?

 

Gary Andrews