2000-12-09 - 20:19 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Postal Romance

A kid friend of mine was the instrument that enabled me to travel the world around. He had a book of blank pages and he was pasting in used postage stamps from all the sources he had access to.

So by trading tops, jack knives and other valuable tradables I began amassing stamps, slowly. I kept them in a cigar box (that's when they were wooden ) and would lay them out on the table and look at the stamps from different places in the world. Strange words, odd values, unknown faces and places intrigued me.

asked my dad for a book to paste my stamps in like my friend did. He was surprised and told me that he had collected stamps as a kid. And he said that he was sure that a real live stamp album would make its appearance before long. It seemed like forever but was probably two weeks and the album made its debut in our house. It had pages with different countries and pictures of stamps of that country. There was a small glassine envelope that had a bunch of these funny little glassine things.

Dad told me to put it all aside until after supper, reluctantly I did so. Eating while thinking about having a real stamp album, something I had not heard about. After supper Dad said, "Let me see your stamps son." I went to my drawer, got my stamps. He was surprised at the number and kind of stamps I had and asked me how I got them. I told him that I got a bunch of stamps in trade for my jack knife and another bunch by trading my dollar Ingersoll pocket watch for them. I told him about trading around with other kids the extra ones for ones I didn't have. He seemed to be very pleased with my activities and then gave me some basic instructions. First one had to determine the country it was from, then try to find a picture of that stamp -- I was ahead of him a bit there. I asked if I should use glue or mucilage to put them in the album. He showed me how to get one of those little glassine things, fold it and touch one end of it to my tongue and then to attach it to the stamp. Then the next step was to determine where I would put it in the album, after doing that to then carefully lick the other half of the thingy (which he called a hinge) and press the stamp and hinge into the proper place in the album.

All of this activity made me truly feel a citizen of the world.

I stayed pretty busy trading back and forth but was beginning to run out of extras (duplicates or dupes), but still would spend a lot of time with the stamps and ask Dad questions about the countries they were from. He and Mom sent away for stamps on approval for me. What a thrill when the first set came to our house, I carefully opened the envelope and extracted three pages of stamps hinged to blank spots on the page. Thinking back it was probably 4 rows of 4 stamps each row. Three whole pages of stamps I had never seen, many of them from places I had not heard about. The three of us looked them over, with Dad telling me that I probably would run into some of them in trading with other kids, then with me asking for this one or that one Dad would write down the prices asked for them. He totaled the column up and then he and Mom figured what they would buy for me that wasn't too expensive. Stamps were removed from their sheets and the sheets and money were put in the envelope and mailed back to the stamp company. One of them is still in business yet today, The Littleton Stamp Company which is still offering different mixtures of stamps for a quoted price.

Dad bought a few packets of mixed European stamps, a packet of African stamps and a packet of South American stamps which he brought home on his return from work on a Friday night. I was running over with happiness and spent the weekend in conference with my stamps and stamp album.

From the packets came duplicates, which I traded with the other kids. They had followed suit and bought hinges from me from an order dad had placed somewhere.

The whole thing snowballed, Mom started collecting airmail stamps, Dad restarted his revenue stamp collection. He bought a big Scotts Stamp catalog which I practically wore out by my constant thumbing through looking for one stamp or another.

Then came the truly fine part of my young life. Scott's catalog was my text book. It gave the name of each country, told its money, gave its square mileage and told what kind of government it had. That in turn led me to checking books out of the library about one country or another that held my interest at the moment.

A boy needs something, some activity approved by parents and the possessions pertinent to the hobby. In my album and Scott's catalog I had the whole world to explore from my secure seat at our table. I knew the names of the leaders of the countries, what country was adjacent to another. Knowldge I gained by collecting stamps helped me in my school work many different ways as well.

Stamps prized highly by us kids were the triangular stamps from other countries, which were novel and strange. Yet today when I make my monthly trip to our nearby post office I will try to get the "lick and stick" commemorative stamps. Not too long ago our United States issued a triangular stamp, the first one in our history. As long as they had them in our postoffice I would buy them and use them when sending out mail.

Most any stamps, paper money or coins can be collected and are, avidly, by many folk. Not too long ago I bought my grandson a piece of old roman money that was in circulation during Jesus lifetime. I also bought him one of the Widow's mites that was, I think, mentioned in the Bible. On the modern side we now have the Sacawagea dollar commemorating the woman who led and helped Lewis and Clark on their exploration of our western lands and now the quarters are commemorative too, each state will have one in its honor, being issued I think, three states a year.

I guess explaining the thrill of motorcycle riding and the bonding between machine and person is as difficult to explain to somone not into it as just how interesting is Postal Romance . . . . .

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