This is a slice of my life: I'm sitting at Mom's old desk, which is positioned inside my bedroom closet, which has been turned into a desk alcove to make the most efficient use of space, because I'm all about efficiency, which is important when you're trying to make everything fit. My laptop takes up half the desk. To my right is my off-from-work-day checklist. To my left is the Box of Dennison DeLuxe Gummed Reinforcements. A few inches further to the left is the dictionary stand from Oak Crest Lane, with the 1951 Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, sitting atop it, opened to Page 1332 (Jegaal ... Jeopardy Assessment) and Page 1333 (Jepard ... Jessamy Bride).1 The shelves underneath the dictionary are stacked with books to be blogged, books to read, books I couldn't yet part with, and an old family Bible, or two, with serious binding issues. At my feet is another book I want to blog soon, so that I can subsequently donate it and get it gone from the bedroom, and the Summer 1967 issue of Saucer News. Because of course.
The cats have been fed, so I have a semblance of peace for writing.
So ... "Box of Dennison DeLuxe Gummed Reinforcements." I was around a lot of old office and desk supplies during my teen years. When we moved from Florida to Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford in 1986, my sister and I were entering the house at its peak accumulation of Stuff. From the 1950s through 1980s, my grandmother and great-grandparents had been saving everything, forgetting about half of it, and buying more. There were never yard sales or spring-cleaning events. There were only drawers and closets and shelves and dressers and rooms filled with things. That included office supplies from the 1960s and 1970s, many never or rarely used.
Things got better between 2005 and 2015, when Mom and I — it took a decade of weekend visits — slowly sorted and removed Stuff, trashing things like petrified glue and donating the rest to charity. But it wasn't a clean sweep. Some of the Stuff survived all of the purges and made the westward trip from Wallingford to Aspers in 2015. And then, after Mom's death earlier this year, it made another trip from Aspers to Dover.
And, thus, the matchbox-sized "Box of Dennison DeLuxe Gummed Reinforcements" is sitting here beside me, being just interesting enough to receive some Papergreat love before heading to the landfill or recycling center.
So here's a little bit about Dennison: It was founded in 1844 in Brunswick, Maine, to make jewelry boxes. In 1898, the enterprise moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, where the Dennison Manufacturing Company became the towering center of the local economy, an era described in this 2014 article in the MetroWest Daily News. In 1990, Dennison merged with the Avery International Corporation to create Avery Dennison.
I believe that the woman shown on the back of the Gummed Reinforcements is supposed to be Spee-d-ADA. She appears on other Dennison products of this time period, as you can see on KookyKitsch.com, Wild Goose Chase, and K is for Calligraphy.
Some of those aforementioned websites want to sell you old office supplies.
I'm good, thanks.
Footnote
1. Jegaal? Jeopardy Assessment? Jepard? Jessamy Bride? I can see why the editors dropped a quarter-million entries between the second and third editions of Webster's unabridged dictionary.
1. Who even reads that? I do!
ReplyDelete2. Soon you will need to photo-document the New Room.
When were gummed reinforcements invented?
ReplyDelete