Ephemera I wish I still had

Obviously, I've saved hoarded a lot of paper stuff over the decades, as witnessed by this blog. Inheriting family papers that weren't otherwise wanted added to the pile that I'm trying to reduce and "resimplify." But there are some things that I wish had been hoarded, or saved or tucked away in a box. I think that might have been more likely if I hadn't moved a dozen times since 1980. There are no more family attics or cellars that could hold dusty treasures of the past.

These are things I think about sometimes and that, for the most part, can never be retrieved. It's interesting how many of them are from between ages 7 and 12. 

• The psychedelic posters that Mom had on her bedroom walls in Rose Valley as a young woman. I wrote in 2023 about my quest to rediscover that vibe.
• Circa 1981, my Pappy took me for a walk one afternoon and bought me a digest-size Richie Rich comic book at a corner family store. I wish I still had it.
• I also wish I still had the comic books my parents bought me during a multifamily trip to the Jersey shore in the late 1970s. I was never much of a comic book kid growing up, but I have fond memories of that trip and those comics, which included Star Wars, the Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom.
• A "newspaper" I wrote in third grade on an 8½-by-11 sheet of paper. The lead story was Buddy the cat upsetting a tray of cooling cookies in our kitchen. Dad made photocopies of it at work, and I mailed some of them out.
• Also in third grade, I wrote a short sequel to Watership Down for an assignment in class.
• And my third-grade class group photo with Mrs. Winston, taken on a sunny day outside my Clayton, New Jersey, elementary school. (I really need to do a post on that school. I can't believe I haven't yet.)
• A short horror story I wrote while in fourth grade. I don't think it was for an assignment.
• A blue-cover notebook that I filled with the details of a D&D world I created circa 1982, complete with maps and details about the inhabitants.
• My college newspaper clippings from The Daily Collegian, most of which were sportwriting. I kept them for the longest time, in case I needed them for job applications. But eventually, along came a move or pruning — I can't even remember which one — that they didn't survive. It's not like they took up much space.
• One of those Scholastic Books or Weekly Reader order catalogs that we happily anticipated each month during elementary and middle schools. 
• Monster finger puppets I made circa 1979.
• In the late 1970s in Clayton, my friend Mike and I would use color markers to draw pictures of the Phillies and list out their starting lineups. 
• In the early 1980s, I had a small metal box full of Phillies newspaper clippings and other Phillies-related ephemera. 
• Some of the elaborate spaceship, tank and airplane drawings I made as a kid in the early 1980s. I spent a lot of time drawing through middle school.
• Infocom game boxes and also the box for Ultima IV that had the cloth map and other trinkets inside.
• Booklets I created on my Commodore Plus/4 and printed out on its dot-matrix printer.
• Early 1980s copies of Sunday Grit featuring full coverage of the previous day's Little League World Series championship game in Williamsport.
• A cookbook that my first-grade class (Mrs. Miller) in Montoursville compiled, featuring family recipes from all of the students. Mom contributed "Mommy's Favorite Hamburger Hash," which, to the best of my recollection, was ground beef, cream of mushroom soup and chopped-up hard-boiled eggs poured over toast. 
• School yearbooks! I only have my 12th-, 11th- and eighth-grade yearbooks. I wish I had others. I know I had fifth- and sixth-grade yearbooks from C.E. McCall Middle School, but can't fathom why they were tossed.

John Bressler Otto, plasterer

As a complement to last week's post about an increasingly less likely possible family excommunication, here's a small newspaper advertisement for the business of my great-great-grandfather, John Bressler Otto (1837-1906). 

It's from the July 28, 1887, Hazleton (Pennsylvania) Sentinel and states: "John B. Otto, Plasterer and dealer in plastering material. Cornice Work a Specialty. Office on Laurel St., Diamond Addition."

I learned that he was a plasterer from his death certificate. Various tidbits of information have now allowed me to piece together a little bit of John Bressler Otto's timeline (complicated by there being a lot of John B. Ottos in Pennsylvania!):

• 1837: Born in Hegins, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, of which his grandfather (William B. Otto, 1761-1841) was one of the early pioneers.
• 1863: Was a private in the volunteer 173rd Pennsylvania Regiment, Company F, during the Civil War. The regiment participated in the pursuit of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, from July 12-24, following the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
• 1869: Living in Hazleton when my great-grandfather, John Algernon Otto (1869-1963), is born.
• 1887: Living and working as a plasterer in Hazleton
• Sometime in the 1890s: Family moved to Allentown
• Late 1901: Family moved to Easton, where he was buried in 1906

Upon further review, I think this timeline makes it extremely unlikely that John Bressler Otto was the "John B. Otto" who was briefly excommunicated from First Reformed Church of Easton in 1903. I don't think he could have become a deacon after moving there so recently. I'm still very glad I did that post, though, because it's a great story that should be remembered.

Oddball movie connections

I love oddball connections or inspirations that people have in jumping between wildly different movies. So the above comment that I saw last week on Facebook really made me chuckle. It must be the first (and only?) time that the corny and overlong Children of the Corn horror series led someone to Godfrey Reggio's non-narrative and meditative documentaries Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002).

Ashar and I have our own running joke surrounding Children of Corn. On August 14, 2022, we were watching the 1984 original — the one where Courtney Gains runs around yelling "Interlopers!" — and making fun of how bad it was, with its idea of a deity that walks between the rows. Then we got hit by a monsoon with hail and straight-line winds that tore out a huge tree in our front yard and scared the hell out of the cats. 

Ever since, Ashar and I have joked that if it's too dry and we need to summon some summer rain, we should watch one of the Children of the Corn movies. I have the one with Naomi Watts on standby, just in case.