The Longing of Days Gone By

No, not getting all nostalgic for old relationships and past loves or the onion rings I so loved from Tizen's Dairy on Silver Springs Boulevard.

I reflecting on, of all things, advertising memorabilia.

When I create art, which I do every day, I have to look up and get up from my desk lest I get overly tired and supremely cranky. Today my eye caught an old thermometer I have hanging on my studio wall. I haven't noticed it for a while, and it has "Staebler & Son, Good Coal," on it, along with the address of 115 Depot Street, and a charmingly simple phone number of 2-6578. No city. Nothing else. And the thermometer still works.

I have loved advertising since I was little. I collected matchbooks, old magazines, advertising cards, post cards – literally anything that advertised a product or business. No big surprise that I had a 22-year career with a newspaper, and started out in...advertising, creating it for businesses of all kinds who supported the print media king of the day - newspapers.

Now that I have changed my career to that of creating my own art, I still have bits and pieces of advertising on my walls and in little boxes and drawers of desks that remind me of days gone by, when print advertising was the only way to get your business out in front of people who would buy your product. There was no radio to speak of, no television, no internet and nothing but magazines, newspapers and the best of all advertising ploys - the giveaways. Smart businessmen looking to promote their business to more levels than their own communities would print their names and numbers on fans, thermometers, wooden crates, pencils, pins and various other doo-dads that people picked up and used in their daily lives. Giveaways from commercial merchants are still in use today. And even if I don't need that ballpoint pen, notepad or frisbee, I will flock to commercial vendors at art festivals and grab up anything free they give out, just to keep it all alive for me.

I don't have nearly as much advertising memorabilia on my walls as I used to. I had framed grocery receipts, old advertisements for hair shampoo and laundry soap, and plenty of "Black and White Scotch" terriers on the walls. I had old postcards advertising soaps, perfumes and exotic locations. I still have a few things hung up, but certainly not as many as before. I still have a fascination for wooden crates, with the printing printed into them, and have made them into shelves, cabinets and have them nailed into my studio wall in a wood mosaic. Whomever has this house after I pass onto another plane of existence is going to wonder what in the world ever possessed me to use all this old wood on the walls....

But for now, and hopefully many more years, I'll be happy with all my old bits and bobs around me. They remind me of a much simpler time and place, and, although I didn't live in the 30s and 40s, I would have loved to have seen it. And I would have bought coal from Staebler & Son.