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[bryant]

I now own two walking sticks. They have sharp metal spikes at the bottom, and nice curved handles. One of them — the one my great-grandfather used as he hiked across Germany — has “Interlochen” carved into the shaft. I don’t know if he did that, during sunsets and sunrises, or if it came that way when he purchased it.

Both of them, both my great-grandfather’s walking stick and my grandmother’s walking stick, have little metal badges attached to the shaft every inch or so. He apparently hiked more places than my grandmother, because he has more badges. Each badge is a new town, or a new sight on the horizon. If I took the time, which I will, I could trace their paths from the top of the stick to the bottom through the mountains of Europe.

As my parents age, I receive more and more of such memorabilia — the diaper pins, Jarvis Wood’s yearly Special Delivery, and so on. I have a lot of objects in my life, but I’ve had very few that I felt protective of until now. Now I own objects that I couldn’t just let go of if need be. Not a bad feeling. But different.

Comments

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

As my parents age, I receive more and more of such memorabilia — the diaper pins, Jarvis Wood’s yearly Special Delivery, and so on.

Hey, did I ever mention to you how Ayer & Son, the ad agency that I believe you said Jarvis Wood worked for, figures prominently in the second half of my dissertation? They took on the task of rehabilitating AT&T's (dreadful) public image in 1907, and succeeded - so well, in fact, that the campaign is often cited as a turning point in how Americans stopped worrying and learned to love giant corporations.

[bryant]

No! That is remarkably cool, and I'd be very interested in reading it sometime. That was certainly the time period during which he was fairly high up in the agency; I'm not sure if he was still copywriting at that point. He was made a partner in 1898.

"After the admission of the new partners, the responsibilities of the business were divided as follows: McKinney was in charge, as before, of the business getting activities: Bradford handled the buying of space and other dealings with publishers; and Ayer, with Wood as his assistant, exercised a close supervision over operations as a whole."