Used to be that everybody smoked cigarettes. As recently as three decades ago (if you count that recent), you could light up anywhere. Magazines had tons of advertisements for cigarettes, movie stars lit up during a heated moment, and it was not uncommon for there to be ashtrays in restaurants, ballparks, and bars (obviously), but also at work, in schools, in the air, and even doctor’s offices. We truly lived in a smoking society.

My family has firsthand accounts with cigarette smoking. Growing up, my Dad, Grandpa and Grandma all smoked; so did my brother up until 2008. My Great-Grandfather, Grandpa and Dad all died of either lung cancer or emphysema. They made my Grandma sick at the end of her life, though she lived a long time. When my Dad died it was personally devastating; his death, complicated by the ravaging cancer and a stroke, still throws me for a loop on certain days. I don’t wish smoking on anyone.

Read more →

Autographed with a dying pen, Dick Williams smiles in his McDonald's style Padres uniform.

In recent years, the Atlanta Braves held a ‘Faith Day’ promotion, featuring performances by Christian rock bands and testimonials from Braves players about how Jesus turned their lives around. This is the same team that, back in 1977, drew more than 27,000 fans for a ‘Wet T-Shirt’ competition. Give me the 1970s, any day. –Dan Epstein, from his great Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging 70s

Pardon me while I go old grouch on you: when I was a kid, back in the tumultuous 70s, baseball was different if you were a fan. For starters, you could typically get autographs from your favorite ballplayer, either at a local department store (as I did, glomming Mark Fidrych’s scribble at the Saginaw J. C. Penny), or, even better, by writing said athlete and waiting for them to send you a little card with their John Hancock.

I collected baseball cards, but I beat the hell out of them, and typically threw away most of the ones I didn’t care about the next year (yes, I do regret that.) Back then, stadiums were weird, cookie-cutter, Astroturf, and somewhat unfriendly to families, as guys would often bring doobies to the bleachers, girls would shake their bra-less torsos, and if there was success or crushing failure, well, the mob would stream onto the diamond, stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down and sending the players fleeing.

Oh, how I miss those days.

Read more →

When people ask me, as they frequently do, if I ever go to garage sales, I like to paraphrase the great beer writer Michael Jackson: “My dear, estate sales are a playground, not a prison.”

What he meant (and he was responding to a question about whether he drank wine as well as all that beer), and what I mean, is that as much as I love estate sales, in the spring my thoughts often turn to the many joys of garage sales.

Now, I don’t just look in the paper for a garage sale, because garage sales, for some reason, promote false advertising. “Huge Sale”, Janice and I scream whenever we drive by a sign advertising what we know is going to be a shitty, small sale with nothing but crap (we also shout out “Huge!” in a Cockney accent, so it sounds like “‘Uge sale, gov’nur!”) Seriously, whenever I’ve stumbled on a sale that I would legitimately describe as ‘huge’, that word is never used, but it is simply advertised as a garage sale, and maybe they’ll add “books” or “household” or some detail. But huge? They’re simply never huge.

Read more →

This old Atlantic mag is a sobering reminder of the dark side of the 70s...

The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70’s!
It’s not reality,
It’s just someone else’s sentimentality…
–Mike Watt, “Against the 70s”

By now you should know that I’m a man who’s fully entrenched in the past. I love reading old books and magazines, wear vintage ties with an outdated four-in-hand knot, and sigh repeatedly when watching Have Gun Will Travel or my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone. The past seems like such a warm and friendly place to me.

But I’m a bit wise with my years as well. Much as I love reminiscing about my conscious first decade (I was born in ’68), I’m aware that there were some, well, some drawbacks, too. When I peruse the old Life Magazines that have such a fascination for me, I see some of the worst of the past as well. The foods were awful, frozen, canned and stuffed into plastic squeeze tubes, and everyone crowing about how delicious this shit could be. Ads for smoking, for the worst beer, with women draped over everything like a new Tigerskin rug. Politics and the world scene may not seem so horrible in hindsight, but at the time it seemed as though Watergate, Vietnam, and others would ruin this country.  Compared to the shit we’re in now they seem quaint. As someday this decade will seem quaint.

Read more →

Though there were a plethora of estate sales this weekend, mostly in the St. Paul area of our Twin Cities, prior commitments and the urge to play some euchre interfered, and Janice and I didn’t actually hit all that many. A strange church sale in downtown, a small bungalow in North Minneapolis, a Bloomington split level, a suburban pad in Wayzata–these revealed only a handful of treasures, such as a Louisville Slugger, an old chair, a set of measuring spoons, and an original Gauguin.

Well, not quite the Paul Gauguin, but an original album cover by an artist who is channelling the spirit of that feisty Frenchman, or is the reincarnated soul of the man, I’m not entirely sure. In any case, visiting dignitary Mike Haeg discovered the work, buried in a pile of LPs, and walked away with a treasure that is both strange and intriguing. Which is part of the joy of estate sales, yes? Read more →

When we travel nowadays, no matter how far away, we remain very close to home. Hop on a jet plane to Rio, to Moscow, hell, probably to Antarctica and you can kept abreast of every drop of rain that falls on your backyard via Facebook, the iPhone, emails. When Janice and I visited Saudi Arabia we were still able to read the Star-Tribune, where I was kept abreast of the Twins 2006 comeback. You just can’t get away from it all.

Not that we want to get away from it all. Quite the contrary: We gripe and grumble if our call to Jupiter doesn’t connect in .05 seconds. Should the email fail to load on our iPad while we ignore the majesty of Yosemite, we will bark and shout and curse the government for its inability to have a national WiFi. It’s ridiculous. As comedian Louis CK says, “everything’s amazing right now and nobody’s happy.” 

Read more →

From St. Paul to Coon Rapids to Summerville, South Carolina. Norwegian ancestry (as evidenced by a pile of cookbooks and a Norwegian/English dictionary), a Japanese gent in Minnesota, to the “Christ haunted South” (in Flannery O’Connor’s words.) A sportswriter, the mother of one of our country’s best comic screenwriters, a nurse, and other mysteries. So pardon the grade school patriotism for a moment, but I’ll be darned if this weekend didn’t make me feel like, well, like this country of ours is one big melting pot.

Of course, this melting pot seems, in this year 2012, to be boiling over at times, especially when elections are on the horizon (though, nowadays, it seems like that ‘horizon’ begins the day after the last election.) To be honest, that’s one of the things I like most about estate sales–the peace. For no matter how different the person in question was from my one political leanings, I have to think that that matters not to them anymore. Right-wing, left-wing, money troubles, family troubles, that leaky roof. No matter. They’re dead.

Read more →

This was once some kid's internet.

There’s a wonderful old joke by our man Groucho Marx that goes, outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

Well, if you’ve got a dog that’s big enough, with your new iPad you can read to your heart’s content, no matter how damn dark it is in that pooch. This weekend, I went to Magers & Quinn bookstore in Uptown to see Zak Sally speak about his latest publishing venture (I do things other than roam estate sales, you know.) Zak writes and draws his own wonderful and peculiar brand of comic, and even hand prints the things with a giant printer he’s got in an old warehouse on the north side of town. Zak lamented the i-publishing world, saying “some person took time and you know, somebody made it.” ‘It’ being the book, of course.

This led me to wonder: what will the estate sales of the future look like, book-wise? When someday a person’s entire library can be held on their Kindle Fire or iPad? Already we’re seeing the demise or shrinkage of newspapers, of magazines, phone books (don’t really miss those), encyclopedias, and even the U. S. Postal Service and its accoutrements, like stamps and postcards. I have to admit, that I’ll be damned sad when I go to future sales and find not a single solitary book.

That day is coming, people. That day is coming.

Read more →