snapshaught sphoto number 6

          This glass marble reminds me of my stepfather.

          My first memory of him:  He was dating my mother.  I was seven.  We were all "going out" as a family to an event (I vaguely remember The Ice Capades but that may have been a different night) I think it was a celebration because I recall all the adults...her, him, Nana, and Papa...were happy and full of loud smiles.  He asked if I'd help him get a tool box from his backseat.

          I accompanied him out to his sky blue 1964 Lincoln Continental in the driveway, he opened the backdoor, and I commented that it was backward.  He laughed and said it was a suicide door...no further explanation.  I'm seven.  Why's it called that?  Because it's backwards.  I didn't think to myself at this point:  Oh boy, living the rest of my childhood with this motherfucker is going to be a real treat if he thinks that's an explanation.  But I did the third-grader's equivalent (shoulder shrug or eye-roll or head shake) and thought "adults sure are stupid".

          Seeing the size of the metal box, painted the same color as the car, I thought he was testing me to either see how strong I was or to see how willing I was to try to pick up something I knew I couldn't lift.  I couldn't tell which test it was by his smile, so I went along with it...grabbed the handle, gave it a tug (it didn't budge) and then watched as he oompfed and grunted it into the house.  It was filled with his coin collection...and probably weighed as much me.

 

          In 1995 he died of heart disease complicated by diabetes and exacerbated by being an obstinate asshole.  I've written about my stepdad before.  Because he was divorced from my mother, after his funeral I took a month off from my military duties, slept in his house, and spent hundreds of hours sorting through and throwing away decades of junk, files, and papers (he wasn't a full-blown hoarder but he kept unnecessary things...like thirty years of credit card receipts).

          This 1¾" (46mm) marble was on a shelf in his bedroom surrounded by other knick-knacks...my last memory of him.

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snapshaught sphoto number 5

          I lived in Mons, Belgium 1993-95.  Summer weather permitting, I occasionally drove west about ninety miles to one of the beaches near Oostend (which I thought at the time was another everything-is-backward-in-French thing, today I read on everyone's favorite chalkboard that there's a historical reason why the farthest western city is named Eastend).

          After a long beach afternoon in 1994, I and my wife-at-the-time had a very nice dinner and stayed in a bed and breakfast in nearby Bruges.  The next morning I rescued this from a flea market vendor who was intending to cut it in half.

          He was running a geode grab-bag: select from a huge pile of over three hundred various shapes and sizes, pay for it, and then he'd halve and polish the halves.  No guarantees that your geode would contain a druzy cavity.  On display were precut and polished halves with beautiful crystals lining the inside pockets (priced double to 20X more than the uncut, rough geodes).

          Although there is a slight score mark on this 2 inch (53mm) geode, it's as perfectly spherical as a naturally formed rock could be.

          The Flemish vendor (who spoke no English) seemed quizzical (het inclusief!) and became rather flabbergasted when I didn't want to take advantage of his saw and grindstone services and couldn't explain myself other than to smile and repeat, dit is goad, as I nodded and walked away.

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snapshaught sphoto number 4

          Last April we stayed in a yurt (because we'd never done it before).  Two mid-week nights were available the following week, so we decided the weather was nice enough and made the reservation (we aren't dedicated foolish enough to lock-in anything over a year in the future...so yurt camping in the Summer or on a weekend would never happen).

          As we headed to Fort Stevens State Park, the weather was normal for Oregon in April: partly cloudy and cool.  We stopped in Astoria, Oregon, to eat and I found this sphere in a second-hand shop.  Slightly larger than 2" (52mm), this hand-blown glass float most-probably was attached to a Japanese fisherman's net a half-century or more ago.

          As it got dark it began to snow.  By the next morning many of the high-passes were closed even though only about two or three inches accumulated on the beach.  We drove the ice and snow covered sand, explored local eateries, and kept as warm as anyone could when camping in below freezing weather.

          Although the yurt had a built-in space heater it also had edge flaps which were laced and tied-down.  One cancelled out the other.  Depending on the strength of the wind blowing through the cracks, the interior temperature fluctuated between 45° and 55° (7-13°C).

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snapshaught sphoto number 3

          One of my spheres was a gift from my fiancée in 2010.  In 2008 we noticed a 2" (50mm) ivory billiard ball in an antique store near McMinnville, Oregon.  I was ambivalent about ivory.  After some weeks of thought and discussion, I realized buying antique ivory would no more incentivize the present and future slaughter of large mammals than would watching 1984-Traci-Lords-porn jeopardize the innocence* of today and tomorrow's sixteen-year-olds.  So I decided that if I ever ran across another antique snooker ball, I'd buy it.

          Two years later, my fiancée was traveling home after a week of working-on-the-road and I was sitting in our living room gazing at my collection.  I thought about the routes she could travel, realized she might be driving through McMinnville, and called her.

          'Hiya'
          'Hi, I was just wondering if you were driving back through the McMinnville area.'
          'Yup, why?'
          'Do you remember that antique mall we visited a few years ago?'
          'uuuuum yeaah?'
          'Well I thought that if they were still open when you got there, could you do me a favor and see if they still have that ivory sphere?  I know it's a long shot...'
          'THAT is so weird, I've got goose bumps.'
          'Huh?  What is?'
          'Do you know where I am right now?'
          'Oh wow.'
          'There goes my surprise.  I'm standing at the check-out counter with it in my hand.  You know it's got a couple cracks, right?'
          'Yea, that's OK.  What made you think to stop?'
          'I was driving past and just remembered talking about it years ago.'
          'Is the din-din din-din Twilight Zone music as loud on your end as it is on mine?'
          'I can hear it much too loudly and waaay too clearly.'

* A once very common quality (even ubiquitous in some parts of society) which, although not yet extinct, is narwhal-rare.  Or is that attitude just the cranky old duffer in me coming out?

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