Stamp Collecting---a Side Note

I have been collecting stamps pretty much all of my life. Probably started about 10 years of age when I suspect my mother introduced me to a fist full of old stamps stuck to paper---she probably wanted to keep me off that meth. Oh, that's right they didn't have meth just after the WWII. Maybe it was to stop me from picking my nose. I know I did that---and still do---particularly in the nose picking weather.

Through the years, with some interruptions, I have always at least latched on to stamps either by having folks save them for me, and that would include the Schools District when I was the President of the board, and by concerned relatives. At some point I even bought a few in that some of the older ones are hard to find and cash talks. Many great stamps can be had for small money, really.

I know FDR was a big fan of collecting and one can only imagine the amounts he spent to get is Inverted Jenny. I did get a few nice ones and my mother was bought a few of them around town, most noticeably from a Mrs Burlingame. She did scrounge up a few beauties this way and I still enjoy seeing a letter or two around here with her name on them. It was a bonding thing with my mother and I always enjoyed her returning from the Burlingame home knowing I was in for a treat. We'd go over the new stamps and learn the history of each one, many from before the turn of the century---like 1900.

There is some great history there in the stamps--everything from Hitler to the Civil War. The winter days of sorting stamps is one of the few memories I have of my mother in that she died only a few years later. Anyway, I still poke through my stamps on cold winter days, and the poking is rather extensive in that unlike my youth of hundreds of stamps, it is now thousands. Many are just in boxes being saved for the next kid that might want to collect, but I do go through them.

Well, today in my travels I found two ditties of note. One was a French stamp with an engraving that depicted a scene from a spot that only two years ago we stood. Literately, we had been there on our trip to Aux en Provence. This is a small commemorative stamp but it was easy to see where it was. The best part of the trip was the Parade of Costumed folks that occurred the day we were there. Great drummers and exotic participants dressed as characters out of children's story books.

The other surprise was a post card sent from Australia to a fiddle playing friend of ours. On the card was a tune all written out called Bunyip in the Water Tank' In the note it states that a Bunyip is a spirit and I would assume that is an Aboriginal word and part of their mythology. Being a fiddle player myself and Ann a flute player, this was a treasure of some note for it was a tune we have never heard. Today, Ann sounded it out on the piano and it will soon be one of ours. It seemed sad song, a minor tune. Maybe a Bunyip is a sad spirit.

So, once more stamp collecting paid off and somewhere up in the unknown territory my mother will have a little smile.