The Quiddity of Things: Part One

 

When I think about my childhood, I usually come to a point when I remember my old obsessions with certain kinds of objects. Obsessions that I still have, to a certain extent. A lot of them came from old cartoons, old movies, or even contemporary shows of the time that were looking backward. While much of the culture was obsessed with ‘mid-century modern’ or ‘groovy’ or even ‘utilitarian’, I was admiring the products of a slower, more aesthetic age.

Nothing exemplified that like the candle-stick telephone. The almost Art Deco design allowed the user to hold the ear-pierce and the receiver to their personally optimum distance. This type of phone was popular in old black-and-white comedy shorts like shorts like Laurel and Hardy. It might have been common and work-a-day in the 1930’s, but it seemed elegant and unusual to me.

Talking of Art Deco design, the cathedral radio also appealed to me, mostly because of Captain Kangaroo. On the show, Radio was actually a character that could talk back to the Captain. While most of the radios we dealt with at the time were little plastic boxes, the cathedral radio was a full-fledged piece of furniture. Despite its undoubted technical drawbacks, I coveted one for its graceful beauty.

And speaking of Captain Kangaroo, it was also probably the origin of my fascination with grandfather clocks, through the character of Grandfather Clock. The size, the ornateness, the impressive chime of these timepieces in the movies marked the passing hours in fancy mansions and haunted houses alike. For a long while I had to be content with a Green Stamp electrical version that we kept on the TV set.

On a more personal level, I also really wanted a pocket watch. Although wristwatches were definitely handier and more available, a pocket watch had more gravitas and could be taken out and opened with a flourish. Pocket watches were ubiquitous in movies: train conductors, doctors, and other people of authority had them. I wrote a whole post about pocket watches on my other blog,  https://brer-powerofbabel.blogspot.com/2010/08/fantastic-pocket-watch.html. Pocket watches made something of a comeback with the Steampunk movement.

I will have more to say about more of these old items in another post. In the meantime, don’t worry; I am still working on Kren.