Heaven only knows when & where I got these old cards (which makes me think it was at Georgine’s, where we toss things into boxes quickly), but I do know why I bought them.

First, it was the graphics which grabbed me — vintage graphics usually do. Second was the tiny product advertising for Kitchen Klenzer & Automatic Soap Flakes on four of the cards — cards which had “Meet The Missus” on them (also very intriguing, so let’s call that the third reason).

But reason number four was the real kicker — the corny jokes on them.

1Q: What part of a baseball park should be reserved for platinum blondes?
1A: The Bleachers. Ba Dum Bum!

14Q: What is meant by a joint bank account?
14A: The husband puts in the money — the wife draws it out. Har Har Har

I just knew these cards would be a journey of discovery. Or a silly night at home playing the game — if they all were there, something you usually don’t have a clue about at any sale. So home they came.

In order to know if I had all the cards — or indeed all the parts of the game — I needed to look at the cards. I have 48 of them. If there were only 22 pairs of question & answer cards, and only four of the “Meet The Missus” cards, then all I need is question card #4, and answer card #15. Am I only missing two cards from the deck? (Hey, no jokes about me not playing with a full deck!) Or is there more to this game?

Time to turn to the Internet.

Quickly I discover this is a rather rare set of cards. It belongs to a 1937 game, of which there were at least four versions, according to Kovels. As Kovels doesn’t offer much in terms of description, and has no photos, I can’t even begin to guess which — if any — my cards belong to.

My search continues…

I discover that the Meet The Missus game was in fact an advertising premium for The Fitzpatrick Brothers (of Chicago, Illinois) who sponsored a radio show of the same name. The show was the 1934 brain-child of Thomas Kivlan, a salesman for Chicago’s WBBM. A young Tommy Bartlett was the show’s host — yes, that Tommy Bartlett, of the famous water-skiing show & other attractions in the Wisconsin Dells. This is exciting to me because I’m originally from Wisconsin, and I’ve been to The Dells & Tommy’s attractions many times. I love discovering hidden connections in things!

While many may remember Bartlett for his radio days at WBBM hosting Welcome Travelers with Bob Cunningham, Jim Ameche, and Les Lear, Bartlett’s early radio fame had much to do with Meet The Missus.

Meet The Missus was a daily radio show, on at 3:00 in the afternoon in 1937, which catered to housewives. It quickly became so popular that spin-off shows, such as The Missus Goes to Market, were created. By 1940 Kivlan had gone from salesman to advertising executive — and Tommy Bartlett had become “the housewife’s pinup boy”.

The Missus radio shows were, as my cards indicate, corny. It’s not just my hip 2008 mentality being cruel to some old time radio shows — even Time in 1940 called them “the cutest, corniest radio programs in the U. S.” But the shows were wildly popular. The Time article says:

In its early career on the air, The Missus Goes to Market opened 10,000 new outlets for Automatic Soap Flakes. Similarly successful, Meet the Missus has attracted a million requests for a card game advertised on the program, and pulls 3,000 letters a week. Reveling in his success with the matrons, young Tommie Bartlett earns $22,000 a year, lives handsomely in a duplex apartment on Lake Shore Drive. A feature of almost every berry, corn and apple festival around Chicago, Bachelor Tommie has so far received 20 proposals of marriage, inherited $5,000 from one mike-struck listener.

Did you catch that part about the million requests for a Meet The Missus card game advertised on the program? Me too. But what was this game exactly? Do I have a complete one? And, if so, which one?

I continued to search. And then I found it — at least the cards look identical to mine.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m missing (at least) the game board (which is supposed to be made of heavy paper, measuring 18 inches square when unfolded), and the instructions (which were printed on the back of the mailing envelope). But that’s still not the worst of it.

It’s not just that I’m currently unable to play Meet The Missus, even if I’ve grown to adore it more minute by minute as I discover more about the game, but seeing those nifty gameboard graphics just makes me itch all the more… I need it, you see. The $150 may be entirely reasonable given its scarcity; but I don’t have it. And so that means I am unable to really meet this Missus.

Pooh.

But, if the Tommy Bartlett Show could continue this year, it’s 55th year, despite there being no more lake for a water show (Lake Delton literally vanished in 15 minutes this past June), then this collector can keep her spirits up and her eyes down, looking for more pieces of this old vintage game.

You can learn a lot from Tommy Bartlett, a man who never water skied yet started a water skiing show — and ended up in the Water Ski Hall of Fame. OK, so the guy slipped on a pair of water skies at his 70th birthday party, but still…

Bartlett himself was said to be a collector. Not just of tourist attractions and things to put in them (like one of Russia’s three spare core modules for the space station Mir, which is a main attraction at the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory), but of paperweights. In that old Time article, it was said that Bartlett listed lawyers’ offices, barbershops, & funeral parlors as the places he haunted, considering them to be the “best bets” for adding to his collection of (at that time) 150.

Maybe that’s where I’ll start my searches for the missing parts of my Meet The Missus game.

*****

Side Note: Tommy Bartlett died September 6, 1998 at the age of 84. It’s rather fitting as that was a Labor Day weekend, which is the end of the show season in the Wisconsin Dells. It is purely coincidental that this, another Labor Day weekend, is when I decided to dig through the box that had these cards in them & do my research. However, the serendipity, as it usually is in collecting, is delightful.

I’ve said before that it’s impossible to collect meat in the traditional sense unless you’re going the well-preserved jerky route, but when it comes to any food-based ‘Of The Month’ club, the definition of ‘collecting’ can be shifted into something a little more transient. Does a collection of something need to exist permanently, or does every item need to exist at the same time? Does the ‘object’ in question need to be in your possession, or can it be a well-remembered experience within a theme? Are roller coaster enthusiasts who pursue upside-down thrills across the U.S.A. any less ‘collectors’ than someone who has a drawer full of matchbooks?

Of course, all of this philosophical meandering always leads me to one thing : bacon. I’m known as something of a ‘bacon freak’ among my comrades. For much of high school, I ate what I called ‘The American Heart Association Lunch’ - a whole lot of bacon on a buttered roll, which remains a favorite snack even today. Friends have gifted me with bacon-themed wallets and band-aids and shirts, and it’s pretty much not a complete day until I have a bit of the hog. It was a stroke of bizarre coincidence when I dated a few vegetarian girls in a row, so my friend Dan (who’d later become a vegan) deftly suggested that I hide bacon in my cheeks when I’d kiss one of them in an effort to convert them back to the meat-side.

It wasn’t as successful as I’d imagined it might be, and I stopped listening to Dan.

So, in my never-ending quest for bacon delights, I came across no less than three different Bacon Of The Month clubs. My potential favorite of the three presented me with the slogan ‘Bacon is Meat Candy’ - which I couldn’t agree with more. And, in honor of today, the Second Annual International Bacon Day, I asked Bacon Of The Month Club and BaconFreak.com proprietor Rocco Loosbrook how his Bacon Of The Month club started.

“It’s kind of one of those dumb luck situations that you just stumble onto. I was on a business trip in Kentucky, so of course I wanted to go out for some breakfast to experience some of that real ’southern hospitality’. Anyway, I ordered breakfast and when the waitress served it, I immediately noticed that the bacon was absolutely huge, all thick and plump and sticking way out of the breakfast sandwich that I ordered.”

Thus began Rocco’s growing love affair with bacon. Well, REAL bacon - the uniquely hand-prepared and loved bacon, not the generic, inconsistent and water-fattened store-brand stuff. “I bought some for myself before I left and took it home and started sharing it with friends, relatives and colleagues. Everybody that tried it absolutely ‘freaked’ - thus the name ‘Bacon Freak’ was born - and they all insisted that I go back as soon as possible and get a bunch more. It wasn’t long after that that I was in the bacon business.”

So, like a lovingly crafted mixtape of meat, subscribers are treated to month after month of expertly crafted bacon. I’ve always loved the surprise that comes with any ‘Of The Month’ club - you might not love every single item that comes along, but the exposure to the unusual or those things that you’d otherwise not try is where the value lies, and when you experience something heavenly, it’s worth all of the trial and error in the world.

While the only bacon that I’ve ever collected into my meat-xperience has been ‘salt’ or ‘maple’ in nature, I’m informed that the full range of bacons extends far beyond this limited spectrum. “Each piece of bacon is hand rubbed with various flavors such as cajun, apple cinnamon, brown sugar, vanilla bourbon or sun dried tomato to ensure that you get a burst of flavor when you take a bite.”

Loosbrook’s personal favorite bacon is, understandably, his own creation. “Boss Hog Bacon is sugar cured and hickory smoked. Our dry cured bacon will not shrink like packing house bacon because no water is added or used in the curing process. We use a time-honored secret formula and you can certainly tell the difference in taste - this bacon has sweet and hammy pork flavors, boasts an intense flavor and the meat is succulent. Finally, a new bacon that is bold enough to stand up and say, ‘Eat me’.”

This is followed by their Bourbon Street Cajun Bacon and Coastal Caliente Smoked Jalapeno Bacon, so if you’re looking to sample some bacon before you dive head-first into a monthly experience, this is the way to go. This is a man passionate about his meats. For him, it’s about contrast : “The reason why Bacon Freak bacon is so perfect to me is because we have all had bad bacon, which makes good bacon even more exciting.”

Gourmet food it not an inexpensive taste, as most are produced in small, hand-crafted batches, so Bacon Freak offers a selection of options which all include two packages of bacon delivered safely and swiftly to your doorstep once a month, for different spans of time. You can commit to a full year of bacon, or you can join on a month-to-month basis. Either way, you’ll never have to leave the house in search of bacon again, and you even get a neat bonus package, including a t-shirt (in case you DO need to leave the house), recipes, games and a bacon air freshener. Of course, you can buy things in regular quantities also. For some, bacon isn’t as common an event as others. Let us mourn for those people.

Loosbrook’s clubs don’t stop at bacon though, as the site also offers steak, jelly, sausage, ribs, lobster, olives, barbecue sauce and ham - all on a monthly basis, each one a collection of sensory delights that can be enjoyed legally within your own home. I’m a firm believer that any food that you don’t have to put your shoes on to get is good food, so swing on by Bacon Freak and consider sampling some of the most versatile of all meats.

I have been told by friends and associates that I have a lot of collections. They are correct, but many have just ‘happened’ over the years. For example, mother-in-law gives me a Roseville vase and we begin to add to the grouping. Or my daughter brings me a teapot from a trip to France and I start up another collection. A farm auction that features lots of primitives offers up a box of glass paperweights, for ‘cheap’, and I raise the paddle. Voila! A new collection is started.

But if I had my ‘druthers’, I’d love to collect high-end jewelry.. And I have no doubt who the pieces would be from – the incredibly talented Rene’ Lalique. Lalique lived from 1860 to 1945 and his works were in two very distinctive styles: Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Two of my all-time favorites! He was well-respected as a jewelry designer and maker but also renowned for his goldsmithing and glass making. He started using glass in his jewelry as early as 1890. In 1908 he was commissioned by Coty to design a range of scent bottles, and from then on he concentrated exclusively in glass.

As long as this is a dream sequence, I think I’ll select several treasures to start my collection. Lalique’s jewelry is very dramatic, works of art really. His pieces were comprised of a wide variety of materials. One of my favorites would have to be this this fantastic Grasshopper necklace, made of horn and pearls, circa 1902.

Another favorite is this romantic “Kiss” pendant, from 1904, made of gold, enamel and rock crystal. I can almost picture this on a gold chain, entering a room, all heads turning.

And who could resist this Water Lilies pendant made of gold, glass and opals. It’s breath-taking and would dazzle my friends and family. Of course, it would make the codicil to the will a lot more difficult. Both of my daughters and all three granddaughters would be drooling over this one!

But the best of all would be this incredible Dragonfly corsage ornament (circa 1897.) Made of gold, enamel, chrysoprase, moonstones and diamonds, it is a show-stopper. Of course, we are talking a ‘price is no object’ scenario.

Maybe if I reminded hubby that my birthday is only 8 months away, he’d break down. (But, it would probably be another type of break down.) Or I could say that if he bought me one of these I would NEVER ASK FOR ANOTHER GIFT, EVER. But he’d know better.

Well, time to wake up and go back to the real world. While I do hunt in antique stores, at auctions, and estate sales regularly, not one of these masterpieces has surfaced. Wish me luck in my continuing search!

When it comes to a historical collection, John Lattimer had a doozy. A sword belonging to Ethan Allen. The bloody collar worn by Lincoln during his last moments. A portion of Napoleon’s, um, remains. Letters written by Lee Harvey Oswald. Nazi suicide paraphernalia.

Some of Lattimer’s collection was built by being in the right place at the right time. By trade, Lattimer was a urologist, but during World War II service as a medic he became an expert on gunshot wounds and battlefield surgery. Being in the right place at the right time, Lattimer was in Nuremberg after the end of the war, but in time for the Nazi war crimes trials. He was there, treating Nazis according to Geneva convention requirements, when Hermann Goering committed suicide rather than being executed. The ampule that contained the poison taken by Goering is in Lattimer’s collection. His mastery of ballistic wounds came to great use decades later, when he was asked to review the evidence in the John F Kennedy assassination. Lattimer’s collection grew with ephemera from the event, and he gained notoriety for announcing that Oswald was the only shooter, and fired the shots that killed Kennedy.

The rest of his collection contained bits and pieces from the edges of history. Every article on Lattimer and his collection drops names: Lindbergh’s goggles. Custer’s coat. W.C. Fields’ hat (at right). According to a 1994 interview in the New York Times: “I have four degrees signed by Nicholas Murray Butler,” said Dr. Lattimer, referring to the late president of the university who became his patient. “I also have his prostate in a bottle.” Lattimer’s collection also included medieval weapons, armor, and relics from pre-American history. “Eclectic” is an excellent word for Lattimer’s collection, in the fine Victorian defintion, as a positive and honorable description of a fine collection of odds and ends.

Sadly, last year Lattimer passed away, but after reaching a respectable age of 92. His collection, however, lives on and remains in his estate, in the care of his daughter Evan, seen at left. Lattimer, unfortunately, did not make preparations for his collection after his passing, as all good collectors should. Evan has been left with the task of deciding what should be kept, what should be thrown out, and what should go to museums. It’s a difficult task: her father kept poor records, and some possible tragedies have happened. She took some broken, nondescript chairs out to the curb. Too late she realized they may have come from Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated: a junk picker had already grabbed them from the yard. Lincolnania that was documented and saved will be auctioned off in November, but more than a year after Lattimer’s death, Evan is still trying to make headway. Lattimer’s drive to collect the things that interested him was a driving force in his life, and it’s too bad that the collection will suffer so in his death. Let’s hope Evan handles her father’s collection well, and his years of collecting and archiving will be one of his greater legacies.

I have a lot of stuff in the garage. A lot. It’s taken over a corner of the garage and begun to spread like kudzu into the area designated for the lawn mower and stepladders, threatening to annex the hard-fought territories of the rooftop vacation carrier. Before my blossoming collection goes too far, I’ve started to trim it.

Working under the simple adage, ‘You can’t take it with you”, I’ve started to hone my collection down. I mean, it’s not even a collection, aside from the sense that I approached everything there with the thought that “I can use this someday in some art project that I haven’t even fathomed yet, but when I come up with it, boy howdy will I be glad that this thing is around!” Unfortunately, the raw materials for my ideas (whether they exist yet or not) seem to encompass the category of ‘noun’. If you can touch it, I probably have some of it in the garage.

A lot of this ‘collection’ is books. I work at a library, and we have to throw out a hundred or so books every day, on average. It’s just a necessity of smooth functionality, and even with that many going the way of the discard pile, our Biography and Reference rooms are starting to look like my little corner of the garage.

Here are five books that I found in the garage, and why I probably rescued them.

1. Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #14 : The Whispering Statue

It’s undeniable that cover art for most of the Nancy Drew series during the 1960s and 1970s was masterful. They’re expertly composed, striking and mysterious - always with a strange aura of suspense. Almost all of these can be credited to an artist named Rudy Nappi, who also happened to be one of the finest pulp cover painters of the era. So, while Nancy Drew dealt with 1940s era thrills and innocence, Nappi’s other covers for titles such as ‘Girl-Hungry’ and ‘Apprentice Virgin’ were nothing of the sort. His transition between the two themes was seamless, and maybe a little sinister, but always appropriately so.

I collected this book because I’d recently seen Nappi’s Nancy Drew covers transformed into handbags and blank journals at a craft fair. While I possess none of the necessary skills to make these things, I remain confident that I can do SOMETHING neat with Nappi’s beautiful artwork.

2. Duck Tales : Webby Saves the Day

Okay, I admit it : I used to run off of the school bus every day, push a blank tape into the VCR and record Duck Tales (and sometimes, the abysmal Super Mario Brothers Super Show). I don’t remember what about Duck Tales thrilled me, but I was a devotee. Perhaps these were the first inklings of my eventual love for comics, as the original Carl Barks comics about Scrooge McDuck’s Duckburg are regarded as some of the finest combination of art and storytelling in the history of comicdom.

Barks’ influence can be felt throughout everything that came after him, most notably, Star Wars. He’s had a street named after him, and even an asteroid. While I’m not sure how many original Barks elements made it into the cartoons, I’m aware that much of it was simplified for the afterschool audience. Instead of McDuck’s Money Vault being a bustling office building (which Barks drew out in detail, functions and all), the cartoon turned the Vault into a big swimming pool of coins. Still, Barks’ remained at the core of this, which is probably where my love came from.

It didn’t hurt that the NES Duck Tales video game was endlessly awesome. Piloting Scrooge McDuck through haunted castles, mines, outer space, the Amazon and snowy mountains with nothing but his cane for a weapon was stupendous. I’ll go back and visit anytime.

3. Demian by Herman Hesse

I have a collection of yellowing paperbacks which I keep for the express purpose of making me look smart.

Does it need to be more complex than that?

For some reason, I like to collect these intellectual titles in paperback form, and I much prefer it if they’re beat up and well-read looking - not so much to imply that I’ve been doing the well-reading, but there’s a certain casualness about a beat up paperback of Camus’ The Stranger, or Carson McCullers’ ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’. It says, “yeah, I read these sexily intelligent books - what’s the big deal?” No gilt edges and fabric binding perched high atop mahogany shelves - this is the down and dirty of literature. New books come with a sense of obligation, a command for you to break the binding and read the innards.

Old books have had their lives already, so anything I share with them is just a bonus. Despite the many similarities between my views of literature and romance, the previous sentence does not imply that I feel the same about my romantic conquests.

4. The History and Technique of Lettering by Alexander Nesbitt

I use lettering resources regularly - especially older ones. Since fonts seem to come in trends and waves, some really great and interesting letterings are lost to the ages and haven’t successfully made their way to a single reliable source on the internet for reference - at least not one that’s satisfied my need for letters.

As a comic artist, I letter my sound effects separately and Photoshop them in later, since drawing proportional letters is an exacting science. Of course, I use a lot of the bombastic, cartoonish cartoon letters to express my hilarious onomatopoeias, but sometimes a flowery, delicate ‘THWACK!’ imparts the scene a lot clearer. Even the completely unnecessary sound effect can be placed for a great deal of hilarity - the act of grabbing something isn’t usually an audible action, but adding the word ‘GRAB!’ to the scene can add a whole new layer of strange veracity to a scene.

If you’re a synaesthetic like me, sounds have shapes - so getting the lettering just right is essential. I pair leafing through these books with my semester of Typography studies and I get some pretty neat results. At least, I think so. Business logos from the 1920s through 1960s are a favorite inspiration of mine.

5. Max Headroom : 20 Minutes into the Future, a picture book of the film written by Steve Roberts

As opposed to the heightened intellect of Demian, the storybook novelization of a movie is the lowest possible form of literature. As far as I’m concerned, it serves no intelligent purpose, and there’s no art or skill behind the creation of one. It’s this angry bafflement, of course, that made me pick this one up. If you enjoyed the movie, watch it again. Don’t read a book where the same stuff happens, but with even more exposition. Did you not get it the first time?

What scares me most is that I recently came across a copy of the ‘Sex and the City Movie’ picture book novelization for adults, and now I’m sure that the universe is about to destroy itself in the worst possible way.

Independent from that disgust, Max Headroom was a mysterious character to me while I was growing up - a little creepy, but very emblematic of the 1980s, whether we knew it or not at the time, and he is a science fiction hero, after all.

The garage is a strange, deep place, but everything serves a purpose, and remains part of an interconnected web.