Uncle John's wallet

Aunt Jinx and Uncle John in 1974

In 2009 after Aunt Jinx died and we had her home to clear and sell, we found Uncle John's last wallet.  He died in 1994 but as I have mentioned before, my family were the original savers, recyclers and never tossed anything that "you just might need to use someday."  The wallet, a magnificent  tooled leather piece, was still usable, so no way would it be discarded.  What is perhaps more comical is that we merely had it shipped to MN in the drawer of the antique dresser where it resided.  Uncle John's wallet is still there today along with my Granpap Teofil's wallet and several others. that Jinx saved.  To the mix, I have added a few of my purse style wallets and check book holders that I no longer use but, well, true to my genes, "might want it someday." 

Wallets in the drawer

Surely, "maybe someone will need a wallet someday and these are all like new."  The way things are going, if  our government keeps taxing us and taking our money, maybe wallets will become the next rare collectibles, antiques.  I am almost at that point myself, regarding a wallet as an antique.  I  seldom carry cash, only a few dollars that fit neatly into a small what used to be a "coin purse" into which I can slip my driver's license and ATM/debit card.   I don"t like the purse size wallets that hold  checkbook and all the cards.  I do not carry a checkbook with me at all; who needs that when we have our debit card?  Who writes checks?  We write few now a days.  We do most of our bill paying direct on line and Jerry, still a man with cash, withdraws and spends his money while there is nothing I need that will not be bought with debit card.  When we travel I do tote that along, but it has become passe.  I don't even like to carry much of a purse and find around home less and less need to, so I have a very small shoulder sling, although I do own a wide collection of purses too.  But this is about wallets, and this one of Uncle John's.

Uncle John's last wallet

I can visualize people in  2112 sitting wherever their congregating places might be and discussing this, (if they are still talking then and not texting each other or sticking their fingers in the air and merely exchanging brain waves), "Wow, you have a wallet!  Let me see that!"  To which another would comment, "A wallet---what was that?  What did they do with such things?"  And the eldest in the group might say, "I have read that once men and women carried wallets in which they kept their money and credit cards.." "Money?"  and to all this exchange of wonder, my future descendants could say, "I got this from the estate of my great great Aunt Pat who said it belonged to her uncle who died in 1994, that makes this wallet at least 118 years old.  It is made of something they called leather and the men carried them in their pockets."   Concepts like wallets, money, and even credit cards will be ancient to them and maybe they will not even know what a pocket is.  After all if one has nothing to carry along but an implanted earbud plugged in why would clothing have pockets?  You can continue this conversation along in your imagination and perhaps I am on the breaking edge of a new short story.  But all this thought comes from Uncle John's Wallet.

Somehing else was saved in his wallet that I have been waiting for the appropriate time to share here on the blog.  This is a newspaper clipping from what was the Daily Dispatch in my old hometown of New Kensington, PA in 1951.  Neither the gentleman nor the boy were identified.  I know it was none of my family because of the ages.  Uncle John may have known  the culprits or more likely he  found this amusing.  We laughed at this and thought of several things, first that the man is referred to as "elderly."  Really?  Hey that's not that old! And that would not have been so easily resolved today--the parents would have been litigious and so it would have gone.  But here is the 1951 newspaper clipping--say, that's another thing that is going the way of the wild goose, printed newspapers.  Many of us read online and no longer subscribe to home delivery.  We are hold outs here because Jerry likes the morning paper, sparse as it is, with his morning coffee, but I confess to going online and some days never touching the paper.  Nevertheless, here is what happened in 1951 in Arnold, PA. 

And all this is brought to you today courtesy of Uncle John's wallet in the antique dresser. 

Upper right drawer hold wallets

This dresser came from England and was owned by John's grandfather, the wealthy John R Irwin.  It is stunning and one of four huge heavy pieces to that bedroom set.