©This story is property of The CyBurr, the online version of The Burr,
A tribute to four
people and the objects of their collection
Story by Katie Hilbert
Photos by Rachel Kasunic
“WISH I WERE AN OSCAR MAYER WEINER”
When Jamie Davis was 12 years old, she joked with her family that she would grow up and drive the Oscar Mayer Weiner-mobile after seeing an article in the newspaper.
Little did the junior classics
major know the innocent joke she made as a child would lead to a collection of
various Oscar Mayer Weiner memorabilia. After
The collection has grown to include Oscar Mayer Weiner hot wheel cars, a cookbook, a lard bucket, a signed letter from the vice president of the company dated 1956, a picture of the three men who originally started the company, a small piggy bank, “weenie” whistles, an Oscar Mayer Beanie baby and even a big stuffed Oscar Mayer Weiner mobile.
The stuffed Weiner mobile is the
funniest item in the collection,
“You don’t know what to think of it,” she says laughing. “It’s just so big and orange.”
Her father discovered it at a flea
market, and it cost about $2. The surprise was waiting for
“It was just sitting in the living
room, so I’d walk in the door, and the first thing I’d see was this huge
stuffed thing,”
Although she says she told her father to stop buying her Oscar Meyer Weiner memorabilia, she received a cookbook last Christmas.
“I don’t really like hotdogs,” she says, laughing.
A KID AT HEART
Matthew Shank has had a connection to collecting since childhood. Or perhaps it is a connection to his childhood that makes him a collector.
Shank, an English department instruction, has a collection of about 400 Batman comic books and about 60 autographed baseballs.
Shank collected Batman comic books as a child, but at some point, he says he threw most of them away.
“I could kick myself now,” he says. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to collect all the Batman comics from my childhood that I remember. So, I have probably most Batman comics within about a 20 year period.”
His home is decorated in other collections too.
“When people come over to the house, they always say, ‘You have such neat things,’” he says.
The items people admire are a good conversation starter and a fun way to decorate, Shank says.
His office, for example, is a hodge-podge of sports memorabilia, with a focus on baseball.
The room is decorated in an organized clutter, causing people to stop and let their eyes wander over the forest green painted walls adorned with baseball pennants, decorative plates painted with pictures of famous baseball players and framed Sports Illustrated magazine covers from the ’70s.
On the left side of the room, another of Shank’s collections is displayed. Above an olive green couch are about 60 autographed baseballs housed in two glass cases.
“I try to collect ones that are from Hall of Fame players,” he says. “I really haven’t gotten any for a while because I got most of the ones I wanted, and I guess I’m waiting now for more players to make the Hall of Fame, and then I’ll maybe get some of the more recent ones.”
BOTTLED HISTORY
All it took was a few 1950s soda bottles to pique Brian Gray’s interest.
In the seventh grade, he discovered them at a friend’s house in Brimfield.
“I was out there in the woods with (my friend), and we stumbled upon this dump with old bottles in it,” Gray says. “And it was kind of like finding buried treasure. I thought it was neat how something could sit there for 50 years and be left alone.”
Gray, freshman fine arts major, says from that point on he had collected bottles. His collection has grown to include about 800 to 1,000 antique glass bottles of varying types, sizes and colors.
The bottles are cylindrical, rectangular, shaped like onions, cones and pyramids. Gray also has a bottle shaped like a Victorian boot, one shaped like a log cabin and one shaped like a coffin.
“I have medicine bottles, some ink bottles, sodas, mineral waters, flasks and some whiskey bottles,” he says.
Medicine bottles are his favorite because of their outrageous claims.
“I have a bottle called ‘Cure for Asthma.’ They don’t even have a cure for that now.”
The words “electric” and “magnetic” were coined in the 1850s, he says.
“Doctors used those words as something brand-new and original, and they would call their products ‘electric’ this or ‘magnetic’ that and claim that it could cure just about anything,” he says.
One of his favorites, he says, is a
Ravenna Glassworks bottle made in
“It would have been used for storing whiskey,” he says. “People would have gone to the tavern and had it refilled.”
Over the years, Gray has become well-versed bottle history.
“Bottles have an interesting history because they were blown at one place, and then shipped to another place to fill,” he says. “It’s like finding a puzzle piece, and then looking back at the history and solving the puzzle.”
HAVING A BALL
They’re bright. They’re bouncy. And there are more than 800 of them.
Nina Aust, senior computer information systems major, has been collecting bouncy balls since her junior year in high school.
It all began one night at the movies.
That night, Aust says she and her boyfriend arrived about an hour and a half before the movie started. To kill time, she says they played games and ended up winning about 15 bouncy balls.
The collection just grew from there, she says.
Bouncy balls bring a smile to her face, she says, admitting she thinks it is a corny reason to like them.
“They’re just fun,” she says. “It’s hard looking at that (a bouncy ball) and not just smiling and laughing, you know what I mean?”
Aust displayed her bouncy balls in the front mesh pocket of her book bag. When people saw them, she says they would often bring her some from home.
More than half of the balls were gifts, she says.
The bouncy ball collection is kept in a large, clear plastic storage container.
“I probably have two of at least every single one in here,” she says. “It’s hard not to. There’s not that many different kinds of bouncy balls you can make.”
But Aust has a large variety of the colorful rubber balls. She has marbleized balls of various colors, glittery balls, balls with faces on them, neon-colored balls, checkered balls and two-toned balls.
“I think this one’s really ugly,” she says holding up a large, clear bouncy ball with a flower inside of it. “I don’t know who gave it me though.”
Although she still collects them, Aust says the bouncy balls are kind of an inside joke from when she was in high school.
“People from high school kinda get
the importance of them a little more,” she says. “And it’s funny because if I
ever give a bouncy ball to someone from my high school, they think it’s, like,
this big honor.”
E-mail: khilbert@kent.edu
©This story is property of The
CyBurr, the online version of The Burr,