During my first divorce, as I moved my stuff to a friend’s house across town, everything got jumbled together in boxes, so it was hard to sort out. Slowly, as I settled in, I unpacked the boxes and sorted through old letters and books, some reaching back to my childhood.
My oldest — and at that time only — son, then about eight, had just become a big baseball fan, rooting for the Giants, playing little league, and collecting baseball cards. I told him about my own card collection back in the 1950s, when I was around his age.
He came over to spend the night one Saturday and I dug through my boxes to see whether any baseball-related stuff had survived the many moves I'd made since childhood. Out tumbled an old scrapbook, circa 1958, with prime baseball cards of legendary stars including Willy Mays, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams, among others, glued inside.
He gasped. Collectively, these old cards might be worth a small fortune!
This was long before the likes of eBay, so I checked directly with collectors, who explained the cards might be valuable assuming they could be removed from the scrapbook without damaging them.
Alas, upon further investigation it turned out that removing them would destroy them. So we just left them in the place where had I pasted them all those decades ago.
It was at that point that I realized the real value they had was helping create a memory of a special moment together. So I took that to the bank.
(This is from 2006.)
***
News reached me last night that David Horowitz has died at the age of 86. Although I did not share his ultra-conservative politics, I was grateful to David for his help on the Betty Van Patter case. Also, I edited David’s pieces in Salon in the site’s early years and I always found him to be gracious and open to my edits. As for his complicated migration from a left-wing radical to a Trump apologist, I’m unable to make any sense of that. On some occasions, he struck me as a tortured soul. But now that is over. Rest In Peace.
HEADLINES:
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David Horowitz, R.I.P. (FPM)
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