We could see it in the
distance.
The
side profile of our nation’s first president, George Washington, his regal
pointed nose illuminated angelic, by the sunshine reflecting off of the wide,
glass doors of the east wing of the Monroeville Mall. It beckoned come hither.
And we did. One of us shouting, run! And then we took off down the hallway like
sprinters in the 100-yard dash, our boy limbs moving as fast as we could. Me,
always the fat kid, always trailing the others. Watching, helplessly, as my
brother and our friends reached the store front of the American Coin
collectibles shop first, not even waiting for me to catch up, before they
disappeared inside.
My mother always shouting for us to
slow down, for us all to just slow down. My mother. It was always my
mother. She seemed to be the only parent willing to take our pack of sweating,
stinking, pre-teen boys out to the Monroeville Mall, even though she never
understood why we collected cards. What are you going to do with those? I
couldn’t answer her at twelve, and I can’t answer her now at forty-six. Love
them? Cherish them? But mom was gracious enough to sit there outside the shop,
on a bench, gazing up a that huge Washington quarter sign that marked our
paradise, bored and counting out the minutes of our half-hour allotment, years
before the internet and cell phones, a hallway littered with the dregs of the
mall’s storefronts (a crappy diner, a nail salon, a tuxedo shop, a collectibles
store), so that she couldn’t even really people watch; all so that we could go
to the “Coin,” as well called it, to spend our allowance, birthday, holiday,
and found-under-the-couch-cushion money, on ever-loving baseball cards.
And
the American Coin was our paradise. Run by men who still wore suits and
ties, proper salesman, whose ode to rare coinage, had been taken half-over by
display cases full of bubblegum cards so that they could keep afloat during
this zeitgeist. There were Henry Aaron and Willie Mays cards. A Pete Rose
rookie we swooned over. There were cards of our, tragic, sainted Pittsburgh hero
Roberto Clemente; a giant whose legendary tales our fathers still told with the
moony eyes of children in awe. The American coin had men who sat on stools,
chain-smoking cigarettes, begrudgingly rising off of their posts every few
minutes, in order to fetch us another bin full of star cards, or to answer the
ubiquitous question: how much is this?
How they must’ve watched us, bemusedly, as we excitedly leafed through the names of Hall of Famers! Grubby kids counting the coins in our hands, the crumpled bills in balls in our pockets, hoping our jackpots could land one of us a ’74 Reggie:
But,
in the end, still satisfied with an ’81 Stargell, a Pirates team set, a few
packs of current wax, something else, something else, as time ran out, as we
waited for my mother to poke her head into the ‘Coin, saying, boys, boys;
just finding that one last gem, Mattingly, Ripken, Rickey! Whatever satisfied
the cardboard beast that raged within us. Until the next time we came to the
Monroeville Mall, someone shouted run, and we again raced down that long,
bright hall.
If
the American Coin was our Xanadu, then the local drug store was the meat and
potatoes of our daily card collecting operation. They were where we bought our
packs on the regular…and maybe even pilfered a pack or so every once in a
while, (I’m 1985 Fleer cello pack guilty), when there was no cash flow. The
very first wax box of cards that I ever bought, the classically, masterful 1987
Topps, I bought off the shelf at a Thrift Drug, not at a card show or hobby
shop. Maybe it seems strange now, maybe it doesn’t, but during my heyday of collecting
in the mid to late 80’s and early 90’s, you could just as easily find packs of
Topps, Fleer and Donruss, on the shelves at your local chain drug store, as you
can now in the aisles of Target or Wal-Mart (could before this year, I know).
And not for nothing, us kids stood outside waiting for those places to open as
well.
On any summer day us neighborhood
kids could scrape some coin together and have ourselves a collecting field day
going from chain to chain, and even a few mom and pop pharmacies along the way,
buying packs of cards, eating the stale gum, and discarding the wax wrapper
onto the pavement like the eco-damaging deviants we were back then. Thrift Drug
was the place for Topps. Revco took care of our Fleer needs. If we were feeling
dangerous and edgy, we took the longer walk, risking life and limb, crossing
where Frankstown Road met Beulah Road in a blur of ever-speeding cars and the
ghosts of legendary auto accidents, never telling our parents that was came
anywhere near that hellscape, so that we could go to Statlander Drugs, where
packs of Donruss mingled on the confectionary shelves with our daily sustenance
of Milky Ways and Snickers bars, and packs of Garbage Pail Kids.
It was from those drug store wax pack
adventures that I got my first McGwire, my first Bonds, my first Bo Jackson
cards. Where the sets and personal collections were truly built. Where us kids
could gauge the seasons, as the shelves that held our baseball cards turned to
wax packs of football cards in the fall. Then it was collecting Marino,
Montana, and Elway until the new baseball boxes arrived at the tail end of the
year, like a promise for a baseball season yet to come. It was on a solo trip
to Thrift Drug on a gray cold, mid spring day where I pulled my blessed 1987
Topps Bobby Bonilla rookie card; my lone, ecstatic cheer, echoing off of the
Ritzland plaza strip mall buildings, as I cradled the card the whole walk home,
praying that it wouldn’t rain.
And
need I not forget the flea markets and card show. The Saturday and Sunday
mornings that my brother and I begged the old man to drive us out to City
Limits, to the indoor flea market, him clutching the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette or
Sunday Press, trying to read the news of the world, until he couldn’t stand our
whining anymore and he relented. City Limits with its tables of card dealers
littered amidst the people selling the detritus of their lives for a small
profit. Heavy-set caterpillar moustache men who smelled of coffee, cigarettes,
and the sugar from a quickly eaten doughnut; weekend entrepreneurs selling off
their childhood to a new generation. Breaking new wax so that they could sell
us the star cards that we were unable to pull, but only at a premium. Because
it all was going to make us rich.
I remember one Sunday in the summer
of 1989, a dealer at City Limit selling a freshly pulled Upper Desk Ken Griffey
Jr. Upper Desk rookie card for twenty bucks. The paper boy money burning a hole
in my pocket. How I kept going back to his table, and then back again. My
brother looking on to see just what I’d do. Until my old man, bored from his
hour perusing war memorabilia and other nick knacks, found us, the car keys
already in his hands saying let’s go. But dad…but dad…I pointed at the
Griffey. Ever the frugal man, he saw the price tag and rolled his eyes at me.
Telling me, you’re nuts, but it’s your money. Then he walked away toward
the parking lot. And I didn’t buy the card. I still don’t have an Upper Deck
Griffey Jr. to this day.
Card shows back then felt like festivals.
I’m sure they still do now. In Pittsburgh, we didn’t have many small ones. But
every few months a card show came to the Expo Mart in Monroeville (think
convention center…but in the suburbs), and it was like being in la-la land.
Hundreds of dealers. A maze of tables selling not only cards, but memorabilia
and ephemera like hats, pennants, jerseys, signed bats and signed balls. There
was a stand to buy a hot dog, some popcorn, or a coke. Card shows were a far
cry from the American Coin and couch-cushion money. We saved for those bad
boys. Paper route money. Chore money. Whatever it took to feel like a wealthy
swinger rolling into the Expo Mart with a fad wad of cash to spend on cards.
And
I don’t want to forget about the autographs. Big card shows meant big names,
from baseball’s glorious past to the present, signing cards, baseballs (only on
the sweet spot please), glossy photos, and other ephemera. I had a friend who
once had Andy Van Slyke sign a cookie jar! For my money, I’ve stood in line to
meet and have items signed by: Willie Stargell, Willie Mays, and Ferguson
Jenkins. I bought a certified autographed Hank Aaron baseball, and wish to god
one day I get the chance to meet him. Even my old man felt like a boy again
that time he got to shake Brooks Robinson’s hand, as he was signing stuff for
me and my brother. When this pandemic is over, one of the first events I want
to go to is a big, old card show.
But
right now…times are hard…and frustrating…and sad. I sit here this morning
writing this, thinking about the past, perusing Comc and Sportlots (some online
ways to buy cards), ruminating over the good old days of buying baseball cards,
building up my sets, listening to people outside walking their dogs, the pant
of joggers as they run past, children talking exuberantly to their parents, the
sound of cars rushing up and down the street, their tires sloshing in the rain.
And I think; this sounds like normal life. At times alone it feels like normal
life. Seven months on and I still catch myself leaving the apartment without a
mask. But as of this writing there have been 492, 026 Covid-19 infections in
the last seven days, and the United States is sitting on almost 226,000 deaths.
Just last week I learned that a former co-worker of mine, a mentor actually,
when I got my first supervisory job, had died of the coronavirus. Going to a
card show seems a long way off. Hell, just walking down the street like a
normal person does.
Maybe that’s why I got to thinking
the way that I was, you know, about the past. The good old days that weren’t
always good, but, in retrospect, sometimes seem like they were the greatest
time to be alive. Like I mention all of these stores and card shows, and flea
markets to try and boost myself out of this year’s malaise. Forget this
pandemic for a moment. Forget that goddamned election. Eschew Twitter and its
nonsense for a moment or two. But my mind’s eye neglected to mention the time
my mother hauled me out of a card shop because I had a temper tantrum inside.
A twelve-year-old boy and I threw a
fit. All because the guy who owned the shop (a jewelry store in a Penn Hills
strip mall that he half-converted into sports cards to make a buck) refused to
continue giving me boxes of cards to sift through. Because he’d had enough of
me asking, for this and for that, and simply shook his head no. The American
Coin this was not. The budding capitalist in me couldn’t comprehend his
weariness and outright refusal. I had cash and he had cards. So I had at him.
And then my mother when she interceded…well, I yelled at her and pouted too. A
petulant boy to say the least. I got dragged out of the store; the cards I’d
already selected remaining in a pile on his display case. I spent the ride home
crying while my brother and friends looked through their bounty. My fit cost me
a week of grounding. Whatever. The place was a no good jip-joint anyway.
Who wants to remember that baseball
card memory?
Nah, instead I’d rather think of the
excited kid racing up the escalator at the Monroeville Mall, with his friends,
walking quickly along the bright corridors of the second floor, weaving past
the shoppers buying such trivialities as clothing and shoes. I want to feel
that anticipation as we headed toward that final hallway. The left turn that
you made at the half-empty stinking idea of diner that had become forgotten by
the mall’s new food court full of Taco Bell, Sbarro Pizza, and the heavenly
scent of Potato Patch fries. I want to bask in the light shining distantly
through those big, glass East Entrance, Dawn of the Dead doors. Try to
make out George Washington’s sun-soaked visage. Feel the sweat in the palm of
my hand. Imagine what cardboard treasures I’d be walking out with that day.
Waiting, waiting, for whichever one of us was going to do it. Look at the
others in a pose, or already in a sprint (the damned, lousy cheater) shouting
for us to go. To RUN.
Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.
Next Friday: I
discuss why it’s painful for me to considering compiling my birthyear set: the
beautiful, classy, 1974 Topps Baseball Card set.
--JG
