Quality Pickles
Jar Lid

Marbles were toys that all boys of my generation or younger played with. At home my brother and I would play and we would bring marbles to elementary school and at recess play the other boys. There were several games, banana, bull ring were the most common. At times we would play keepsies in which the winner would get to keep the marbles he had won but the teacher found out and the school disallowed keepsies. Peewee, agate, catseye, steely, tiger, lag to see who to go first. Marbles are in a plastic bracelet I made at Boy Scout Camp.

Universal Calculator: I am not sure when I got this, but it was long before the modern calculators. I was always fascinated with it.

Boy Scout items: Boy Scout chain bracelet, woven neckerchief slides made at camp, Boy Scout 50th Anniversary medallion

Cub Scout Neckerchief slide made this in Cub Scouts

Aviation Clock. Me and a couple of buddies would go to a junk yard in Gainesville that had a room full of war surplus stuff where I found this.

RPM gauge faceplate.

IBM Selectric type ball: This was from my early days in college when I programed in APL. There was a special APL type ball for the selectric computer terminal, so you had to remove the regular one and put on the APL ball.  <see story>

Marantz stereo plate: In 1971 a friend of my had a Marantz stereo receiver which he said he would sell me really cheap. He explained that it had a problem, a buzzing sound which explained why he was selling it. I was able to fix it and it and really enjoyed it. Several months later he called me wanting it back. As it turned out he broke into some stereo repair shop in town and stole it along with others. He got caught and part of the deal he worked out was for him to return the items.

Watches: The two on the right were mine and my brother's first watches that Grandma Junior gave us in 1959. Mine quit working so I took out the inside. The gold watch was a gift from my wife for my 30th birthday. The one on the left was my first digital watch.

Misc. Electronic items – IC chips, Transistors, light bulb, fuse, photo resistors, motor, spool of wire

Film can: Film cans were hard to come by for only people with high end 35mm cameras got them. I had this one from a child. It was really good to store small items and later for storing, well you know.

Turn counter – when you rotate the shaft it increments the counter. I stuck on a wooden wheel from some model. I always thought I would use it for something but never did. Next to it a pointer I thing from the RPM gauge.

Ceramic insulator - these were used in the first houses wired for electricity to hold the wires away from the wood studs.

Man/Nature balance buttons from the 1970’s

Robbie the Robot from Lost In Space card that came on a keychain that when you pressed it would say “Danger, Danger Will Robinson”. I don’t know what happened to the keychain, but I saved card.

L-R Microscope lens, brown button from a sweater, small gear

Pennies, top two flattened on train tracks when on vacation in North Carolina in the 1962 with family. Bottom penny is a 29. 1936 British penny with Georgivs V

1973 Candian Dime

Bullets

Dice, 2 wooden, one plastic

Steel ball with threaded hole, bottle opener/knife from Midix Asphalt Products

Glass stoppers.  Dad got these for me from the chemistry department.  I am not sure what happened to the bottles.

7-Up bottle lip. A trick I learned as a kid was you could take two soda bottles, one in each hand, hook the drinking lips on each other and pull apart. If you do it right the drinking lip comes of into a perfect ring. I this was a 7-Up bottle since it is green.

Glass cones. Something I discovered as a kid that if I shot my BB Gun at a plane of glass a perfect cone would pop out the other side.

Small steel rod

Squirt gun stopper. Summers were always hot and we would often buy cheep plastic squirt guns (this was way before the super soaker). There was a hole in the back of the gun to put the water in and plug it with one of these stoppers.

Combination lock with missing latch

Comb and shoe horn, in the 60's every boy had these in his back back pocket. With it and a little dab of Brilcream I would be all set.

Unopened roll of 120 film

Cigarette lighters. A neighbor who lived on the other side of the street a few houses down had a storage shed made from all sorts of old windows, doors and tin at the back of their yard which backed up to the field behind the houses on that side of the street. The kids found we could slip in a hole in the back and we used it as a hideout. It was filled with all sorts of old junk, cloths, trunks, furniture and junk. I found these in some box.

Fishing sinkers

Esso Tiger button

Bear claw

Glass ring, I used to have a bunch of these, I think Dad brought them home.

Plate for printing my name
Larry Morris Mixson

Dog tags with my name

Tie clips worn ever Sunday when we dressed up for church.

Lamp part

Pencil and pen parts. I remember in junior high school they came out with the fountain pen that a ink cartridge of ink you would put in it. I really like the way the pen wrote and had several of them. The biggest problem was that if you weren’t careful the pen would leak and make a stain on your shirt pocket. I still have some old school papers I wrote with them.

Slot car wheels - My brother David and I got a slot car set for Christmas one year. It had a track with two slots in it, one for each car. My car was white and David’s was green. With the hand controller you would race around and around the track. I think David’s car was a bit faster but mine was longer and more stable. If you went to fast around a curve it would jump out of the track. I could also fish tale my car around a curve and knock David’s car out. We spent hours racing the cars and they would sometimes break down and I would fix them.

Navy survival flashlight – Dad would go to Camp Blanding to buy army surplus equipment for the Chemistry department and sometimes would get a little extra. He brought this home one day and I played with for many years. At the time he brought this one home there also was another emergency light in a clear plastic cylinder about 6 inches long. It was made to attach to a life vest that when opened and coming in contact with water would activate the light. I took it on a Boy Scout camping trip in which we camped next to a lake. After it got dark, I opened the light up and threw it out into the lake among the water lilies where is slowly lit up and got brighter. It didn’t take long for the other scouts noticed it and the whole troop gathered at the water’s edge speculating what it was. I made a comment that I thought I saw something fall from the sky and the speculation went wild. Finally, one brave, or dumb depending on what you thought about snakes in the water, swam out and brought it back. The best guess was that it was part of some weather balloon, but eventually I fessed up and explained my trick.

Plastic model parts – I built many small plastic models as a boy, planes, boats, cars and a tank. Most got blown up with firecrackers.

Assortment of key chains collected as a kid.

Car points – probably from my ’68 Camaro I got in my senior year of high school.

Keys – I had a fascination with keys and collected them. I particularly like the skeleton key with a slice of elk horn bone key chain. The red key is was for my '68 Camaro on a keychaing with a 1969 Kennedy head half dollar, the year I got the car.

Model paint jar cap, gloss black

L-to-R Metal tube case for a thermomete, tube flashlight, red plastic, sunglass arm

Bunsen burner part, I had a Bunsen burner for my chemistry experiments.

"Souvenir of Florida" Knife, paper drink umbrella, shell

Thermopylae game plastic plate

Sunglass Lens

Toothpast tub squeezer

Model wheel with disk brake. I remember this model well for it was one of my favorites. It was a futuristic car and 12 inches long, streamlined with a bubble top. What I really liked about it was that it actually worked, the wheels turned, the steering wheel turned the wheels, the doors and hood opened. It had modern disk brakes that you see here.

Firecrackers were always illegal in Florida but for several summers our family would go to the mountains North Carolina for summer vacation and on the way back Dad would stop and buy fireworks.  Bottle rockets, roman candles, spinning things, firecrackers, cherry bombs and, on occasion, the powerful M80’s.  As a teenager I had great fun blowing up things, plastic models were particularly fun to blow up.