Found in Books February 2022

 Our Found in Books collection this time features a vaccination card circa 1971.  "Mike" a red Irish Setter received his rabies vaccine.  

Why yes, I do have a restless urge to write.

And someone cut out the images of Tarzan book covers from a calendar - more muscles and tan skin, please.

A poor drawing of a fancy chandelier, photo booth strip, and map of an Indian temple are some of the other found ephemera in the past few months.

Found in Books, May 2021

It's been an entire year since I last posted photos from my "Found in Books" file.  This edition's presentation from May 2020 to May 2021 features a lot of the classic FIB material:  Ticket stubs, boarding passes, photo booth strips, naked guy photo, drawings, travel brochures, letters, receipts, and photocopied book pages.

Some of the more unusual findings are a JC Penney full-page color ad for $8 "antifreeze flannel shirts"; a postage-paid postcard to the Washington State Employment Service (a.k.a. "unemployment office") with a doodle and some notes; a yellow index card with two-sided lists of 61 birds seen in July 2006 in shaky ballpoint pen; a currency exchange rate card with pesos and dollars from Pardo's Gift Shop in Mazatlan, probably from the fifties or sixties; and a ticket to the haunted house, "The House that Eats People," sponsored by NEAT, a non-profit corp.  

 

There was also a faded pasteboard sign wisely advising, "Pay Your Grocer FIRST.  When you pay your bills, give your Grocer FIRST MONEY.  He supplies you with what you need most--FOOD;" an order form for Modern Taxidermy Books; a Red Cross card for someone who completed CPR - ADULT.  And a poignant list with two columns:  "Observable Change" (try to be more organized and neater, try to [down arrow] internet porn) and "What is Changing"  ([up arrow] weight, [up arrow] road rage)."

Found in Books - Spring 2020 Edition

It's spring cleaning time, and time to empty our "Found in Books" folder and start anew.

This time we have some of the old standbys--  bookmarks, invitations, photographs, boarding passes, transit tickets, receipts, drawings--  plus some new book inserts that we haven't seen before:  computer programming cards, an information request card for "Nuclear Diodes, Inc."

Postcards, early computer printout, bar mitzvah invitation, drawing of train on tracing paper, and pamphlet for the Sixth International Congress of Radiation Research.

There was also a pink note stuck into a book titled, Mud Pies & Other Recipes that said, "I always thought it was a waste of good pie in a  pie throwing but I would enjoy seeing this one, wouldn't you?"

A note on the back of this owl/deer/heart artwork says, "For the best couple ever."

"After seeing children in grammar school at play, doing very active activities, I've come to the conclusion that childrens wear can be very simple and still have that 'darling' look."  This paper titled  "Field Trip to Grammar School" received an "A".

This Dodge Dart was serviced regularly with detailed record-keeping.

Someone had a very large and carefully-kept Agnes Moorehead clipping collection.

Agnes, Baby!  She was Endora on "Bewitched."

Found in Books

It's been a while since I've posted photos of some of the ephemera found in books, and the envelope holding such objects has grown fat.  

Included this time are the usual bookmarks (from bookstores and torn from handy sheets of paper), gift tags, drawings, tickets, and personal notes.  In one card someone writes, "Now that I know from the medical examiner's report the severity of her AVM condition, I wonder if M--- knew or at least had a premonition of fatality.  Just after her first MRI she intensified her study of Buddhism which focuses on preparing in this life for one's next life."

Remember phone bills?  Spanking, cirque & sensuality, oh my!

Bookmarks from shops, The Ten Commandments (from St. Jude's Ranch for Children), and Legend of the Raven are just a few of the ways people keep their place between pages.

Cards from card catalogs... as rare as phone bills now.

Found in Books

Greetings

My friend sometimes shops at the Goodwill by-the-pound store, otherwise known as "The Bins."  I've been to The Bins a couple of times, but the shopping experience is not for me.  Not surprisingly as a used book dealer, I'm a proponent of re-use, recycling, and buying used, but the couple of times I've been I've always wished I had worn gloves and felt like I needed a shower afterward.

Giant wheeled bins are filled with piles of clothes, household goods, and, yes, books.  The customers are a mix of regular people, dealers, and crazy people, particularly those after books.  My friend usually concentrates on vintage clothing and she's found some good scores, like a Pendleton jumper, or a tapestry of a pastoral scene that she re-purposed into a skirt.  When she found this scrapbook, she passed it on to me.

This scrapbook also included a number of loose items, yet-to-be-pasted, which makes it a candidate for the "found in books" category.

Found in Books, Yet Again

Not long ago, Sean and I were doing a book buy at a woman's house.  She was moving and was selling her pretty nice collection of books on eastern religion, psychology, body work, and the like. I flipped through a book to check for marking and two hundred dollar bills fell out.  A couple of other books also had money bookmarks, and they weren't mere dollar bills either.  Of course we returned the money to woman who was quite grateful and now our found-in-books karma has benefited.  Alas, no money of late, but check out these treasures:

One thing we found in a book titled "Reproduction in Farm Animals," was a love letter, which may be a little too personal to include in the photo, but here's an excerpt:  "Do you see that I am terribly in love with you and terribly obsessed with you?  Make sure you take responsibility for this state of my heart.  Let's see whose poison is more poisonous!"  There was also a photo of the young lovers as Disney characters.

The fortune teller card is one of my favorite pieces, and obviously applies to me:  "You have a brilliant mind and enjoy reading and the fine arts."

Drop another coin in slot and I will tell more.

Another favorite is the business card, how's this for a job title:

This little dragon is made from paper cut-outs and is really quite lovely.

Here's a bookmark from a store with 89 parking spaces - that's 88 more than Pistil has!

Found In Books

Usually I feature a number of items in my "Found In Books" posts, but this time my latest find warrants its own post.  This piece of ephemera is double-sided.  On the first side is a page from a grammar test, appropriately titled (from a bookseller's point of view), "Getting Words in the Right Order."  I know I sometimes have trouble with that.

Our intrepid test-taker seems to have answered all questions on this page correctly, as the green check mark attests, but his total score is only 70% (remember, we have only one page of the test).  Could you have answered this question:  "What is a nominative absolute, and does it have to be edited?"   Huh?

But it is on the reverse side of the test form that the true talents and skills of our student are revealed:

Sissies Rule!