From rocks to rubber ducks, we love collecting
By Burton W. Cole
The dashboard of the Jeep was submerged under a fleet of rubber ducks of various sizes, colors and occupations.
“Why?” I asked the driver.
“It’s what we Jeep people do. We collect rubber ducks.”
Traffic came to a halt. The Jeep person grabbed a duck from a bag of them behind her seat, ran to another Jeep three vehicles ahead of us, and passed a rubber duck through the window to that driver to add to his army of rubber ducks in formation on his dash.
“It’s what we Jeep drivers do,” she told me when she got back behind the wheel. “We greet each other with rubber ducks.”
“You keep a bag full of rubber ducks in your Jeep.”
“Well, I can’t very well gift them to other Jeeps if they’re at home.”
Jeep ducks is one of the more curious collections I’ve come across in all my years as a collector of various things. My living space is home to collections of Coca-Cola memorabilia, elephant figurines, stuffed gorillas, well-worn comic books and bills.
I didn’t mean to start the bills collection. Like the beach rocks, that one wasn’t my idea. It just sort of happened. If I don’t keep up with bills collection, collections agencies will call to collect on my collection.
Most everyone I know has collections cluttering their homes. Mom collects souvenir spoons. My sister collects pictures and figurines of cows. I’ve seen hefty collections of PEZ candy dispensers, buttons, bottle caps, baseball cards and toenail clippings (don’t ask).
A dear friend of mine collects penguins — not real ones. I don’t think. She does have a deceptively large basement big enough for a penguin pool. Do you think… Nah.
I tried to collect live toads once. I wanted to keep them in my sister’s sock drawer, but that didn’t work out so well. Her screaming made the toads awfully nervous. And jumpy.
My snake collection ended with the first snake, a little green garter snake named Fred, who escaped and may still be living in the walls somewhere.
My brother Tim and cousin Dave used to collect beer cans. Neither of our families touched alcohol, and Tim and Dave were underage, so they were stuck getting their collection from ditches.
I suspect the anti-litter people started the beer can collection craze of the 1970s as a way to clean up roadsides.
Tim and Dave had to keep their collection hidden in our barn. But when I got to college, a lot of kids created beer can pyramids in their windows. Brent and I had a yogurt cup pyramid in our dorm window.
You don’t have to be weird to be a collector, but it helps. Quirky, I think is the preferred term.
I visited a couple who collected salt and pepper shakers. Their basement was jammed with all shapes, sorts and sizes of shakers, some of which I had to crop out of the photos I took because it was a family newspaper.
According to Google, the collector of all knowledge, some of which is true, a woman named Becky Martz collects banana labels. She has more than 21,000 of them peeled off banana peels over 30-some years and stuck into albums like a stamp collection.
Petra Engels of Germany collected 19,571 different designs, shapes and sizes of erasers from 112 countries between 1981 and 2006.
Ay-yi-yi-yi, in elementary school, we tried to collect all four colors of Frito Bandito pencil erasers. They were incentive to get our math problems right so that we didn’t have to ruin our erasers on mistakes.
A guy named Niek Vermeulen collected 6,290 airline barf bags. According to Niek, he traveled on 1,191 different airlines from more than 200 countries to amass his collection. I’d probably need a couple of those bags if I spent as much money as Niek must have flying on all those planes. It might be cheaper to build Jay Leno’s car collection.
A few weeks ago, I wandered the shores of Lake Erie with my daughter, who was collecting beach glass. She plucked a smooth, bluish-gray stone from the sand.
“For your fish aquarium, Dad. You need a collection of rocks to remind you of your hometown.”
Now my fish tank in my living room has a fine collection of little stones in browns, whites, grays, greens and marble. I hope this collection leaves room for the fish, or I might have to relocate them to my Coke bottle collection.
Tell Burt about your collections at news@falmouthoutlook.com.