Collecting is Not for the Fainthearted

By Homer Hirt
In the July 30 edition of the Jackson County Times there appeared a picture of me and my statue of a baby elephant, and underneath it was a short piece written by Managing Editor Sid Riley. Sid is called the “managing” editor because he manages to take Thursdays off to play golf. He leaves Stephanie to do the real editorial work. This probably is the right way to go. Stephanie looks out for me and has always used a picture that shows my good side for my column. She also proofreads my columns and thus makes them readable and sometimes logical.

Sid “Got it Right” as far as he went. I did purchase a baby elephant statue, made of resin and weighing about 100 pounds. The statue is six feet long, four feet high and has the trunk raised, which is a sign of good luck. I did bring it back from North Myrtle Beach, accompanied by my fifteen year old grandson Stuart, who seemed somewhat bemused and amused by my actions. By now, though, he has learned to expect the unusual from me.

The statue is, as Sid stated, for the purpose of energizing our local Republican Party. We don’t need revitalizing. We have had a steady growth in members for several years, and are over 7200 voters strong. We do, however, need another “mascot”, one that does not look like an aardvark. An aardvark is an anteater, and he sucks ants up from the ground and according to my sources, makes a snuffling sound. As an aside, any animal that sucks ants up is almost bound to make a snuffling sound, or worse. An elephant pulls branches down from tall trees and steps on things on the ground, probably aardvarks and people that annoy him. This is why there is usually a pink squishy substance between an elephant’s toes. It doesn’t pay to argue with an elephant. He also trumpets loudly, both before and after stepping on aardvarks and people.

I have not, however, started collecting elephants, or anything else. I have known some strange collectors in my time. One of the most unusual was a fellow sailor in Utility Squadron Five on the island of Guam. Every night he would lie on his bunk in our Quonset hut and, with an empty aspirin bottle in one hand and tweezers in the other, carefully remove belly button lint from his navel and put it into the bottle. His avowed purpose was to stuff a pillow with the material. I lost track of him, thankfully, but I suspect that if he was successful he has a collectible that would set the “Antique Road Show” on its ear. He has probably been married and divorced at least four times. The divorces would follow his answer to the question from his brides: “Honey, what in the world is this pillow stuffed with?”

My wife Theresa collected Elvis Presley things, as did many young women of her time. When we got married I rented a small house in Chattahoochee and one day we began unloading her truckload of possessions. “Be careful of those boxes” she said, as I picked up one of two cardboard cartons. “Glassware?” I queried. “No, Elvis stuff” she replied. She had never mentioned Elvis to me before that day. Two years before I had broken up with a young lady, partly because she liked Elvis and I did not. And here I was married to an Elvis fan and had no way out. No, make that an Elvis “fiend”. For forty-two years I had to listen to Elvis music. He had songs for every occasion: Christmas and New Years, Easter and Passover, Fourth of July and Washington’s birthday, and countless other events thrown in. He even sung one about a hound dog or something, and some strangely colored shoes that he seemed to care for greatly.

Theresa’s sister in Maryland collects salt cellars. These are the little containers that look like miniaturized chamber pots, and show up in front of you at formal dinners. She has them stowed on shelves and in cabinets. I have not visited her for at least ten years, but I suspect that during this time she has added on to her home at least twice to accommodate the overflow.

But I am not a collector, except for some Navy and Civil War items. I am moderate in both of these, and I do not intend to begin collecting elephants. It is true that I showed up at our last Republican Club luncheon with an image of an elephant about twelve inches long and six inches high. I held it up and asked the assembled people what it was, and almost everyone shouted “AN ELEPHANT” and of course they were wrong. It was a statue of an elephant. The only person to get it right was David Carrel, who has a weekly column in the Times. Now, there’s the man to go to for financial advice. He can tell the difference between an elephant and a statue! Think about how sage he will be on his investment advice.

And now I have a much larger statue, a life size baby elephant, properly colored and soon to have pink paint between his toes to symbolize his ability to walk on folks that get in his way. And I did buy 100 lapel pins that look like elephants, with trunks raised on high. On the Internet I found a life size statue of a bull Indian elephant, complete with tusks, and, I assume, with pink squishy stuff between his toes. And if you have a bull elephant it follows logically that you would need a cow elephant. Africa also has elephants, and a full sized pair of those are available. The prices are a little high, but shipping is included for each, which is a positive point. The company guarantees satisfaction, although I cannot ever imagine not being satisfied with an elephant, as long as the trunk is in the air and the pink squishy stuff is in its proper place.

But collect them? Never!