Collectors and Collecting. Presenting my Dirt Collection.
I won't say this is the first time I have paid for dirt, as my garden needed soil to counteract the sand. I felt stupid buying dirt, as there is so much of it around...
But this is the first time I can honestly say I have owned a collection of dirt.
Seems like every state was swept up here, then specialty items started appearing. Dirt from Disneyland. Dirt from the highest point in so and so, the furthest point in somewhere else. Well over one hundred examples, each one numbered and labled with a hand-typed "cursive" red font from a typewriter. Each little plastic pill bottle scooped full and carried home.
We used to have our choice of two fonts, but they could have gone with the dymo labelmaker too.
Said to have been collected by a husband and wife team of traveling CLOWNS! The estate sale had their costumes and such too.
DIRT collection Jim Linderman No date (ancient...dirt is really old)
Books and Ebooks by the author are available to browse or purchase HERE
All great fake crimes take place in Manhattan. Sure, some happen elsewhere, but except for a few genre-creating masterpieces set in Los Angeles (okay...maybe they can claim a few) the dark, scary corners of the West Side are still the best place to fictionally stab or shoot someone. Dump them in the Hudson and they won't float up until spring.Maps are snoresville...GPS killed them, and piles of the once familiar gas station freebie now fill baskets at the flea market. All of us still have a few crumpled and stuffed in the back of the glove compartment, still as ungainly and unmanageable as ever. I once drove from Manhattan to Los Angeles, a trip everyone should do, not only to realize the scope of the country but to obtain major bragging rights. 6 days for me...and I traced every mile on my faithful USA road map until the Petrified Forest in Arizona, when a big wind grabbed it right out of the car. I watched it fly down an ancient ravine, just like a recent automobile commercial which has sullied my memory.
By far the coolest paperback books are the Dell Mapbacks which were published from 1943 to 1951. I recently disparaged them in a post about a more obscure publisher...but they remain most collectible, mostly affordable and mostly available. And they are cool. My father, who visited me in Manhattan annually, used to love reading them and he would shout "I was there" a few times in each volume. Most were hard-boiled mysteries, the greatest fictional genre EVER. Shown here are a dozen or so Dell Mapbacks located in Manhattan. I do not believe there is one placed in the Petrified Forest.
A complete directory to the Mapbacks in shown HERE. There were hundreds, and all are great...but the ones set in the Big Apple were always my dad's favorite.DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS complete catalog and previews HERE
I spent plenty of time at the 26th Street Flea Market and the Pier Shows in NYC. I was a regular. I don't know if folks noticed me and said "there's that guy again" but I certainly said it to enough to myself. My favorites? The one legged man entirely dressed in a pirate uniform asking each dealer for cast iron cookware. The large man asking repeatedly "poker chips? poker chips? poker chips?" while dressed in a dingy t-shirt which read of course "POKER CHIPS" and the most flamboyant fellow in stripped tights...and I mean tight. Here is another fellow who seems to have taken his hobby a bit too far...a man dressed in cigar bands. At least he is appearing at the International Cigar Band Society convention in New York City in 1947. I hope he took a cab right to the show, but if not, I guess no one would have looked twice.Original Press Photograph, Man with Cigar Band Clothing 1947 Collection Jim Linderman
Marian was born Flora May Spore in Michigan and became the first female dentist in Bay County, Michigan. After her mother died in 1919, she had a major transformation. She gave up her dental practice, moved to Guam and began painting. According to her sister, she had never shown any inclination towards art until that time. Like all aspiring artists, she soon rented a studio in Greenwich Village. Having her own style, self-taught, she laid the paint on deep, building the canvas up so thick at times it looked like sculpture.
A good story, but now it gets weird. Apparently Spore could somehow channel dead artists and attributed her skills to the spirit of her late mother. She explored her ESP talents with Dr. Prince of the Boston Psychic Society. Her paintings became a sensation, being exhibited at the finest galleries in NYC. The American Weekly printed a story titled "Pictures my Mother sends me from the Grave." No less than anti-spiritualist Harry Houdini was taken with her work and said, I am not kidding, “It is a great exhibition. I am certain of Miss Spore’s honesty. I have never excluded the possibility of supernatural intervention from my belief. I have been engaged in the exposure of criminal fakers… there is no question of that here. Miss Spore has something beautiful and is conveying it to her fellow men.”
With her success as a painter, which at the time was apparently extensive, she opened a soup kitchen for the hungry on the Bowery. Now 1/3 artist, 1/3 soup kitchen worker and 1/3 socialite, Marian met Billionaire Irving T. Bush, another whole story as big as the painting shown here...who married her in Reno one hour after the divorce from his second wife was finalized.
Now, at least seemingly, the artist has been forgotten. The last time her work was shown was a retrospective in 1946, the work has not been seen in public for over 60 years. I for one would love to see it. She wrote a book about her spirit paintings entitled "They" in 1947. Except for the incredible, detailed, extraordinary wiki profile HERE, on which I relied completely for this article, the remarkable work seems to have vanished into thin air. In fact, a Google search turns up only one photo of the artist and none of her work.
I found the photograph here at an antique show, it was taken in 1938. I've cropped it, labeled it...and I will be more than happy to share the entire photo and credits with any art scholar who can show me more of the work! There is a SERIOUS book tale and exhibition here...anyone want to do the work? I don't have the energy.
Location Unknown Southern United States Original 35mm photograph c. 1994 Collection Jim Linderman
