Hi Folks!
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. Despite all the turmoil of 2020 I do have so much to be grateful for. Many others are not as lucky, and I was thinking about them as I enjoyed my turkey yesterday. So a hefty portion of today's sale has already been sent to the local food bank here in western MA.
A little story for you today...
My great Uncle Howard was a pioneer in the aviation industry. During
the 1930's and through WW2 he worked as a master machinist for the Chance
Vought Company which produced some of the most famous fighter planes of
the era. After the war, he went to work for Pratt
and Whitney in their experimental engine department and stayed until he
retired in the 1970s. He passed away some years ago, sadly. But he
strongly influenced me as a kid. I enjoyed many hours playing in his
fascinating and well appointed home workshop, listening to his colorful
stories and watching him build everything from a completely hand made car (from scrap metal and a lawnmower engine!) to musical instruments to elaborate doll houses. He was truly an amazing and very talented man, a self sufficient product of the Great Depression.
That's a cool story in itself, but here it gets even more
interesting... It seems that sometime in the 1950's, while at Pratt and
Whitney, he became close friends with a gentleman who had recently been
transferred from a government post in Nevada. His name was Bill,
although we never learned his last name.
One hot summer evening,
while enjoying cigars and a few too many drinks, Bill shared an
interesting tale with my uncle. He claimed to have in his possession
some mysterious artifacts from the crash of an unidentified flying
object in 1947.
The debris field from the crash had been enormous and material was strewn over a half mile of rough terrain.
Bill had been part of the recovery crew so he had seen it all firsthand. Every single bit of the wreckage down to the tiniest scorched scrap was carefully collected by the men over
several weeks. The entire collection was then
brought by a convoy of military trucks to the new secret aviation facility in NV for long term storage
and study. There were literally hundreds of boxes, barrels and pallets stacked high with these items, all stored in dusty metal sheds. Bill simply couldn't
resist and at one point had "liberated" a few small pieces for
himself.
Bill knew of my uncle's engineering skills and keen
interest in exotic metals so he loaned him several things to examine at his
leisure. Soon after that fateful evening Bill was tragically killed in a
car accident and my uncle ended up keeping these curious objects. He
stashed them away and more or less forgot them... but he did eventually tell my aunt about Bill and his remarkable finds, and so the story has been passed down through the years.
After his death, my family came across an old steamer trunk in the attic filled with some of
Uncle Howard's secret treasures. There were vintage pinups, yellowed
newspaper clippings, a jar of old silver coins and other personal items. In the bottom corner there was a small but very heavy wooden box which turned out to be lined with lead in case of radioactivity. Inside were several strange twisted metal items and a greasy smudged note card in my uncles' handwriting which read, "Bill's horde.
From NM crash site 1947." On a second card he had scrawled "Space nails?"
SpaceNails
are faithful replicas of the 1947 originals. Made of armor plate
titanium, 3.75 inches long, they will make a great pry tool, although we
can only guess at their original use. Were they pins used to hold
together the decks of an alien spaceship? LOL...fun stuff.
Titanium
SpaceNails will run $65 plus shipping and the link is below. Limit of two on them please. Thanks for dropping by my friends, and may the force be with
you. ;)
These are sold out, thank you so much everyone and have a great weekend!
