Saga of the Garrigus Stamp Debacle - PART I

Dear W,
Here starts the "Saga of the Garrigus Stamp Debacle".

I was about your age when I decided to collect stamps. I can't remember what instigated this. Lord knows there were no "pretty" stamps then - none of the soon-to-be multitudinous gloriously colored ones with pictures of floweres, animals, people, buildings, causes, philosophical sayings, states and their mottoes etc, etc. They were just plain ordinary stamps - and cheap!

Both my sets of grandparents had been New Englanders with ancestors back to the Puritans. On my Mother's side, my sister and I were the only grandchildren; on my Father's side, with many grandchildren, she and I were not only the youngest but the only girls. I guess no other grandchild up to then had ever been interested in stamps so when I appealed to the four grandparents for any old stamps they might have, they were amiable, agreeable, and cooperative. They had attics filled - indeed, overflowing with their "treasures" they couldn't possibly throw out (Junk, I called it, until I knew much later what it was worth).

So, they went through their boxes, drawers, trunks where they found letters from their grandparents and, I guess, great grandparents. They just overwhelmed me with the number they found.

I started sto get the stamps off the envelopes and into my stamp book. Fortunately, I did meticulous work. (I think those who do handwork tend to be very particular). I was always careful to keep a list of those stamps I didn't have so when the conversation was steered to birthday or Christmas presents (usually by me!) I just happened to have the numbers needed to get them at stamp stores. (I canremember once my Mother gently and plaintively complaining that she had to pay a dollar for a two-cent stamp that I had needed. Today it is probably worth at least $2500 - if you could even get one). My many Uncles with their house full of boys, were most generous to a young girl and her stamp collection.

Soon the Post Office started to print beautiful commmemoratives in their sparkling and many colored and , usually, larger stamps. I usually bought a whole sheet: 100 if the stamps were small, 50 if they were they big ones.

I decided about this time to spread out from keeping just one new stamp for my book to four "plate block" ones. I expect you know these. They are the four stamps in the corner of a sheet with sxome numbers in the margin. (I never did know what the numbers stood for!) A little later, to add to these four, the next four beside them had the words "mail early in the day". So I saved them too. Now the Post Office was starting to recognize that stamp collecting was big business, and wanted to sell as many as possible. Next, another four had the words "Use your zip code" in the margin. So I added those to my colledtion. New commemoratives came out two or three times a month. I never cared about collecting foreign stamps. I loved looing at them with the pictures of their royalty and their own special flowers, animals, etc, but I figured I was lucky to keep up with those in the United States.

First I kept my stamps in boxes; then in cartons; and finally I acquired a small size steamer trunk. So far, I've just been talking about ordinary postage stamps. I was also getting "air mail", "postage due", all kinds of "tax" and "documentary" stamps. I know there were others, but, for the life of me, I can't remember their names.

My steamer trunk was getting really full. Then the Post Office decided it wanted more money. Instead of four stamps with thenumbers, it ran thenumbers down the whole side of the sheet of stamps - and now you had to save twenty or so. And, which was more important, they didn't fit into the little envelopes I had been buying. so I put them between pieces of wax paper - locked together by paper clips every four of five inches. (A big mistake as you will learn later).

For some reason I never belonged to a stamp club. I'm essentially a loner. I like to do things alone. If I had joined a club, I probably would have learned a lolt of things from other members that would have prevented my final downfall...