Watercolor and gouache, by JD, 2023
Some objects have their memories grafted onto them. No early attachment, no affective charge, is original to this box. I recall quite clearly the afternoon I acquired it in Somerville, Massachusetts in November, 1989. I was with two friends who liked to forage in shops that exist in the zone between thrift and vintage, without ever rising to the pretentious or expensive level of “antiques”. There the castaway items of material culture appear on shelves like the residue in tidelines along the shore. The unmatched cups, plates, picture frames and novelties have the same statistical distribution as the partial sea shells, plastic bottle caps, and creatures whose remains are tangled with the seaweed. You think you might find anything, some hidden treasure overlooked by others. That guiding myth forces eyes into focus among the bits of worn and faded bric-a-brac offered on the crowded shelves.
The day was cool, grey, and cheerless. Against the autumnal gloom our camaraderie was an almost adequate buffer, especially as libations were promised as part of the expedition. Collars up and hands plunged into pockets we strolled along whatever zone of Massachusetts Avenue or proximate quarters were the familiar hunting grounds. We were trolling for things to catch our interest. Not my usual mode. I had neither disposable time nor income and rarely looked for distractions on which to squander my limited and precious resources. But they were good friends and I wanted to experience their enthusiasm for the junking game. So we strolled.
I had just taken a job in New York, at Columbia, and the elasticity of the bonds we had forged the year before when I was at Harvard stretched to reach across the new geographical gap. Our friendships had been made in the minor details of our lives, not grand passions or intense relationships. A host of small incidents added up to affectionate familiarity—sharing meal that included stuffy shrimp from a Chinese restaurant near Harvard Square, or experiencing the smell of burgers coming up into the briefly occupied apartment over Bartley’s, right near the Harvard bookstore. Later, this shared activity would include sitting in the apartment in the Mission, San Francisco, among boxes that never got unpacked. Only the music—a wall of CDs—had been made accessible in that environment which one of them occupied in the 1990s. His vast collection was migrated into digital form, onto an iPod as a gift to me where I kept it for years until the device ceased functioning. Now it is all on a file on my desktop, a veritable wine cellar of vintage files I play, spending time in the company of my departed friend.
My move to NY in 1989 had been the fifth in six years to new cities or countries–always on my own. I was weary, a bit battered, and went to see a shrink about taking me on as a client feeling I could use some support that went beyond what I could ask of my friends. I had no money, I explained, barely enough for my Columbia apartment’s rent, basics of food, insurance, and utilities. How much, he asked, did I have over each month after that? Two hundred dollars, I had calculated, being an obsessive maker of budgets determined never to get into debt. That’s fine, he said, I can work with that. I calculated quickly. The shrink, or an occasional new item of clothing, frivolous outing, tasty meal or theater ticket? I opted for the latter categories in the interests of mental health.
The point is that when I was walking in dull, chill Somerville that afternoon I was caught between the desire to buy something in the spirit of the outing and the conservative streak that saw an investment in other things–paper, binding supplies, or some useful book for study as a wiser choice (this was before the internet offered access to reference materials, art historical images, and other essentials for teaching and research). One of the joys of being raised by a Protestant mother is that the internal judge is always keeping the accounts.
When I picked it up in the not quite antique store, this box was not appealing. Something in the use of blackletter to spell “Lollipops” seemed off. When was this box made? It has a 1940s feel about it, and interestingly, in 1941 the Nazi government issued a “normal type decree” that banned all blackletter printing fonts. The decree was written by Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, who identified Schwabacher forms as “Jew-letters”—which is historically incorrect given their origin in calligraphic traditions of Gothic text lettering in Italy in the 15th century. Blackletter variants served as models for early printing fonts (as did other styles of handwriting). The more rounded letters of Schwabacher and shaper angular forms of Fraktur were the two most prevalent blackletter fonts in use for centuries, especially in German-language publications. The 1941 decree declared that a form of “Antiqua” (closer to Roman and humanistic round hand) would be substituted in all schoolbooks, road signs, publications and official communications. Many people found blackletter fonts difficult to read—and write. But the characterization on which the decree was issued was simply blatant anti-Semitism, not surprising. Hard to imagine what the little American children made of this lettering, and whether they simply saw it as having fairy tale or other magical associations.
In addition to the peculiarity of the font, the language of the phrase “For Good Little Girls and Boys” feels vaguely threatening. The combination of candy and children raised specters of predatory behaviors. The lollipops themselves were already dull, flat wooden disks without appeal. And the box was meant to hang on a hook somewhere, somehow. Out of reach? In what context might the thing have found its original use? A dentist’s office? Unlikely. A floral shop? Hung at what height? At the eyeline of the child? Or too high for them to open? The more one ponders, the more perverse the item becomes not least of all because the children who are not considered worthy of its rewards are condemned to some horrible deprivation. No lollipops. Lucky them. `
But the desire to participate in the ritual of buying something, something useless, kitsch, with a slight cool nostalgia factor drove me to the purchase. No idea what it cost or where it fit in my restricted budget and how I justified acquiring something for which I had no use or even inclination. The box was insufficiently aesthetic to merit a place in my life. The paint was already chipped, the surfaces less than clean. And above all, it had no function. I tried putting packets of flower seeds in it to use at a later time. But anything that went into the dark hole just disappeared from view and use. A trash chute to oblivion whose dimensions seemed to expand infinitely. I’ve lost track of all the things that, improbably, vanished into that box over the years, porthole to another dimension.
The companions of that afternoon are both gone now. One at forty from lung cancer, a decade after our expedition. The other died a few years later and older from a heart attack, without warning, staying at his parents’ house over the Christmas holidays. Now those deaths are a long time ago. On that shopping afternoon we had no foreshadowing, no hint of what was coming. We were just passing some hours in idle distraction, enjoying each other’s company, as if we had all the time in the world to stroll, looking for something to provide interest.
The box has stayed, persisting in its lack of purpose or use, an item I could have easily done without but now cannot give away because it connects me to a lost afternoon in the company of two beloved friends I thought would remain in my life. The uselessness of the object is redeemed by another purpose, the simple function of preserving memory. `
Will likely leave SubStack and Lollipop Boxes and hope that JD: ABCs also moves! According to a piece written by a Substack publisher and published by The Atlantic on November 28, about this platform:
“Some Substack newsletters by Nazis and white nationalists have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, making the platform a new and valuable tool for creating mailing lists for the far right. And many accept paid subscriptions through Substack, seemingly that ban attempts to ‘publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes’...Substack, which takes a 10 percent cut of subscription revenue, makes money when readers pay for Nazi newsletters.”
From our perspective as Substack publishers and subscribers, it is unfathomable that someone with a swastika avatar, who writes about “The Jewish question,” or who promotes Great Replacement Theory, could be given the tools to succeed on the SubStack platform. And yet they’ve been unable to adequately explain their position.
I recognize everything about Cambridge/Somerville/Harvard changing cities, etc.!