An FBI fingerprint kit, a set of brass knuckles, a sturdy pair of black paratrooper boots. …
Every day is Christmas for the volunteers sorting donations to the annual Times Colonist book sale. Open a box, they never know what might be inside.
Sometimes an old love letter, $2 bill or pressed flower will slip out of a dust jacket. Sometimes the box will hold a bigger, weirder surprise.
Among the nuggets mined in the past week are a cigar box full of collector pins, an original Mulroney-era Raeside cartoon and a series of autographed, mounted photos of yesterday’s TV stars: Susan Lucci, Piper Laurie, Patty Duke, Mulder and Scully from the X-Files.
Yes, there were jump boots, size 12 from the looks of them. A Playboy bunny logo was mounted on the brass knuckles, which must have left some interesting scars. No passports, marijuana or urns of cat ashes this year, though.
The FBI fingerprint kit came in a hard plastic container sealed within a clear evidence bag. We hoped/ feared that the container would hold a severed hand, but when Sgt. Mike Yeager of the Victoria police forensics section cracked it open he found a brand-new brush, powder and lifting tapes, along with a how-to instructional DVD — your basic G-man field kit. Maybe it belonged to Mulder and Scully.
Sometimes the unboxed items are personal in nature, making you wonder if someone, somewhere wants them back. Nicco Collins, wherever you are, we have photos of every team — rugby, soccer, hockey, tennis, football — for which you ever played as a kid.
Victoria’s Karen McLeod has been holding on to one such gem for years, hoping to return it to its rightful home. It’s a handmade Father’s Day card that fell out of a book — she can’t remember which one — that she bought at the TC sale maybe a decade ago.
What makes this card so compelling is the earnestness of its author, who might have loved his father, but was absolutely passionate about his desire to play hockey. Judging from the names printed in a laboured boyhood (or girlhood) hand, it was probably written around 1972.
The cover features a pencilled rendering of a goaltender in a No. 30 Boston Bruins sweater. (Had to be Gerry Cheevers.) “Happy Father’s Day,” the message begins, but after that it’s pretty much a heartfelt plea to pull on the blades: “dear dad can i join hockey this year, I will help you with the boat and wash the car, set the breakfast table in the morning and bring in your breakfast for you on Sunday and Saturday and take empty beer bottle cases down to the basement every night you ask me to.
“Hockey is the best,” it continues. “Join now you can be an All Star just like Bobby Orr, and Bobby Hull, Denise Hull, Gordie Howe, Tony Esposito, Phil Esposito, Ken Driden.”
Having misplaced the card when moving house, McLeod recently rediscovered it in a box of old photographs. Too bad it bore no name. She hopes someone will recognize it as a missing family treasure. “It’s a long shot, I suppose, but…”
(McLeod, incidentally, was the subject of a classic Victoria newspaper photograph. In 1977, the legendary Big Jim Ryan took a shot in which a Tally Ho carriage horse appeared to be checking out the teenage McLeod, blonde and leggy, as she walked past. Ryan, shooting for the short-lived Victorian newspaper, got the horse to turn its head by making clucking noises and dragging a feed bucket on the sidewalk. The photo ran across Canada.)
Anyway, you’ll have your own chance to unearth treasures of the printed kind at the annual two-day Times Colonist book sale this weekend. It runs 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday at the Victoria Curling Club at 1952 Quadra St. As usual, the money raised will go to literacy-related projects on Vancouver Island.
Make sure to check inside the covers for surprises.
