Basement Archaeology

by Brendyn Schneider

It was just after dinner at my grandparents’ house.

My dad wiped his mouth, leaned over to me and asked, “You know who Mickey Mantle is?”

I did but I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that Mickey Mouse had jumped to mind first. I wasn’t a baseball fan. Sue me.

“Somewhere in this house, there’s a baseball card with Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris on it – a double. You know how much that’s worth?”

I shook my head.

He lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the air. “Thousands.”

“Thousands?”

“Thousands,” he nodded. “You find that card and we won’t have to pay for your college.”

I was 11; college was still a ways off but I was old enough to know that a “thousand” with an “s” on the end could buy a lot of video games.

“I’ll tell you something else,” my dad mused, leaning back in his chair, “there’s MAD magazines too.”

“MAD, really?”

“That’s right. Old ones. ‘Vintage,’ they say.”

“Huh!” my grandfather said, across from us. “You’re full of trash.”

“I’m tellin’ ya,” my dad insisted. “I used to buy all that stuff – baseball cards, MAD Magazines. God knows what else you’ll find if you start looking. Unless your grandmother threw it all out,” he leaned forward and poked the table, emphasizing each syllable, “there’s a goldmine in this house.”

The glory days of working 9-5 hadn’t started yet so the only sources of revenue I had trickled from the pockets of the other two guys at the table. The way my dad was carrying on, the basement harbored a genuine golden calf. Better than that – Golden Cattle! Thousands of dollars? For openers? Never having to ask for money again, all because of Mickey Mantle and Alfred E. Newman?! Impossible dream! I could quit school!

“Start with the workbench,” Dad advised like a wizard before a quest. “Look in the attic too and under the stairs, out in the garage and in the sun porch. You’re gonna find collector’s items. The only question is how many.”

I ran from the table a true believer, shunning the very high probability that Grandma had tossed the calves out years before with a dismissive, “JUNK.”

Dashing down the basement stairs, I tore around the pool table, targeting the dusty workbench with little pink hands. I rifled through the drawers, noting with only mild interest the model airplane engines, cans of Imperial epoxy and musty smell of cabinet grit, undisturbed since the Bay of Pigs. After only five minutes, I had struck gold – a 1963 MAD boasting a sticker section with gems like “THIS MOVIE’S A BOMB” and “MY OTHER CAR’S THE BATMOBILE.” Life’s perpetual weekend had begun!

“You can’t just stop going to school,” my mother said on the drive home.

“Yeah,” Dad replied. “It’s just one MAD. Put it away. Save it. Keep lookin’.”

And I did. On subsequent visits to my grandparents’ house, I’d pick a room and scour it. My grandfather would yell from his chair in the living room, “Bring it all home. I want it all the hell out of here!” Well, most of it would be staying but some stuff, like the rolled up 1968 Playboy calendar under the pool table would be going home with me.

The garage had an old erector set from the 50s, a Daisy air rifle, an ancient croquet game and a diving mask made not of plastic but glass.

Back on the workbench, I found an “Official” Three Stooges collector’s card which declared, “Hey Kids! Tell your friends about Larry, Moe and Curley’s new movie, Have Rocket Will Travel!”

Fun stuff, sure, but it wasn’t Mickey Mantle.

Sitting under the stairs with a flashlight, I found myself poring through stacks of National Geographic and Life Magazine. I fell in love with the fonts and guarantees of the American advertisement – the cursive “S” sweeping through a Swingline Stapler ad and the promise of getting that girl next door with just the right amount of Brylcreem.

Of course, not all of it was nostalgia-lite. On the 30th anniversary of the JFK Assassination, my mother showed me a Newsday supplement. It was a reprint of the paper from November 23rd – the day after Kennedy was shot. The next time we were at my grandparents’ place, I showed her the original.

Then there was the 1956 issue of Ring Magazine that I found in the attic. It was in a stack that had belonged to my mother’s father. He had passed away decades before. I recall going through his effects slowly, almost solemnly. These weren’t bits of forgotten pop culture. Yeah, the boxing magazines and editions of The Daily Mirror were in good shape but because their value matched that of the old photos and grade school report cards, I would not be taking them. It was the first time I encountered the difference between collectors’ items and a legacy.

After a few months, I had gone through the hot spots outlined by my dad but only had a few items to show for it. Where was the windfall? Where was the baseball card that my father was now valuing above $10,000?

Dad and I started going to comic book shops and conventions, collecting MAD and introducing Superman comics into the mix. My allowance flew out of my wallet in favor of the SUMMER SPECIAL edition of MAD featuring the Sergio Aragones pull-out section, the Marvel/DC crossover battle between Spiderman and Superman and of course, the very first MAD magazine. There were the accessories too: the airtight bags, the 8 ½ X 11 shape-preservers and the long cardboard box for storing the comics exactly as the comic shops did.

I had become a comic book kid but one obsessed with the past – the characters’ faces, the look of rocket ships before Yuri Gagarin’s flight, and those ads! Always the ads. They weren’t like the adverts of today. It all had a certain style, a level of artistic merit that just screamed ATTACK OF THE 1950S!

I’m kind of embarrassed to say that some of the ad hooks still worked. When I was 12, my curiosity over whether or not I could actually obtain an Atlas Body had gotten the better of me. I sent in the two dollars or whatever it was to Charles Atlas Ltd. and only half-expected to get anything back. The ad was in an Action Comic dated 1968. Well, six to twelve weeks later, I received a kit packed with reasons why I had to send them more money for the vitamins and exercise guide exclusive to the Atlas Team, which thanks to the 2 bucks, I was now a proud member of. Not only did the company still exist but they had constructed a time tunnel into the forties as part of their marketing campaign.

“Men,” the first page read, “get a load of this picture of Jerome. Would you believe that before becoming a team member, this SUPERMAN was a scrawny 98 lb. weakling?”

Jerome stood there wearing nothing more than khaki shorts, an admiral’s cap and a smile. I stuffed the kit into a comic book and felt uncomfortable for the rest of the day.

My burgeoning love for comics and pop art notwithstanding, there was still no sign of the Mickey Mantle/Roger Maris baseball card. I began to dream of tunnels beneath the basement and little doors in the attic – my subconscious desire for there to be more of the house to look through.

When I was 23, I found a pack of Lucky Strikes in the rafters above the pool table. God knows how long they had been up there. Three cigarettes remained in the pack. Out of boredom, I lit one up. Never before had the world turned on its side so definitively.

Years passed. Even though the old ball players had absolutely no role in flipping the bill for college (or, for that matter, any expense since then), the expeditions continue. These days, there’s more time between each hunt but I still look with the faith and spirit of that 11 year-old boy.

While I was putting this story together, I searched around online for the card. After some digging, I found something on eBay. The description read:

Extremely Rare, PSA 7 – Topps 1962 card #53, AL Home Run Leaders of 1961, featuring the Real Home Run King Roger Maris from his record breaking year. Mickey Mantle, Harmon Killebrew and Jim Gentile.

My God, I thought. I called my dad and sent him the link. He jumped on his
computer and confirmed it. This was the card! How much was it worth after so many years?

$150.00.

“Oh well,” my dad sighed. “I swore that card was a helluva lot more.”

eBay is wrong of course. The card is worth a hell of a lot more. One day, like me, my kids will hear about it and the expeditions will go on, maintaining a legacy that knows no price tag.

***

Read more at www.brendynschneider.com

© 2008-2012, Brendyn Schneider, reprinted by Dadity.com with permission. Use or reprint not authorized without permission of the author.

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