We finally had some appropriate seasonal weather last weekend. My parents came up to visit and we went into Salem to walk around and do some shopping. First stop, as always, was the
Witch City Consignment & Thrift. You may have seen me live tweet previous visits to this store because there's rarely a lack of interesting and unusual things to be found there.
Since we were there, I decided to poke around and see if I could add anything to the
collection of keys I started over a year ago. After digging through a shoe box lid of $1 keys, here's what I came away with.
The one of the left was a no brainer. I'm a sucker for anything that looks like it goes to a locker or a safety deposit box. It automatically has an air of mystery about it as you start to wonder who the key belonged to and what they had locked up. The one of the right I picked out because of the windmill. It's probably nothing more than the logo of the key company but it's something different. I mean, how often do people really look at their keys?
The last one I grabbed is pretty neat.
The flip side of the little card has some person's info on it (see below). But the first thing I noticed about it is that there's no area code with the phone number which means it has to be a couple decades old at least. Something else interesting is that the tag is for a car place but the key is clearly not one that goes to a car. When I went to photograph this one, I noticed the plastic tag actually had a few more cards inside it. Of course I had to open it!
Inside were two more Zarren Motors cards and two blank info cards. A
quick Google search turned up an 80 year old David Wright who still lives in Melrose and formerly lived at the listed address. If I were more of of adventurous person, maybe I'd contact him to see if he recalls the key.
The shop had gotten in a large number of Hot Wheels since the last time I was there so I spent about 5 minutes going through them to see if there was anything to add to the Halloween Garage. If you've ever browsed pegs of Hot Wheels, you know it's a quick affair so spending 5 minutes should tell you just how many cars they had!
What I found was a 2004 version of Evil Twin from a series called Demonition. It's got some very cool demonic artwork on it! The sides show three impish creatures doing the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil poses. The roof has what I'm presuming is the same trio doing the exact opposite!
They all have removed their hands from their eyes, ears or mouth. Only now they look a lot more demonic with long horns sprouting form their heads.
After the thrift store, we walked down the pedestrian mall. We passed by the only remaining local book store in town which appeared to be closed because its windows were papered over. But I noticed a table set up outside the door with some books. Despite the growing number of books on my 'to read" shelf, I can rarely pass by a table of them!, especially when they're $1 paperback and $4 hardcovers.
When I got to the table I saw a sign on the store that said they were closed for renovations, so that was some good news! I didn't find anything noteworthy in the "adult" books so I checked the 50% off kids book stacks and found something that, I'm not gonna lie, made me kinda giddy.
A junior novelization of an episode of the gone too soon Fox series Space: Above & Beyond. I absolutely loved this show when it was on. Even though I taped it every week, it was something I wanted to watch live. This was '95-'96 so there was no fear of internet spoilers but I enjoyed the show that much that I had to see new episodes ASAP.
After finding this one, I immediately tore through the rest of the stacks hoping to find #1 (or #3 and #4 as promised inside the cover) but no luck. When I got home, I hit up
Paperback Book Swap and found not only #1 but two regular novels based on the show were available from other members. Ordered and on their way to me! I'm very happy to have found this kids book because it will get me to reconnect with the S:A&B universe again.
