Memorabilia Moment – Page 2

New in the collection: Unconvention pinback

“It wasn’t long ago that President Donald Trump foresaw accepting the Republican nomination for president for a second time in front of a roaring crowd.

“Instead, the Republican National Convention will be a far more scaled-back affair, with an even smaller crowd than what was initially — and even more recently — planned for Trump’s celebration.

“The coronavirus thwarted plans to pack a North Carolina sports arena with red-clad supporters, and left Republicans with a pared-down gathering across two cities that will include a mix of prerecorded content from Washington, D.C.

“While Charlotte was expected to hold the full convention this year, after being selected more than two years ago, those plans were abruptly altered by the president. Trump’s desire for a boisterous celebration in the middle of a pandemic led to him briefly move his acceptance speech to Jacksonville, Florida, before the coronavirus once again forced those plans to change.

“The convention is set to take place over four days — with Charlotte hosting official business — culminating in Trump formally accepting the nomination from the White House on Thursday night.”

— From “Split between 2 cities, Trump to accept nomination from White House” by Kendall Karson and Terrance Smith at ABC News (Aug. 23, 2020)

New in the collection: Reidsville beer pennant

“If you have a can of Miller beer in the refrigerator, there is a pretty good chance you have a product of Ball Corp.‘s Reidsville can plant. Not the beer, but the can itself.

“Ball, the world’s largest beverage can maker, has owned the plant since 1998. It employs 187 people [and] produces 1.8 billion recyclable aluminum cans a year….”

— From “Ball’s can plant in Reidsville” in the Greensboro News & Record (May 22, 2011)

“In 2015, MillerCoors announced it would close the brewery [in Eden] and lay off the 500 or so people who worked there.

“Then, in 2016, Ball Corp., which had made the cans and packaging for MillerCoors, said it would close its plant in nearby Reidsville in mid-2017.”

— From “The Downsides of ‘Efficiency’ “ by Alana Semuels in the Atlantic (March 2, 2017)

From happier times, this celebratory souvenir pennant.

New in the collection: matchbook from Melton’s

“Born and raised on a Nash County farm, Bob Melton [discovered] his true calling at age 50. Bob, who had ‘been cooking’ since he was 12, started selling barbecue in 1922 using cooking pits along the banks of the Tar River in Rocky Mount. Two years later he built his first restaurant, which became the first indoor sit-down BBQ restaurant in North Carolina. He specialized in whole hog with a vinegar-based sauce and sides of slaw and Brunswick stew.

“Over the years Melton’s put Rocky Mount on several culinary maps. In 1958 Life magazine called Bob the ‘King of Southern Barbecue.’
— From Robert “Bob” Melton, Twin County Museum & Hall of Fame

Melton died in 1958, but the restaurant survived until being destroyed by flooding from hurricanes Fran in 1996 and Floyd in 1999.

Though modest in appearance, this matchbook seems to have been from the advertising medium’s golden age — the 1940s and ’50s.

New in the collection: child’s wrestling title belt

“The late ‘American Dream’ Dusty Rhodes will be inducted into the National Wrestling Alliance‘s Hall of Heroes in his favorite city, Charlotte, North Carolina….

” ‘We arrived in Charlotte in 1984,’ recalled Dusty’s widow, Michelle, ‘which was before the NBA Hornets and the NFL Panthers, and the wrestlers were the biggest stars in the city. At one time, over 200 wrestlers and their families called Charlotte their home….’

“Dusty had great success as a main-event wrestler in the NWA and also as the ‘booker’ — TV producer or creative force behind the wrestling product under the Jim Crockett Promotions banner. The NWA was Charlotte’s home team within the pro-wrestling world that saw intense competition with the rival WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment, based in Stamford, Conn.”

— From “Dusty Rhodes to be honored in beloved city of Charlotte” by Jim Ross at Fox Sports (Aug. 2, 2016)

This “World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion” belt for kids is from the WWE, where Rhodes finished his ring career in 2007 at age 61.

New in the collection: Piedmont Airlines safety card

Cover of Piedmont Airlines seatback safety instructions featuring an image of a captain's hat.

Inside of Piedmont Airlines safety instructions. It includes drawings noting the proper use of drop down air masks, the location of emergency exits, and the method for removing emergency doors.

This seat-back safety instruction folder, likely pilfered from a 1980s Piedmont Airlines flight, proudly announces the captain is at the controls of a Boeing 727-200. Maybe even Lori Cline — who at age 23 became the youngest airline captain ever for any airline. “Without a doubt,” she told O.Henry magazine, “my favorite airplane of all time was the Boeing 727 for Piedmont Airlines, which was a workhorse for the industry during the ’70s and ’80s before it was retired for being considered inefficient, fuel-wise, due to its third engine. And to this day, before I retire, if I could get to fly one airplane again, it would be that classic Cadillac.”

Chris Runge, curator for the Piedmont Aviation Historical Society, mentions a feature of the 727-200 that enabled a policy that surely seems fantastical to the put-upon air travelers of 2022: “The 727 has what you call your rear air stairs…. If a passenger missed a flight and the plane was halfway down the tarmac, the agent would call out to the plane, they’d stop, the pilot would drop the air stairs. The passenger would run out on the tarmac, jump up the back of the plane and they’d lift it up and go. Their motto was ‘Don’t leave anybody behind. Ever.’ And they didn’t.”

Footnote: In 1978 Piedmont purchased from Northwest Orient Airlines a used 727-200 with a historic rear exit — the one used by “D.B. Cooper.”

New in the collection: Blotter from Palms Restaurant

Blotter with words "The Palms Restaurant, Food at its best," and urging customers to "try our 35 cent lunch."

“The Palms restaurant at 305 E. Chapel Hill Street was an institution in Durham from about 1920 until it closed in 1983. An early proprietor of the establishment was Norman O. Reeves, who served ‘sizzling steaks’ and claimed ‘We never close.’

“The Palms was frequented by downtown employees (lawyers had their own table) and was dubbed ‘the bellybutton of Durham.’ ”

— From “Durham, North Carolina: A Postcard History” by Stephen E. Massengill (1997)

This ink blotter is undated, but “Try Our 35c Lunch” seems to narrow the possibilities.

“Richmond-based painter J. Bohannon was born in New York City in 1950 and moved with his family at age 2 to Hilton Village, [Va.], Newport News and later, as a teenager, to Hopewell. After studying art at the Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bohannon worked as a salesman in his father’s art supply store, selling his own original artwork on the side. By his own admission, his paintings of the time were derivative of the European high art and contemporary abstraction he had studied at RPI. Then one day he picked up a copy of Matthew Baigell’s The American Scene: American Painting of the 1930s (1974) from a discount book bin. Until then, Bohannan says, he had never really seen, much less studied, modern American painting, despite four years of formal art education.

“Working alongside street artists in Verona and Munich, copying famous Caravaggios and Bouchers in pastel on public sidewalks, Bohannan developed a passion for ‘plastic realism,’ embedding human forms in visual space in a way that is, as Bohannon puts it, ‘more there than right’ — that is, more materially present than technically correct.

After his return to Virginia from Europe, Bohannon began developing a latter-day American Scene style, and his career took off in a wave of commissions. In 1995, after an employee of Philip Morris saw one of his paintings in a Richmond coffee shop, the company hired Bohannon to create the artwork for its ‘Keep Tobacco Clean’ poster series, intended for display in its growers’ warehouses.”

— From “Multiple Exposure: Catablog of the Visual Studies Collection @ the Library of Virginia”

“In the 1990s [Philip Morris] began its push for ‘cleanliness’ by furnishing auction warehouses with red garbage barrels and immense red banners [reading], ‘Keep Tobacco Clean’ with white lettering against a red background that mimicked Marlboro packaging.

“At a time when the auctions were still operating and growers were not yet directly contracted with firms, the signs expressed corporate power and subtly implied that more stringent demands were coming down the pike….”

— From Tobacco Capitalism: Growers, Migrant Workers, and the Changing Face of a Global Industry” by Peter Benson (2012)