Grandpa's trunk - VARIG menus

Menus from a time when VARIG's flight service was considered one of the world's best, and we woke up to a glass (real glass) of orange juice and watching a movie with beautiful sights and sounds of Brazil . The way things are going, soon airlines won't offer even free water...

Grandpa's trunk - Brazilian money bills

I hope our grandchildren will never live in an inflation environment like we had in Brazil until 1996. And that it will be such a remote thing for them that it will be difficult to explain the large variety of bills we had to use during all those years. Different colors, sizes and themes, and values taht defy our imagination today: a 500.000 bill?

Grandpa's trunk - things from my desk

My desk came from my father's house, many years ago. An uncle once told me it had belonged to Galeão Coutinho*, but I can't confirm that. Today it is used as a computer desk, but when I learned to write even ball pens were novelties, and for the first years I used fountain pens. That required the use of blotting paper, and since I'm left-handed, this was an absolute requirement for me. For those who don't know what blotting paper is, I leave the description to Mário Prata.


I never used the old style pens. The fountain pens on the picture are my father's Parker 51 and the 21 he gave me. I must find someone who can fix them, if it's worth it. As for the ink, one of these days I asked at the stationery store in my neighborhood if they had any fountain pen ink and they showed me the only one they had, Chinese, of course...


The likable "dromedary" was another indispensable object on any work desk. Before stick glue, even before white glue, what was used for closing envelopes and for any other paper gluing needs was gum arabic (I wonder if that's why the glass is shaped like a camel). I know it still can be found, since it is used for crafts, besides many other uses, even in the food industry.


Today these objects are curiosities, things from grandpa's trunk.
It seemed that writing was becoming old-fashioned, at least writing correctly, as a habit, for pleasure. Fortunately, blogs are beginning to make people relearn the pleasures of reading and writing. I, as a novice in this field, already spend a long time browsing blogs of common people whose talent for writing was revealed by this 21st century hobby.

* Brazilian write: complete name - Salisbury Galeão Coutinho - 1895/1945, died in an airplane crash. Works: Memórias de Simão, o caolho; O último dos Morungabas

Grandpa's trunk - São Paulo

Today I open my trunk to show some souvenirs from the Fourth Centennial of São Paulo: pictures from a magazine showing a recently opened Ibirapuera Park, still unfinished, and from a calendar of that year. It's a small tribute to my city, that celebrates today the 453th anniversary of its foundation.







I'm a second-generation paulistano. My mother, who was the daughter of a Portuguese father and an Austrian mother, was born on the Brás neighborhood, which at that time was an Italina town within the city - a typical São Paulo mix! My grandson is, therefore, a fourth-generation paulistano. It is difficult for those who don't live here to understand how it is possible to love this city. But for those who come live here with an open mind, without preconceived ideas and without the intention of returning home as fast as possible, the city will slowly reveal its charms, its secrets, its beuty, its fringe benefits. People begin to learn that it is possible for any person to discover in São Paulo their own town, suited to their tastes, hobbies, idiosyncrasies. Very few cities in the world are so self-sufficient, so complete in what they offer their dwellers.
São Paulo today is very different from the city of my childhood, of course. Worse? The first impulse is to say Yes: to remember the calm streets, the wide horizons, the merchants we knew by name. But on a second thought we see that in the last years many things are changinf for better. Today we have a much more intense cultural life, great musicals, a world-class symphonic orchestra. Birds are returning to the city thanks to the planting of trees that attract them. The Tietê river is undergoing a huge depollution project which must be maintained for decades to get to the results we all dream about. Ths disorderly growth unfortunately continues, but this will change only when São Paulo ceases to be the dreamland for all desparing people in this country (and the neighboring ones). This vision of São Paulo as the lat hope is something we must be proud of and, at the same time, sad about. In other words, this is another one of the contrasts that compose the portrait of this city of mine...
How will the São Paulo of my grandson be? Much better, I hope. I hope he will be able to navigate on the Tietê, to walk on the streets at night without fear, to breath an air as pure as in the countryside, to see birds that still haven't returned. And that he may continue to enjoy all the advantages of living in one of the largest and most dynamic cities in the world. Oh, and to eat the best pizza on the planet! Happy birthday, São Paulo!

Grandpa's trunk - stamps

An old Carnaval song said that confetti are "colored pieces of memories". What are stamps, then? Besides memories, they're colored pieces of history, geography...
In these times of instant communication , when people talk on their mobile phones even in the restroom and receive their e-mails while they walk (or even worse, while they drive), traditional mail has lost a lot of its importance. But not very long ago, it was almost the only way of communicating at great distances. And stamps, more than being a mean for paying postal fees, were show windows to their countries.



I've never been a "serious" stamp collector. I didn't know about the values of the stamps, or how to identify a stamp with good philatelic quality. I collected, or should I say, I gathered stamps because they made me curious, for their colors, for the pictures of animals, planes, historic characters, whatever...
I had a Japanese neighbor who would always call me to the backyard and throw me, from her window, beautiful stamps from Japan, still glued to the very thin envelope paper. And the stamps from other countries, my mother would buy them downtown, in parchment paper envelopes, always with the legend: "All different and authentic"...



Looking at these stamps today, I see countries that no longer exist, Dictators and kings who no one misses, advanced technology that today belongs in museums...

Grandpa's trunk - vacuum tube radio

This radio was stored for a long time. I recently decided to show it at my office, and luckily, after a few carefully administered blows, it started working as new!
The knobs are missing, But I'm almost sure they're somewhere at the bottom of the trunk; but I'm not sure I'll ever find the Philips symbol...

Some interesting characteristics: this radio is what we call here a "hot tail", meaning that it doesn't employ a transformer for the tubes' filaments: they're connected in series, as Christmas tree lamps. If one of them burns, all of them turn off...


Another economy measure is that, in order to keep the positioning of components simple, the dial is backwards, that is, frequencies decrease from left to right, as shown on the picture of the dial.


The story for my grandson is that grandpa assembled this radio himself, when he was a student of Electronics at Liceu Eduardo Prado. The year? Let's just say that, when new, grandpa listened to many Beatles songs for the first time on this radio...

Grandpa's trunk - slide rule

When I studied Electronics, personal computers were a thing not foreseen even by science fiction, and calculators were mechanical and heavy. The calculation intrument used by engineers and technologists (although this word didn't exist, either) was the slide rule.
Slide rules are analogical computers based on logarithms. An explanation of how they work would be too long to fit in here, but I recommend this site for those who want to learn more about this subject.
As an exercise, try to determine what multiplication is being done on the second picture and its result...

Grandpa's trunk - one of the smallest books in the world

When I bought it, it was advertised as the world's smallest book, but since then smaller books appeared. Anyway, it's a little wonder. This book, sold at the Gutemberg Museum in Mainz, birthplace of the inventor of movable types (and if you thought Gutemberg was born in Moguntia, you are right too: Mainz is the German name of the Roman Moguntia), contains the Lord's Prayer in seven languages: American and British English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Swedish. The pages are 3.5 x 3.5 mm in size, and it is bound with a leather cover...
This was a good test for my Canon's super-macro feature...

Grandpa's trunk - coachman's license

A note in the papers informed that a new Portuguese law would make it easier for grandchildren of Portuguese citizens to obtain Portuguese nationality. I'm interested, of course, so I did a little research. Unfortunately, it's not exactly as reported. The new law only facilitated the naturalization of grandchildren, that now can request it even if they don't live in Portugal. As for Portuguese nationality, it is still given only to children of Portuguese citizens, and grandchildren can obtain it only if their parents do it first. And the bureaucratic requirements are many: for example, Brazilians must present their birth certificates authenticated by the Foreign Relation Ministry in Brasília...
Brazilian bureaucracy ir really inherited from our discoverers. And this reminds me of an item in my trink: my grandfather's Coachman License (I don't have the original one, this copy was gently given to me by my uncle):





Notice that:

• The License is signed by the mayor of Campinas, Heitor Penteado. He's the same man after whom avenues in Campinas and São Paulo are named. You can learn more about this illustrious Brazilian here.
• The License had categories already, like the current drivers' licenses. In this case, he could drive "any vehicle harnessed by two animals".
• The bureaucracy was already very "advanced" at the time, what shows that it is really an historical characteristic of our society. Notice that each time he changed vehicles or bosses, the coachman had to register this fact on the License and pay 2 thousand reis of fees for the registry. Also, notice the well planned design of the form. For instance, the space at the end of the word anima_, to be filled with the end of the word in the singular or plural. I always say that American forms are usually poorly designed, with insufficient space for filling the fields, or not allowing for exceptions. This happens because, there, bureaucracy is not the rule, but the exception, as opposed to what happens here...
  

Grandpa's trunk - matchbooks

Last week I opened my trunk for my grandson for the first time, to show my Matchbox cars. This week I'll stay on the same theme, except this time with real matchboxes, actually, matchbooks. Today's grandchildren may find it difficult to believe, but not so long ago smoking was "cool", and the advertising industry would use this charm to sell everything. Not so much here in Brazil, but in the U.S. every restaurant or hotel would have matchbooks all over the place, on the tables, in the rooms, on the reception desk, by the cashiers... Believe me, people could smoke even on planes, and the airlines would give matches and cigarettes to their passengers! On my trips, I've collected many matchbooks, and quite a few more in restaurants and trade shows here in Brazil (yes, because matchboxes were also given as souvenirs).
It's interesting to examine them today and find brands that are gone, airlines that don't fly anymore... And to remember places and happy moments, travels, tours, delicious meals...
Here are a few examples of this collection kept in grandpa's trunk:
Anybody remembers this likable VARIG toucan, which appears here in various Brazilian sites?


Other matchbooks of airlines: except for VARIG, which is under "intensive care", all others are gone...


These are very old. Notice, on the picture at right, one from Jânio Quadros' presidential campaign. And can anybody imagine nowadays using matchbooks to advertise milk or health checkups, or to request donations to build a children's hospital?



A series about the inauguration of Brasilia, and another one about the '62 FIFA World Cup:



Souvenirs of trips around Brazil and the world:





If I counted right, my collection has 411 different matchbooks. Today, it almost doesn't grow anymore: matchbooks are not so common, and my trips are even rarer...