Stephanie Miller Asker, a pioneer in women’s psychotherapy, died at the age of 91. Her obit notes that she was one of the last living persons to have known Albert Einstein. Her father, a CPA, became Einstein’s accountant and friend. Stephanie met the great man when she was four, and would often visit his home in New Jersey along with her parents.
When she was nine she asked Einstein about his theory of relativity. He promised to explain it to her when she was older.
She reminded him of the promise when she was twelve. So he took the top of a cake box and drew on it illustrations of a train station and an elevator…and wouldn’t you love to have that box top? I still wouldn’t understand the theory, but I’d have one heckuva conversation piece for my wall.
Which is why people collect autographs, of course. Little pieces of scribbled celebrity that sometimes gain value over time. In fact, a 1946 autographed photo of Einstein is one of the most valuable of such items, at around ten grand, because Al wasn’t exactly loose with his pen.
Abraham Lincoln signed 48 copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, half of which are lost. One of the remaining copies sold at auction for $2.1million back in 2012. That seems about right. You would not expect to spend that much on a Millard Fillmore or a James K. Polk, but for Honest Abe, yes.
And you’d think that John Hancock’s John Hancock would be the most valuable among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. But that honor actually belongs to a more obscure rebel named Button Gwinnett. A 1770s-era document with his signature went for nearly $722,500 back in 2010.
Gwinnett, by the way, was not given his first name because his mother thought him “cute as a button” when he was born (and where did that idiom come from, anyway? What is so cute about a button? “Sturdy as a button” maybe, if you have a pair of stud-fly Levis. But cute? Apparently, in merry old England where the phrase comes from, a button refers to a flower bud, which makes more sense. But I still can’t make head or tail out of “cute as a bug’s ear”), but rather because he was named in honor of his mother’s cousin, Barbara Button, of the Gloucester Buttons, who fastened themselves to high society (see what I did there? This is why you read Whimsical Wanderings).
Other valuable signatures are Jimmy Page’s autographed Gibson guitar, and a baseball signed by that fun couple, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe.
I was too young to have seen DiMaggio play, but his name was well known to us Boomers, and not just for baseball. He was for many years the TV pitchman for Mr. Coffee, and he’s also a lyric in the Simon and Garfunkel song “Mrs. Robinson.” That song was part of the score for the movie The Graduate (1967), starring Dustin Hoffman as the titular character, and the brilliant Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Woo, woo, woo.What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away.
Hey, hey, hey.
The song became a huge hit. Several years later, in a New York restaurant, Simon was introduced to Joe DiMaggio, who said to him, “What I don’t understand is why you ask where I’ve gone. I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial.”
Simon explained that he used Mr. DiMaggio as a symbol for old-fashioned values and heroism, gone now from a cynical society.
What he didn’t tell Joltin’ Joe (aka, The Yankee Clipper) was that Simon was really a fan of DiMaggio’s replacement, Mickey Mantle. But Mickey’s name didn’t scan as well for the song. Try it. Thud.
Speaking of The Mick, Jim Bouton was a Yankees pitcher in the 1960s who wrote the first tell-all book about baseball, Ball Four. In there he has a story about Mantle, who liked to hoist a few. He came in one day for a game, completely hung over. The manager told him to sleep it off, they’d put somebody else in center field.
But the game went into extra innings and the Yankees needed a pinch hitter. So they grabbed Mickey off the training table. He went to the plate, took a practice swing, and then smashed a towering home run into the bleachers.
He somehow made it around the bases, but missed stepping on home plate. Some players hustled him back to touch it.
In the dugout, a player asked him how he hit a homer in his condition. Mantle said, “I hit the middle ball.”
Quote of the Week: “Be brief, for no discourse can please when too long.” – Cervantes
Poem of the Week: By an anonymous Scot poet from about 150 years ago:
He was a burglar stout and strong,
Who held, “It surely can’t be wrong
To open trunks and rifle shelves,
For God helps those who help themselves.”But when before the Court he came,
And boldly rose to plead the same,
The judge replied: “That’s very true;
You’ve helped yourself—now God help you!”
When I was just a little kid, the Yankees came to Savannah for some kind of exhibition game. We didn't go to the game, but some friends and I were outside the stadium when the team came out and got on their bus. I handed a piece of paper up to a guy sitting next to one of the open windows, and he signed it and handed it back to me. It was Whitey Ford. I didn't know much about baseball players other than Mickey Mantle, so I gave it to my brother.
I once had a pristine Mickey Mantle baseball card, but alas, my mother didn't understand the value and tossed it and a box of other baseball cards that included an early Willie Mays...