Surprise in my Gibson Mandolin Case

[Petrus]

With my luck I'd find a brown recluse in the case or something.

[outsidenote]

Watson - its the strange case of Danny Roberts's analog watch. It only had the day on it. And on May 1 it said 31. Its possible - even likely - that a few other Gibsons were also made on 4/31/03. Or, you may have the only one. How cool is that?

[BradKlein]

Watson - its the strange case of Danny Roberts's analog watch. It only had the day on it. And on May 1 it said 31. Its possible - even likely - that a few other Gibsons were also made on 4/31/03. Or, you may have the only one. How cool is that?

HA! That's a perfectly probable explanation, for those of us old enough to remember manual date watches. Did you make that up or actually hear it from the horse's mouth?

[outsidenote]

HA! That's a perfectly probable explanation, for those of us old enough to remember manual date watches. Did you make that up or actually hear it from the horse's mouth?

Process of deduction . Might be wrong of course. I do deduce (much more confidently) that the mandolin is really cool!

[Timbofood]

I can see it, I used to get customers who failed to understand how to adjust the date on analog watches often. One guy came in the first of the month almost without fail for a year! Finally he grasped the way it worked.

[Jeff Mando]

Kinda like A sharp and B flat.....

[Austin Bob]

I can see it, I used to get customers who failed to understand how to adjust the date on analog watches often. One guy came in the first of the month almost without fail for a year! Finally he grasped the way it worked.

Um, shouldn't he have only come in on the 1st day of March, May, July, October and December? On the rest of the months, his watch would have been right.

[Timbofood]

I thought that was mostly clear Bob, sorry. Guess I needed to be more specific. No worries. I was glad the day he finally figured out how the thing worked! Heck, it wasn't even a spring powered watch. Battery operated movements are pretty straightforward, mechanicals need a tiny bit more...thought but, not much. I think he may have been lonely and this made a good excuse to see someone. I don't know.

[Bill Baldridge]

I think he may have been lonely and this made a good excuse to see someone. I don't know.

That was the thought that went through my mind. I am sure you were nice to him or he wouldn't have kept coming back.

[jaycat]

. . . Jaycat, I didn't realize you were a typesetter! One,more,interest we have in common!

Yup. Even worked at the Wall St Journal for a year. You wouldn't want to know what went on during the midnite shift . . .

[Timbofood]

Sometimes I think I am just a frustrated printer!
Now it's rare to find someone who knows much about a press.
My dad had a an old "Heidelberg" he used to print small projects on.
He made a series of "house call" cards for priests under the name "The Priest Pocket Press"
He was amazing with understanding layout, I miss him every day.

[Emmett Marshall]

Watson - its the strange case of Danny Roberts's analog watch. It only had the day on it. And on May 1 it said 31. Its possible - even likely - that a few other Gibsons were also made on 4/31/03. Or, you may have the only one. How cool is that?

I think it's very cool, but even more so FUNNY! I'm also wondering how many mandolins are signed by Danny on the "date that didn't exist"? If you look really close at the label, you can see that the blanks were written with one pen, and Danny's signature seems to be written with another pen. At least, it looks that way to me. I wonder if someone at Gibson filled in all the blanks on these labels ahead of time, and then handed them to Danny to sign? I also sent an email to Gibson just to get their "reaction" on this strange label. I figured that might be good for even a few more laughs. Unfortunately, they replied with a "boiler plate" response asking me to send them pictures of my mandolin. They seem to have misinterpreted my email completely. At some point in the future, I may give them a call and ask them to please explain how my mandolin was signed on a day that doesn't exist.

I think about all this "weirdness." - it's number 13, the date doesn't exist, finding the letter in the box, and I really have to wonder what kind of "mojo" I'm dealing with here!

[Emmett Marshall]

With my luck I'd find a brown recluse in the case or something.

Hey Petrus, you could start a thread on "Weird Things Found in Mandolin Cases." I bet all the luthiers around here have found some pretty interesting stuff in those instrument cases.

[journeybear]

Huh. My Birthday is April 30. I always thought it was the last day of the month..I now have one more day to file my income tax!

Ummm ... Unless things are different in Canada than here, where taxes are due on April 15th, regardless of birthdate, it would have no effect.

Yup. Even worked at the Wall St Journal for a year. You wouldn't want to know what went on during the midnite shift . . .

Not so fast. I never gave it a thought before now, but now I want to know everything!

[Bill Snyder]

JB, I would have thought you of the nimble fingers and Google saviness would have checked into it to find out that taxes are indeed due on April 30 in Canada.

[journeybear]

But it's SO much easier to ask the expert(s) at the Mandolin Café. Plus there's a chance there'll be a little humor in the offing as well.

[jaycat]

Not so fast. I never gave it a thought before now, but now I want to know everything!

Let's just say that the crew were not always stone-cold sober. This was at their plant in Chicopee, Mass., about 35 years ago (gulp).

We used to use a pre-printed masthead where the price per issue appeared. Then the price went up but we were supposed to use up the old mastheads, so it was someone's job to paste the new price in every night. Well of course one night they forgot so many thousands of copies hit the street at a "bargain" price.

Can't remember if it went from 25 to 35 cents, maybe something like that. No repercussions however, we had a fairly strong union in those days.

I often wondered how accurate the agate type (stock prices, etc.) came out in the morning. Fortunes won and lost ???

[jaycat]

Sometimes I think I am just a frustrated printer!
Now it's rare to find someone who knows much about a press.
My dad had a an old "Heidelberg" he used to print small projects on.
He made a series of "house call" cards for priests under the name "The Priest Pocket Press"
He was amazing with understanding layout, I miss him every day.

That's a great memory.
I was never a "pressman," the distinction was between "printer" (typesetter) and "pressman." So I know nothing about presses.

I quit the graphic arts racket around the turn of the millenium, when things started moving away from print and towards the web. "Desktop publishing" as it was known then, kind of made the Typesetter go the way of the Brontosaurus.

[journeybear]

Thanks for that. Funny stuff happens! You would love it here, where things go awry in the local papers all the time. There is one daily here, one semi-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays), free everywhere except on its island of origin, and a bunch of free weeklies. The daily purports to have some journalistic integrity, but now and then ... One time the date was wrong - just on one page! I don't even know how that can happen. Not long ago one of the weeklies had its date wrong on the cover, saying it was the March 13th - March 9th issue, while the inside pages had it right, March 13th - March 19th. I might not have noticed, but this is the issue which carried the coverage of the annual Conch Shell Blowing Contest, in which they erroneously reported someone other than my duo had won in the Group category. Looking for the issue info for my letter to the editor I looked there and saw what I saw. Funny stuff!

[Timbofood]

The graphic design world left me when the cool old store I hired in was bought by a rival. The old guy that hired me was the best boss in the world! He taught me tons, glass work, picture framing, volumes of art material knowledge which is now archaic to say the least.
I never knew the distinction between "printer" and "pressman"! One more fact in the archaic term file, much like "rubylith".
My dad also played mandolin before I was born! One time at church camp, he played bass when I got some guys together to play for a dance. I think that was the only time we made music together, wish there had been more.

[jaycat]

Oh yeah, cutting rubies, such fun. Remember fanning out type into an arc by hand? Line screens, reverses . . .

Tim, you and I are available when the hipsters decide to go retro, like they have with LPs, etc.

[Big Joe]

As far as the date and watch theory, I gave Danny an automatic wrist watch that used numerical dates and all months were 31 days. It was a nice watch. It was not Danny's only watch, and I would never claim that great a memory to know he wore it on that date 12 years ago ��. But, it was possible.

[Timbofood]

One thing which I found as the crowning point when the store sold, one of the requirements was that he could not move the store until he had purchased every scrap of inventory. Two weeks later the entire "Letraset" style of dry transfer designing was rendered obsolete! The old guy ended up retiring without a care in the world! He had sold his business, the stock, the building went to the Upjohn company for a tidy sum. He was a shrewd businessman to be sure.
One note, I never cut a film, or laid any commercial type in my life but, I sold a helluva lot of material! I miss the creative people I met through there! And a couple of girlfriends. It's where I ended up meeting my wife!
Then I got into the vacuum cleaner selling business...that sucked.
Then the jewelry industry, it was as close to selling art material as I could get!
Joe, I almost always wear automatics! The way they work I find fascinating, much like fine mandolins, everything must fit and finish out properly or....something is out if tune!

[jaycat]

. . . Then I got into the vacuum cleaner selling business...that sucked.

Ouch!

Oh, and for the record, I wear a wind-up Omega . . . and I have a pin-up wall calendar. So . . . no April 31st in this house!

[Timbofood]

"Speedmaster"?