I've grabbed a new box full of fun for the next few "Stuff From the Box" installments. It's a pretty nice old lithographed tobacco tin, with the stern countenance of Daniel Webster, oozing solemnity. He was an American lawyer and statesman who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress and served as the 14th and 19th U.S. secretary of state under presidents William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Millard Fillmore. Inside the box, there's the usual selection of random objects, along with a few "gems".
I used to have fun bowling with various family members when I was younger, even though I was not particularly good. I could never throw the ball any way other than "dead straight and fast", which led to a lot of splits. But it was a good excuse to eat hot french fries with lots of ketchup, and there's nothing wrong with that. For whatever reason, bowling's popularity seems to be waning year by year. The pin below is a nice example from 20th Century Lanes (wherever that was) in celebration of somebody scoring 225 - not too shabby. I love the rocket theme.
I've mentioned my fondness for old employee pins and badges (in fact all of the rest of today's items fall into that category). This next object is an ID badge that belonged to a fellow who worked at General Electric's facility in Schenectady, New York. I guess he was hired in 1949? (GE's) company's roots in Schenectady go back to Thomas Edison, who moved his Edison Machine Works there in 1887. GE's Schenectady facility is known for its manufacturing and service center capabilities, particularly in areas like steam and generator rotor services, and advanced generator manufacturing.
Here's a cheerful orange name tag (sans name) from a Rexall drug store. I assumed that Rexall was still a thing, but Wikipedia says Rexall was a chain of American drugstores, and the name of their store-branded products. The stores, having roots in the federation of United Drug Stores starting in 1903, licensed the Rexall brand name to as many as 12,000 drug stores across the United States from 1920 to 1977. They've been gone since 1977?
Here's an attractive employee badge from Pabst Breweries (in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), date unknown. The Pabst Brewing Company is an American company that dates its origins to a brewing company founded in 1844 by Jacob Best and was, by 1889, named after Frederick Pabst. The brewery's best-seller was a lager, Best Select, which began public sales in 1875. By 1893, Pabst became the first brewer in the United States to sell more than one million U.S. barrels (120 million liters) of beer in a year. The beer was also the favorite of Frank Booth from "Blue Velvet"!
I really like the design on this tiny pin (small enough that it was hard to photograph) given to a Convair employee in honor of that person's fifth year with the company. Convair, previously Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, was an American aircraft-manufacturing company that later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. The company was formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. In 1953, it was purchased by General Dynamics, and operated as their Convair Division for most of its corporate history. It also manufactured the first Atlas rockets, including the rockets that were used for the crewed orbital flights of Project Mercury. The company's subsequent Atlas-Centaur design continued this success and derivatives of the design remain in use as of 2025.
Stay tuned for more STUFF FROM THE BOX!
