Greetings boys and ghouls!!       So you’re back for more of our merrily mumbling memoirs from Jimmy’s critically praised crockpot, eh?  Heh  heh  heh.   O.K.  For you apprentices,  I will introduce myself. I am The VAULT WARDEN;  elected witness, ghoulunatic clone and file-keeper of this vanity-vault of reckless recollections.  Here, I will reveal TRUE stories about Jimmy VanHollebeke, who is too embarrassed to reveal them himself! Gather round my corner of the Vault.  Get nice and comfy and let me tell you about the time little Jimmy received his first important gift. An artistic tool that would prove to be useful and useless at the same time! I call this short story …

 

Jimmy was five years old in 1950 and he already had a hero.

Pinocchio.

Pinocchio was the first of many champions Jimmy would accumulate.  To Jim, a hero is forever.

But he was five years old back then and obsessed with that lovable puppet character.  He had two books about Pinocchio.  One was a comic book and the other was a Little Golden Book, both loving gifts from Aunt Lorene, the real life version of Jimmy’s Blue Fairy!

Mom would occasionally give Jimmy gifts too but not as lovingly chosen. On the occasion I will relate, Mom gave her son a practical gift… a pair of scissors.  NOT adult scissors of course.  Little shiny red plastic scissors for kids.  Nice and safe with blunt ends and rather dull cutting edges. They were more of a learning aid than a real tool. But they were beautiful and they really cut paper!  Jimmy was as happy as he could be with this gift.  He drew pictures and snipped them out. He cut Howdy Doody out of the newspaper.  Such fun.  

   And so it came to pass that the little boy had nothing left to cut up. Mama, by now, had put some callous reality in his head with regard to rules. You don’t cut up anything that belongs to others. You don’t trim your hair. You don’t cut the tablecloth. Many, many things had to be left un-assaulted. 

Eventually boredom set in.

The child wanted to cut some things out but couldn’t think of anything.

Then it struck him.  Like a bolt of lightening.  PINOCCHIO.   He would cut out his favorite Pinocchio pictures!

  

 

His first choice was the treasured Little Golden Book with the breathtaking picture of Monstro the whale.  It was the neatest picture he had ever seen  …in his whole life.   Snip snip  ….captured!   And look here at the beginning …Geppeto carving the unpainted Pinocchio.  Snip snip  ….liberated!   Jimmy grabbed his comic book.  There were TONS of pictures in there.  The young editor was no longer bored.  He was doing real work. Work with a purpose …and creative too! 

 

 

 He had accomplished something to really be proud of. 

 

The tyke took his new collection of priceless pictures to show Mama.

   “JIMMY!  These pictures were in the PINOCCHIO books that Aunt Lorene bought you …when it wasn’t even your birthday.” she exclaimed. “I thought you loved those books!”

The MamaMia didn’t understand-aria.  But she DID instill some guilt in the young slasher and he decided not to further pillage his cherished books. He set the scissors aside and like all little boys moved on to other interests.  Some weeks passed.

   But Pinocchio was always there, lurking in his subconscious and it wasn’t long before the magic puppet resurfaced in our little hero’s thoughts.  OH YES!  It came back to him.  He had created that collection of pictures from his Pinocchio books.  Let’s go look at them now!  The lad searched and searched but was unable to locate the valuable cache.  He asked his Mother who immediately claimed ignorance of any knowledge. 

Jimmy was distressed.  He needed a ‘Pinocchio fix’. 

Then… another brainstorm.   The books. 

He would gather the two books and look at the superb pictures remaining in them.  But the books were nowhere to be found either.  Again, he asked his Mama, “Where’s my Pinocchio books??” but Mom had no answer.

  

Jimmy never gave up the search. The kid had begun a journey on the long road to insanity. Years passed and occasionally he would recheck with Mom if she had yet found his lost treasures.

And it came to pass that he asked her for the final time. 

He was nine years old and she literally exploded at him.

   “WILL YOU QUIT ASKING ME ABOUT THOSE DAMNED PINOCCHIO BOOKS?!”

Jim was crestfallen.

   It was many years later when he finally realized   …it was his own mother who was responsible for all his grief.  She had done what she always did with junk … discretely thrown the stuff away.

 

Come to think of it, those beautiful red plastic scissors were gone too.

 

  

The End.

 

 

 

 

 

Heh heh …’Course the kid never got over it.

As an adult collector, he eventually got both books back ….and a TON of other Pinocchio items …by haunting antique stores, auctions and rummage sales.   Today he proclaims his collection to be the largest in the world! 

 

The MAMA MIA  never did ‘confessa ria’.   She didn’t even realize what she’d created. 

Well …she knew he was nuts …just didn’t appreciate how or why.

Jimmy continues to collect Pinocchio. 

He doesn’t know why.   A lunatic never does!