GOLDEN EAGLE VINTAGE CLEAR ERIE PA SELTZER BOTTLE
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:15239814 |
I AM DELIGHTED TO OFFER A VINTAGE CLEAR SELTZER BOTTLE FROM ERIE PA. IT IS EXACTLY AS PICTURED.THE WATER INSIDE IS FROM ACTUALLY HAVING SELTZER IN IT. I HAD MOST OF IT LAST NIGHT WITH A MEAL . IT WILL BE EMPTIED OUT. THE GOLDEN EAGLE BOTTLE HAS A WONDERFUL ETCHING OF AN EAGLE WHICH IS AN ENDURING SYMBOL OF FREEDOM. THE NAME NATIONAL HAS A... SIGNIFICANCE AT THIS TIME OF WHEN I PASS BY THE AREA OF LOWER MANHATTAN THAT HAS COME TO BE KNOWN AS GROUND ZERO. IN TRIBUTE TO THE INDEFATABLE SPIRIT OF AMERICA I OFFER AGAIN ONE OF MY AUCTIONS....... Last week as I departed Orloff Ave after delivering to two customers, one on the route for only couple of months, and the other 40 years or so, and turned right near Van Cortland Park and then on to Hillman Ave., I remembered a Day in May 1999 when I held a case of seltzer on my right shoulder with my infant son Jonathan in my left hand, and as I gave him a kiss, a photographer for the New York Times snapped away on her 35mm camera.We were in Mildred Blitz's street level apartment, where she lived alone.It was a massive apartment that now is a credit union, but once housed her entire family as well as her parents, who had been my grandfather's customers in Manhattan's lower East Side delivered to with his horse drawn cart till they moved to the Bronx in the 1940's. Mrs. Blitz could vividly recall the day I was born, and we shared our lives.Her husband Miltie was a brillant chemist who lost his sight but he could remember complex formulas in his head and was picked up in a limo daily that took him to work in Connecticut. Mrs Blitz contracted MS decades ago but her husband who was working on a cutting-edge remedy gave her some of it to use, and though she always needed a wheelchair to get around, she never got worse and continued teaching, remaining always a brillant and inspiring friend.Appropriately this story ran on the Sunday before Memorial Day and I was never prouder to read a thing than this story to my father on his birthday on June 1 with my grandfather nearby in his first year year since his passing, though I couldn't stop crying, reading it it in their last resting place, seeing his name etched in stone, not simply etched on his seltzer bottles that still are used to remind those enjoying the seltzer of him.
On September 4, 2001, very early in the morning, I met up with a radio producer, Joe Richman, who was producing a documentary for NPR. He read about me in that NY Times story and was excited to do a story on my route, but I was less than convinced anything would come of it. Armed with little more than a small recording device and a microphone all tucked in what looked like a shaving kit we met at sunrise and didn't stop talking till 8 in the evening, recording 8 hours of audio captured while driving and delivering that he sculptured brillantly in to a 8 minute documentary that morphed in to something I couldn't have conceived.A significant part of it consisted of the interchange with Mrs. Blitz which was spontaneous and effortless. It was so well received that a company wanted to use it to demonstrate how customers should be treated and I and NPR received money everytime it aired.This story was played so often that better than 10 million plus people have heard it and it continues to be used in universities as a teaching tool.
I have often thought of that day we rode together on September 4, 2001. I had told Joe Richman as we headed downtown on the West Side Highway with a perfect view of the World Trade Towers that I would be delivering there next Wednesday which was September 12, 2001. One of my customers who worked on the 105th floor for Cantor Fitzgerald was arranging for me to bring seltzer to his office.He lived one block away in a building I still deliver to and had a beautiful wife and an adorable 9 year old daughter, and was at work promptly by 7am on September 11th.
It was the kind of warm and comfortable morning with the air so fresh that I felt like bottling some of it up to release on the cold days of Winter just to remember how good weather could be and would be again. As I crossed the Throggs Necks Bridge from Queens in to the Bronx, the sun was rising to my right over Long Island Sound and Manhattan to the West was illuminated in a soft glowing hue.It was a magnificent morning and everything seemed right with the world. I could never have conceived what would soon transpire, and what the trip home, just eight hours later, would be like as I left the Bronx for home praying for my family to be there as Manhattan, then to my right, was smoldering in a thick billowing cloud where two huge megaliths had stood only a few hours before.
It was a routine and problem free morning.There was no hint of anything ominous in the air. I had been taking cases of full bottles of 50 year old returnable 28 ounce glass bottles packed in newer plastic cases of 12, from my van. I had three cases on a handtruck about to deliver them to a synagogue that was one block away from the Henry Hudson Parkway that led in to Manhattan- which was less than one mile South.The traffic was at a standstill which wasn't that unusal at that time, a little past 9am, but cars were backing out of the highway.A car with Ohio license plates with a family of five stopped by me and the man driving asked how we could get away from New York.He explained the roads to Manhattan are all closed..Terrorists had crashed in to The World Trade Towers- and we were at war.I tried to call my wife, but my cell phone didn't work. I really didn't know what to do, but there's something in me that just keeps going forward. There been times I got hurt went to the emergency room of a hospital, got stitched up or bandaged up and went back to work, or kept delivering in blizzard like conditions, but this was a lot different, and a lot scarier. I did make my deliveries of soda but no one there seemed to know exactly what was going on. And I managed to say a prayer or two, and it certainly seemed a fitting place to do so.
I kept frantically trying to call my wife and my mother to find out if everyone was okay.I sat in my van for awhile not knowing what exactly to do.I couldn't really process what was happening - I was paralyzed with uncertainty, and with all the confusion momentarily frozen, but I decided to go forward.
Though under ordinary conditions I had other deliveries to make, but these were no ordinary conditions. I went to 555 Kappock Street where I have two customers I generally deliver to later. Apartment 14M had there empty bottles out and were no doubt already in Manhattan- hopefully safe. I knew Mrs Klein in apartment 5L would be home and actually I wanted to be with her. We had become quite close in recent years after her husband Leo passed away, and I looked forward to seeing her every two weeks.
The area Mrs Klein lived in is known as Riverdale.The building has a doorman, a pool and many amenties and is surrounded by mansions in the Fieldstone section, set in the woods with vistas of the Hudson River and northern Manhattan where the homes were so nice even the Kennedy's owned a home there once.It's quite a departure from where she had lived before-less than a couple of miles away in the Moshulu Parkway section.That area consisted of block after block of art deco pre war buildings whose middle class residents, many immigrants, were mostly products of the Great Depression- striving for more for there children.
She had lived on Rochamebeau Ave in a building that faced my grandparents and held some precious moments for me. They lived there till my grandfather passed away at 95 in 1987. I recall the last conversation we had when I asked him how it was to deliver seltzer with his horse and wagon and he said, "It was a hard way to make a living. I wish you'd do something else."It is ironic that though my grandmother couldn't read much in English, grandpa Jake would read the NY Times Sunday edition from cover to cover, and whenever they've done a story on my route in that newspaper which included him I actually felt good about it.He had come to America at 3 and spoke English perfectly, but my grandmother was more comfortable speaking Yiddish, which was a carry-over from Europe.They were frugal people who would give us anything, yet spent little on themselves.After my grandfather would give me my $1.00 allowance which consisted of ten silver dimes-both Roosevelts and Mecuries in the mix, my grandmother would usher me in to the bedroom and reach in to her bra, pull out a five dollar bill with her finger over he mouth, and say " Don't tell your grandfather." There was never a better cook and I have never enjoyed a Thanksgiving as much since she's gone.
It was a close knit neigborhood, before the detachment of social media and the comfort of air condtioning . On those hot oppressive summer nights everyone would sit outside on their beach chairs, and most people would brag about their children and grandchildren.Their personal success would be achieved if their children and their children's children could do better than they had, at a time when everything seemed possible in America.
It was a middle class neighborhood that could have been characterized by mediocrity if those there believed in limits, but they believed in something better for the future. A few blocks away lived Penny and Gary Marshall.And a couple of blocks away lived the Lifshitz's and across the street Flo Klein and her family, all embued with optimism.Ralph Lifshitz would eventually change his name to Ralph Lauren and make quite a name for himself..Equally true was Mrs. Klein's son Calvin who also made quite a name for himself as well. Flo would often tell me that her husband Leo never made more than $40.00 a week, but she never felt poor.She had pictures of her mother in her bedroom-a stunning and elegantly dressed woman in Victorian attire who was seamstress, and taught Calvin how to sew.Even in her ninety's Flo could remember ever detail of her life and I was in awe of that. As a standing joke I would purposely wear Calvin Klein underwear when I saw her every two weeks and when she astounded me with her recall I would say in amazement that "I wish I could remember things like you do. Sometimes I can't even remember my own name." then out of a line from the movie Back To The Future I would pull the top of my underwear up and say "Oh I think I'm Calvin Klein" and she'd simply respond that "There's no one like my son." , and she was right. But I suspect every mother would share that view about their own child. When I delivered to her generally around noon she'd have lunch ready for me-usually a turkey sandwich and when I told her one day how much I enjoyed the cheese cake she had made for me, she'd have it for me most every time.It was like having my grandmother back again, in many ways. When I or my helper or my wife had a birthday she'd give us a bottle of her son's cologne. I still have a bottle of Eternity and Contradiction right above me as I write these words, as a momento.She had cases of her son's cologne which she generously dispensed to those she liked.When she needed more she'd call the number on the box and more would arrive.That all worked well till one day her son said "Ma. I just got a bill for $15, 000 for cologne" and when she realized he paid for it we stopped getting the gifts, but I held on to these two.My grandmother would have done the same thing- so would my mother.
And so at this moment of uncertainity I couldn't have found another I would have prefered to see.The door was slightly ajar when I got to apartment. Her aide who Calvin retained around the clock was seated on the couch glued to the tv, and Mrs. Klein was just finishing a conversation with her son who was sending his office home.Both buildings by then were in rubble and I finally saw the carnage with everyone in a state of shock. Since my cell phone stopped working I asked to use her land line, but my wife and boys weren't home and I was worried. Finally I got through to my mother who told me my wife was picking them up at the Y where they were in Nursery school, and they were fine and my mother spoke to Mrs. Klein.It sort of reminded me of the two times Mrs. Klein ran in to Mrs Lifshitz in the old neighborhood when their sons started gaining fame:once at the bakery and the other at the Kosher butcher, both around the corner.As Flo would tell me, Mrs Lifshitz who had a Yiddish accent would ask how her son Calvin was and she'd ask about her son Ralphie-just two mothers talking about their sons. And here we were with the same type of conversation, but with the world in an upheavel, everything seemed more frightening and less light, but well intentioned none the less. Though they each expressed an interest to meet one day it never happened. Mrs Klein died in 2005 at 96 and my own mother at 94 five years ago, but both are remembered well by those who knew them.As well as Mrs Blitz who made it to 91.
The weeks that followed were distressful times in the city of New York in so many ways.We were wounded and wondered when life might resume some semblance of what it had been. That following Sunday we took are boys to the park to relax and forget. Overhead a 747 flew by and my wife who had been a stewardess, and loved planes, took notice. It wasn't so much the plane flying that was of importance-it was that a plane was flying , because all flights had been grounded for a while.And it was nice seeing children running and laughing because in the days that followed September 11th there seemed to be no place for happiness.
When I delivered in Manhattan in my step van there were check points everwhere.They asked to see my drivers license, insurance card and to visually inspect the contents of my vehicle with doors open, which type of scrutiny had never existed before, but has to an extent ever since. Two years before my boys were born a year apart we had a Yorkie dog and mated her with my wife's neice's dog and had four puppies and I kept one-Pee Wee, who was like my daughter. But once my boys came along my wife was so stressed out Pee Wee who was four pounds and loved by all came to work with me and stayed in my shirt while I delivered- which made for a very interesting sight. On September 11th Mrs. Klein who had asked me numerous times to stay in her apartment till things cleared up invited Pee Wee as well.
During the endless security stops armed national guard soldiers actually laughed when I got out with Pee Wee, and she was a tremendous comfort, but it was still a stressfull time. A month later on Columbus Day which was a Monday I opened the door and for some reason Pee Wee bolted out across the street to chase a cat and was hit by a car and died.Two days later. on Wednesday as I crossed a small inconsequential bridge from Riverdale in to northern Manhattan I was stopped at a checkpoint entering that borough. I was approached by a serious-looking black woman who was a NYPD officer asking to see my documents. This was the first time I had encountered a checkpoint without Pee Wee to consol me, and for a moment I just lost it.I started crying. I remember blurting out in that moment of dismay that I have two boys who are 3 and 4. What's going on with the world? I've lived some, but what about their future?.And in something out of a movie this same woman who was so serious before and cold, warmed in an instant, and told me that she had a two year old daughter, and was afraid for her and we actually hugged for a few minutes.
A lot has transpired since that day.To a great extent life has returned to a degree of normalcy. New Yorkers who were previously deemed by some as too distant before, were viewed with sympathy and warmth in the aftermath. Tourism is now a 50 billion a year business and we welcome more than 50 million visitiors a year who enjoy the safety of this huge churning engine of change, where anything is possible.
I couldn't deliver below Canal Street for six months. The area was an unspeakable horror. Now it is almost completely rebuilt and vital again, but there's a memorial to that one horrible moment in human history.My customer who left for work at 7am on September 11th kissing his wife and nine year old daughter good bye as he left for work, never made it home that day , and they eventually moved away.There were others I knew who never made it home that day as well.I have friends who were first responders, and construction workers who toiled at that area for months, when they were told that the air was safe, who are checked annually in hopes nothing developes from their exposure to toxic fumes.
Every corner I turn there are memories of moments and people-some good and some that haunt me.Life is so uncertain. The trick to staying sane is to focus on those things that are good, and to face the trials and challenges that we encounter with conviction and optimism...And to always remember when you close your eyes to sleep, to look forward to tomorrow- whatever it might bring.
. THESE BOTTLES ARE MEANT FOR DISPLAY. ALL AUCTIONS BELONG TO MY WIFE SELTZERLADY.I STILL DELIVER THE SELTZER AND WILL NEVER SELL ANY OF MY BOTTLES IF YOU SEE ME AROUND, BUT WILL TALK TO ALMOST ANYONE ABOUT THEM.
I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT I HAVE JUST INCLUDED ANOTHER PHOTO FOR THIS AUCTION. IT FEATURES THE TWO ERIE BOTTLES BEING AUCTIONED , PLUS, BUT NOT INCLUDED IN THIS AUCTION THE TWO BOTTLES OF CK COLOGNE THAT WAS A GIFT FROM CALVIN'S MOTHER FOR TWO OF MY BIRTHDAY'S. IT'S A SAME SHE NOT AROUND TO GIVE ME ONE FOR MY NEXT ONE NEXT MONTH. ALSO FEATURED IS A BOTTLE FROM F.G. KLEIN THAT AMONG OTHERS F. KLEIN DISPLAYED IN HER APARTMENT. IT'S AN OLD ONE FROM WISCONSIN WITH THE NAME OF THE COMPANY AND BURLINGTON WISC. INSIZED IN THE BOTTOM DESIGN.WHEN SHE PASSED AWAY I RETRIEVED THAT BOTTLE PLUS TWO MORE PLUS THREE CASES OF BLUE AND GREEN BOTTLES. HER DAUGHTER ALEXIS AND SON BARRY WERE THERE CLEANING OUT THE APARTMENT BUT I GUESS CALVIN WAS TOO BUSY.
THESE ARE IN FABULOUS CONDITION CONSIDERING THEIR AGE AND THAT THEY'VE BEEN USED FOR GENERATIONS. WHEN YOU DELIVER THESE BOTTLES IN WOODEN CASES OF TEN WEIGHING 70 POUNDS THEY DO GET HANDLED ROUGHLY.
AND THEY DO SHOW THEIR SIGNS OF AGE BUT THAT ONLY ADDS TO THEIR AUTHENTICITY AND DESIRABILITY..THESE BOTTLES HAVE BEEN CLEANED THOUUGHLY BY MY WIFE AND THESE ARE HER AUCTIONS.
THEY ARE MEANT FOR DISPLAY AND DECORATION..
THESE ARE VINTAGE COLLECTIBLES AND WERE IN USE TILL RECENTLY..THEY ALL HAVE A LONG AND MAGNIFIENT HISTORY OF PLEASING MANY FOR GENERATIONS. THEY ARE TIME-WORN WHICH ONLY ADDS TO THEIR AUTHENTICITY AND SENSE OF CONTINUITY WITH THE PAST FOR THOSE WHO LOOK FOR THINGS THAT ARE MEANT TO BE USED FOR A MOMENT THEN DISPOSED OF JUST AS QUICKLY.
THESE BOTTLES ARE FOR DISPLAY ONLY....
THANK YOU.
