Eagles

Some people I know collect postage stamps. Others collect rare coins.  Baseball players cards were popular when I was a kid and you got them in bubble gum  package. Me?  I collect eagles. Just swivlin’ around in my office chair here without getting up I can spot at least forty on any given morning, eagles of all sizes and materials from shiny brass to a whale’s tooth.  I bought one at a little shop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the whales tooth in Alaska.  I visited a special sale for Gift Shop Dealers at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, Illinois and that place is enormous. Hundreds of manufacturers of gift store items had their wares on display.  One manufacturer from China must have had over a hundred different eagles on display and it was the first time they were being shown in the U.S. Their porcelain eagles were so lifelike it was amazing and many had their wings spread in different stages of flight.  I was like a little kid in a candy store. I was incorporated as Growth Unlimited Inc., we had a good credit rating and the price the dealer offered me on his products blew my mind. I must have picked out more than a dozen different eagles that I simply could not resist.  Shipping from China was guaranteed against breakage and as I recall, very reasonable.  One of the eagles had a 40″ wingspan and just a few weeks later when the entire shipment arrived there was absolutely no breakage. We had bought a second house in our neighborhood to serve as my office and warehouse and bit by bit I found a spot for them first in Battle Creek, Michigan and now in my office here in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Eagles represent America and freedom and oh, you folks who aren’t collectors of something or other won’t understand. 

Every now and then I just sit here and look at them soaring in a blue Alaskan sky and I feel so young and so free and so proud that I have been blessed to be an American.