My good friend, mentor and office mate Chet Krause died at the end of June. The office building where he let me maintain a retirement office is in the process of being sold, so I'll be vacating by mid-November, when I return to my Pennsylvania home for the winter.
Much of the past couple of months I was laid low by a nasty bacterial infection of the chest that has been plaguing our little town. Osteoarthritis in both hands, wrists and elbows continues to take a toll on my mobility in those joints.
To try to test the limits of what seems to have become the new normal in my dexterity, I've spent the past couple of days cutting, folding and pasting replicas of 1951 Wheaties single-serving boxes which featured on their backs one of six star athletes: Ballplayers Stan Musial, Ted Williams and Bob Feller, golfer Sam Snead and John Lujack (football) and George Mikan (basketball).
 |
| It takes lots of exacting cuts and folds to recreate the original format of 1951 Wheaties single-serving boxes. |
For some time I've had images of complete, unfolded boxes of Musial and Williams in my card-creation file. Even today, 65 years after they were made, the 1951 Wheaties singles are not all that scarce, even in complete-box form.
I'm only partially satisfied with my efforts to replicate the boxes. The intricate cuts that would allow the boxes to present a more original appearance are more of a challenge than I had hoped. But even at that, they don't look too bad sitting on a shelf across the room.
