Souvenirs are what holiday memories are made of

By JIM EAGLES

Why would someone who has little interest in sport choose to buy sporting souvenirs? I can't really answer that but I can tell you that a sportophobe who brings home sporting bric-a-brac from his travels is not all that strange as souvenir buyers go.

If the responses to an earlier article on souvenirs are anything to judge by, there is some very peculiar stuff in china cabinets out there.

A stuffed elephant made of goat intestines, an electric communion host maker, an American Indian boomerang, dancing teeth - no, they've been binned - a Jesus number plate ... the list goes on.

Many of them appear to have been acquired not because of their appeal but because of their lack of it.

For instance, Russell Baillie, the fellow with the collection of sporting souvenirs, purports to have chosen them for very unsporting reasons.

"I got the baseball from the Guggenheim in New York. It's a post-modern baseball."

In what way? "It's got writing on it saying it's a baseball. It's a baseball in the style of Andy Warhol."

Uhuh. And what about the hockey puck?

"That's from Toronto. What else would you get from Toronto? It's sort of like a coaster that's too tall."

I suppose that's much the same reason I have in my pile of souvenirs a battered old bugle, even though I have never been able to play it.

I discovered the bugle while fossicking through the Portobello Rd market during my OE some 30 years ago.

"You from Australia," asked the stallholder, blissfully unaware that he had just delivered a mortal insult.

"No," I snarled, "New Zealand."

"Well it's your lucky day then," he snapped back without losing a beat, "'cause that there very bugle was used in your Maori Wars."

The bugle was actually made in 1884, more than a decade after the land wars ended, but it was cheap and it made for an amusing story.

And I did put the instrument to use blowing noisy raspberries at English and Welsh rugby supporters in the days when touring All Black teams could be relied on to win.

Then there's my distinctly non-religious colleague Alan Young whose souvenirs of the southern states of the US include a couple of licence plates carrying the name "Jesus" and the Biblical reference "John 15: 13-15."

Not only did he buy the number plate he also acquired, from the same shop, a card saying "Clergy on Call" designed to advise parking wardens that the car belongs to a reverend who is visiting a parishioner.

What's the attraction? "Oh, a sense of whimsy really."

That's probably why Rodney Pascoe, is pleased with his genuine Our Lady of Lourdes statue with a crown that can be unscrewed so the inside can be filled with Lourdes water.

And why Matt Martel is the proud possessor of an electronic host maker which he bought at a Catholic shop during a trip to Mexico.

What would make you buy that? "Sir, you can also use it as a pancake maker."

The lure of the bizarre was certainly behind Gabriella Armstrong's decision to buy a ghastly "stuffed elephant made from goat intestines all stitched up", which was offered for sale on a dusty back road in Namibia.

"It was so ugly we could not resist buying it. Our friends are horrified."

But Gabriella did manage to resist the lure of llama foetuses in the famous Witches Market in the Bolivian capital of La Paz. "Rather macabre and, no, we did not buy any."

Not all such souvenirs stand the test of time.

Judi McLachlan bought a pair of dancing false teeth "at a desert watering hole somewhere in Nevada" and "threw them out not long after arriving home ... I've no idea why I bought them."

We've probably all done that some time.

On the other hand, occupying pride of place in the McLachlans' guest bathroom is an equally strange lump of resin with a small fish inside.

It stands as a souvenir of what Judy describes as "an eventful - indeed unforgettable - journey by Greyhound from Coeur d'Alene in Idaho to Seattle with the most incredibly motley collection of humanity I have ever encountered".

During a stopover in Spokane she scoured the souvenir shop "which ran the gamut of bizarre to hard porn, determined to find something to remind myself I'd been to Spokane, before finding my little fish in his dusty prison".

The great thing about such mementoes is that they are often very cheap.

In fact, what is probably the most delightful souvenir on this list is a paper bag Lesley Lundy brought back from the Himalayas, and it cost nothing.

"It was given to me with some purchase and turned out to have been handmade with pages recycled from a child's arithmetic exercise book. I don't know what happened to whatever I bought but I still treasure the bag."

Quite a few travellers have bits of the old Berlin wall. And quite a few probably have bits of some other wall which are somehow even more appealing for being fakes.

Fakes can be great fun. A lot of people get great joy from buying fake Rolex watches or Cartier necklaces precisely because they are fakes.

But the most delightful fake I've heard of for a long time was found by Brian Pittams when he went into a gas station in Idaho looking for a souvenir of Indianapolis for a petrolhead friend and stumbled over a souvenir boomerang.

The accompanying leaflet said, "Big Chief Boomerang. Adopted from The Indian THROWING STICK used to hunt small game on the reservation. hold boomerang firmly at one end with the right hand, shoulder high; flat side to the right; one point toward the ground and then other straight ahead, Throw overhand with a sudden jerk into the wind. Taiwan."

Puzzled by the gales of laughter this provoked, the attendant said he had definitely been taught at school that Indians invented the boomerang.

Needless to say the Pittams bought one.

It's a great payback for Pavlova, Phar Lap, Russell Crowe, Willie O and all those other things the Aussies have tried to claim credit for over the years.

And it's a great story. Which is what the best souvenirs are all about really.

* If you've got any interesting souvenirs with stories to tell please send them to:
travel@nzherald.co.nz