GREENLEAF – Why do people collect things?
Google and AI tell us it’s to “satisfy deep psychological needs for order, identity and emotional support.”
Collecting “gives the brain a soothing sense of control and structure,” and the search for things to collect “triggers dopamine in the brain.”
Or maybe it’s that for some people collecting is just fun.
I’ve never been much of a collector. As a kid I had a collection of unusual rocks – iron ore, turquoise, fool’s gold – that my father and I scavenged in the Colorado mining town where he was raised. I’ve owned a lot of guitars, but they’re to play rather than satisfy a “deep psychological need,” so they don’t really qualify as collections.
I’ve written a number of columns over the years about collectors, however. Several of them come to mind at the moment:
Ed Ketner collected junk. Literally. He had a mountain of it. Most was scrap lumber, which he used to build his house outside Boise. It looked like an overgrown bird house. Asked why he had so much junk, he said it just made him feel good to know it was there.
Garfield Shults collected trees. He planted so many around his Owyhee County home that they filled nearly 40 acres. He had four kinds of pine trees, five kinds of fruit trees, six kinds of nut trees and a variety of others, from quince trees to hickories. The only kind he wanted but didn’t have was a pistachio tree. Idaho winters are too hard for them.
Robert Grubbs collected rocks, from pebbles to a 750-pound chunk of crystallized quartz. He also collected oddments from horseshoes to telegraph wire, some of which he sold at his shop in Bliss.
I’ve missed writing about people and their collections, so in a recent column I asked for collectors to let me know if they’d be interested in being interviewed. Two responded. One collects dead insects. The other was Ken Yellen.
Yellen, who lives in Greenleaf, collects cast iron. Mostly cast-iron skillets, which he restores if they’re in bad shape. He also collects cast-iron griddles and makes cast-iron knick knacks – a cast-iron bee, cast-iron dog, cast-iron dinosaur …
Yellen, 71, has “used cast iron forever,” but has been collecting it seriously for about five years.
The appeal of collecting can be limited to collecting just one type of thing – be it coins, stamps or cast iron – or a variety of things. Through the years Yellen has collected wood figures, stained glass and Mason jars. Jars were his main interest before he got hooked on cast iron.
“I’d buy and sell them and make some money,” he said. “It was cheap and it was fun,” he said, “It’s a hunt. Now everybody’s into it so you can’t buy them cheap any more.”
“Everybody” may not be much of an exaggeration. There’s actually a book for canning-jar collectors – “The Collector’s Guide to Old Fruit Jars.” It’s popular enough that it’s been published in multiple editions.
You’d think there wouldn’t be a lot of variety in fruit jars. Not so. They come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, even colors. Yellen has a rose colored one that’s beautiful, or at least as beautiful as a fruit jar can be.
“I collected jars for three or four years, then moved on to cast iron,” he said. “I’d pick things up at auctions, garage sales. … It’s just fun. I’m retired so I gotta’ do something.”
He’s done a lot of things, He retired from contracting and property management, ran an avocado ranch, learned to fly and once built a two-seater airplane.
His cast iron collection numbers about 30 pieces.
One of his and his wife Linda’s favorites is a Wagner 14-inch skillet that he got at a yard sale for five dollars and is worth about $100.
“We use it all the time,” he said. It’s great for pancakes.”
Wagner and Griswold brand skillets are the Cadillacs of cast-iron cookware. Griswold Manufacturing Co., closed its doors in 1957. Wagner Ware shut down in 1999, but Wagner Cast Iron now makes reissues. The rarest Griswold and Wagner skillets are worth thousands of dollars. (Yellens’ aren’t in that category.)
Another of his favorite pieces is a waffle maker.
“It makes the best crispy waffles!” he said “We’ve used it a few times, but I’m afraid that if we made a mistake with it we’d be cleaning it for two days so we don’t use it that often.”
How does Linda feel about having all that cast iron around the house?
“I’m fine with it,” she said. “I use it every day.”
Is there a Holy Grail of cast iron, something Ken’s itching to add to his collection?
“No, I’m probably done with cast iron. The problem is everybody’s doing it. The prices to buy it unrestored are almost what they’re worth restored.”
Linda’s view of the collection is pragmatic.
“It’s probably a good thing that he’s done,” she said. “We don’t have room to put it any more.”
***
A recent column quoted a researcher who claimed that “America is more divided now than at any time since the Civil War” and asked readers how they felt about the state of the country.
It didn’t result in a lot of responses – four, exactly.
If there were some optimistic ones, I’d have been happy to include them. There weren’t:
Walt Varnes wrote that he remembered “reading somewhere that the average age of world empires going back as history records is 200 years. This year is number 250 for the United States. Will we see 300? I doubt it.”
William Brudenell thinks “that the nation is worse off today than any time I can remember as we are under the leadership of people who are either scoundrels or who are members of a cult.”
Don Newton likes what President Trump has done: “It is easy to overlook his childish name calling, tweeting and over use of gold decorations in the White House as he does seem to put America first. Just the fact his DOGE team instituted the new hunting for fraud is refreshing as neither party was interested in the past.”
Janice Davis is “very sad for America. We’ve gone from the top spot, number one country leading the world, to a pathetic laughingstock. I believe America is in the worst trouble ever, in danger of losing her identity and everything she has stood for for 250 years.”
Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.
Tim Woodward 