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- Wanted
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- Do
you have a passion for antiques and collectibles - and writing?
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- The
Wayback Times invites you to submit freelance articles for use
in print and on our new web site.
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- E-mail
your text submissions
to
The Wayback Times.
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- Articles
published in The Wayback Times since 1995 have covered a wide
range of interests, from Golliwoggs to toy VW collecting, and
from collecting insulators to hunting old books.
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- Most
authors of our online selection of articles have included their
e-mail addresses and they are always delighted to hear from other
collectors.
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- Jay's Wayback Blog
- About lives, then
and now
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- James Deans "Jay"
Telfer, popular musician
and founding publisher of the Wayback Times, died May 20, 2009,
at Trillium Health Centre in Mississauga after bravely enduring
a long illness
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- Jay, who was 61, founded the
Wayback Times in 1995 and developed a lasting rapport with readers,
antique dealers, show promoters and advertisers. He sold the
newspaper to Sandy and Peter Neilly in 2006, but continued writing
for the paper in Jay's Blog. Enjoy.
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 By Jay Telfer
The late comedian George Carlin once said: "A
house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it."
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- It is a shame he left us so soon, but Carlin’s legacy
is a lot of great stuff – from the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman
to Wonderful Winoooo, to his reflections about our comings and
goings as we wandered on through them.
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- Speaking of “stuff,” I will now tell you of my
recent move to Mississauga, Ontario - the sixth largest city
in Canada. I never knew that!
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- I moved my "stuff" - three couches, two beds, desks,
chairs, and my 1,500 toy Volkswagens - to a secured lock-up off
Hurontario. They would never fit into my very comfortable (and
bright) two bedroom condo. I gave away a third of my books, gave
away far too many T-shirts and oversized sweaters (I did lose
weight) and will be casting off more stuff as time progresses.
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- The first house I bought in 1980 was in the Beaches, two
houses in from the lifeguards’ house at the foot of Leuty
Ave. (as seen on every Toronto news channel), but it did not
have a basement. The next house had a full basement and I filled
that up pretty darn quickly.
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- Moving to Wellington to set up Jay's B&B, I got a larger
house and a larger basement. I put massive shelves in there and
filled them up just as quickly.
Moving to Rednersville Road, there was only a half a basement.
With my renovations, we tripled the size of the basement.
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- And now, they have storage units all over the place, jam-packed
with peoples’ basement leavings because as they grow older,
they are moving into condominiums. I swore when I bought into
that storage unit I would empty it all in three months and get
rid of the books, the papers, the magazines, the pictures, the
letters.
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- My friend read through his 60s journals and letters and then
shredded them - no point in letting the darling grandchildren
see his flagrant hippy-dippy 60s love life. Dr. Phil had on a
man who had been collecting Star Wars stuff forever - some $250,000
worth of it. Regis Philbin just mentioned that he had far too
many great keepsakes and Kelly suggested to him a Regis Museum.
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- And one day soon, whenever the clock or Entertainment Tonight
tells me "I am famous," I will set up my museum and
point out all of the idiocy I have accumulated.
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- I don't think many people save letters from old friends,
grandparents, parents, old flames. Old flames that are now grandmotherly
and not in
touch with the recent bands.
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- My grandfather's letters are from when he was a policeman
in Liverpool. That was before WW1, when he went down to Africa
as a soldier and caught malaria, came home and lived his 99-year
life as a gamekeeper at the Kinross Estates.
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- There are the sad letters from '69 telling me Capital Records
was not interested in using my song, "Ten Pound Note"
- which, when placed on a teeny record label, won a 1970 BMI
award and was placed on the second K-Tel Massive Hits Album!
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- That is a "gotcha" letter.
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- I wrote to a great friend I met in Los Angeles when he moved
to Cincinnati. Being a new screenwriter, I would go to work and
the movie producers downstairs would listen to the rat-tat-a-tat
of my typewriter. Never a thought of how the script was going
for the people listening, but I loved writing letters.
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- After all that typing, I told them the idea never worked
out - and mailed a letter.
In an attempt to write my autobiography a few years back, he
mailed about seven pounds of my old letters back to me. Now,
what do I do with my old idiotic thoughts?
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- I must purge, purge, purge and reduce the problem so whoever
finds it will have to get rid of it all. All of my great puns,
the unfinished songs, the ads I wrote, the stories I never finished,
my “poor me” poetry, (I have about 15 pounds of it)
and all my brilliant ideas.
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- There should be a nice shredded museum in Toronto. I think
I will write to my MPP and try to set that up (saving two copies
for the shredding pile.)
Other articles by Jay Telfer
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