Jump to content

Last night's American Pickers.......02/15/2021


pararaftanr2
 Share

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, manayunkman said:

 

These days people are quicker to judge than at any other time in my life.
 

 

I completely agree. This snap judgement comes from ALL sides. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 "They are taught about WWII in greater detail than you mention."

 

In general, blanket statements are not universal truths. My boys are now in their mid 20s and we live in the Hudson Valley area of New York State. When they were in elementary school, literally months of their history education was focused on the history of the various local Native American tribes and little else. By the time they were in junior high, finally some WW2 history was included in their text books. Prominent in that slim WW2 chapter was the internment of the Japanese Americans and the contributions of the Tuskegee Airmen. Both are important things to learn about, no question, but one has to wonder the agenda that was being pushed considering the much broader spectrum of world events during the 1939-1945 era? That was my experience as a parent in our local school system in recent decades. No doubt, different schools, and different states, will have different curriculums. 

 

Other than myself, has anyone else actually watched the episode? I'd love to hear any comments about the militaria that appeared, but wasn't commented on in the show.

Thanks to everyone for your comments so far!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some times I get a hard time at the flea market because I sell regular military stuff.

 

They call me a war monger.

 

When I was in high school I was labeled a Nazi because I collected military things.


Those people are now in government and media.

 

Will being white and collecting Militaria become a problem?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BILL THE PATCH

Don't be so sure, the writing's on the wall, I wouldn't be surprised if this forum
gets censored by google.

Sent from my moto g(7) play using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

dhcoleterracina

Things have changed in the last 12 months. A large segment of our society believe that White people are racist, just because they are White. Crazy, and if you disagree then you really haven't been paying attention.  It's a very sad time right now. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, dhcoleterracina said:

Things have changed in the last 12 months. A large segment of our society believe that White people are racist, just because they are White. Crazy, and if you disagree then you really haven't been paying attention.  It's a very sad time right now. 

 

They don't believe it ... none of them believe it ... it is a tactic ... they are weaponizing race for control, power and greed. 

 

Ironically since we are on the topic of Nazis, they used the exact same tactic in the exact same way in 1933 on the Jews.

 

History does repeat itself....  socialism is an infinite loop of hate since 1933.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

cutiger83

 

I believe you misunderstood the point I was making.  I am not saying to make more of ww2 than any other conflict we have been in either before or after ww2 in history class. what I was stating is that less is spent on ww2 as time goes on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am currently in school and I can say that even the older American wars are taught pretty extensively alongside everything else. I remember spending weeks on the civil war, doing multiple projects on WW1 and we only got into WW2 in 10th grade because of how much time we spent on American history and everything else. I can also understand why schools teach certain eras of history at specific times, such as teaching ww2, Korea, and Vietnam when students are older, because all the different events and politics of those eras and conflicts can be more confusing to a middle schooler than a high schooler. If it was true that as time goes on, we spend less and less time on past conflicts, then you'd think that the Civil War unit would be a few days long at most. From my experience, school does a pretty good job nowadays teaching us about how great our country and our people are, while also showing the terrible things we have done in the past. For example, the history of native Americans were glossed over in American schools until pretty recently. Spending time explaining what our country did to these people is something kids need to learn and understand, along with their cultural histories. Of course, you could make the argument that what we are taught in school can be politically motivated, but it is still history and did in fact happen.

 

Now in regards to American Pickers, I do enjoy the show and would rather watch that over Pawn Stars which is terrible, but like many have said already, it's not reality in the slightest. If I wasn't a collector and walked into a house full of WW2 German related memorabilia, I'd probably feel a bit uneasy too, but what she said on the show is pretty ignorant. It's a piece of history no matter the horrible things it represented and should be able to be collected without being associating with that ideology. Some people nowadays are having a hard time understanding that.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was asked to reopen this thread and I have done so. We are really close to the political lines we try to shy away, so it will not take much to lock it again. 

Please be mindful of your fellow forum members and their considerations, we do not all collect the same items or for the same reasons; that does not make anybody wrong. To believe that in circumspect is hypocritical. 

So please be sociable and civil...Robert 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks to Tarbridge for steering this discussion back on track.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts on the A-2 jacket that was featured, or any of the other militaria items shown in the episode?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, pararaftanr2 said:

Thanks to Tarbridge for steering this discussion back on track.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts on the A-2 jacket that was featured, or any of the other militaria items shown in the episode?

The A-2 was nice.  ID'd, iconic "Hell's Angels" painted on the back.  No other art or patches that I recall, but it was solid.  

 

The collector genuinely had a nice assortment of "stuff".  It looked like he had a decent eye and had been doing it for a while.  

 

He made out like a bandit selling the kid's WW1 uniform for $450 or whatever it was.  Strong value on that, but it was nice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, trenchfoot said:

I am currently in school and I can say that even the older American wars are taught pretty extensively alongside everything else. I remember spending weeks on the civil war, doing multiple projects on WW1 and we only got into WW2 in 10th grade because of how much time we spent on American history and everything else. I can also understand why schools teach certain eras of history at specific times, such as teaching ww2, Korea, and Vietnam when students are older, because all the different events and politics of those eras and conflicts can be more confusing to a middle schooler than a high schooler. If it was true that as time goes on, we spend less and less time on past conflicts, then you'd think that the Civil War unit would be a few days long at most. From my experience, school does a pretty good job nowadays teaching us about how great our country and our people are, while also showing the terrible things we have done in the past. For example, the history of native Americans were glossed over in American schools until pretty recently. Spending time explaining what our country did to these people is something kids need to learn and understand, along with their cultural histories. Of course, you could make the argument that what we are taught in school can be politically motivated, but it is still history and did in fact happen.

 

Now in regards to American Pickers, I do enjoy the show and would rather watch that over Pawn Stars which is terrible, but like many have said already, it's not reality in the slightest. If I wasn't a collector and walked into a house full of WW2 German related memorabilia, I'd probably feel a bit uneasy too, but what she said on the show is pretty ignorant. It's a piece of history no matter the horrible things it represented and should be able to be collected without being associating with that ideology. Some people nowadays are having a hard time understanding that.

 

I think it depends on where you go to school.  The biggest problem I remember from school (almost half a century ago now) is the way it was taught could be just plain boring.  Most of my history teachers were also coaches and were just filling time until they did what they really loved.  As a result most of the kids I went to school with hated history and thought it was boring.  It was up to me to dig deeper and one way to do it was to collect the artifacts and talk to those who actually participated.  Then it became exciting!  That's why it's disheartening to see anything about history stifled.  You can learn from it all.  Good and bad.  So to use a modern term...I get triggered when I see someone trying to censor history.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

47 minutes ago, trenchbuff said:

That's why it's disheartening to see anything about history stifled.  You can learn from it all.  Good and bad.  So to use a modern term...I get triggered when I see someone trying to censor history.

 

 

Speaking of erasing/censoring our history ... it is always good to point out that you can never actually delete repealed articles in the U.S. Constitution ... they remain as a reminder of past mistakes or how we have grown or outgrown past articles.  The Founding Fathers were ingenuous.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, MAW said:

The A-2 was nice.  ID'd, iconic "Hell's Angels" painted on the back.  No other art or patches that I recall, but it was solid.  

 

The collector genuinely had a nice assortment of "stuff".  It looked like he had a decent eye and had been doing it for a while.  

 

He made out like a bandit selling the kid's WW1 uniform for $450 or whatever it was.  Strong value on that, but it was nice.

Apparently the jacket belonged to S/Sgt William H. Wilson, who was the radio operator in the Cecil M. Miller crew. They flew a B-17G from the 358th BS of the 303rd BG.

S/Sgt Wilson is 3rd from left in the front row of the image below:

 

 

358miller-S.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The episode mentions the crew's last flight. They were flying B-17G "Paper Dollie" #42-97622 (358BS) VK-K on mission 210 - 23 July 1944. Their plane ran out of fuel when approaching the English coast on the return trip from Creil, France. The Navigator and Pilot were unable to find an emergency airfield on which to land. The crew was ordered to bail out while crossing the English coast. Three engines were out and the 4th was sputtering on and off. Seven crewmen made successful parachute jumps on a country side hill, but the pilot and tail gunner did not survive their parachute jumps.

Below is an image of "Paper Dollie" from May, 1944, after a landing mishap:

 

pp-42-97622-crash.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, pararaftanr2 said:

The episode mentions the crew's last flight. They were flying B-17G "Paper Dollie" #42-97622 (358BS) VK-K on mission 210 - 23 July 1944. Their plane ran out of fuel when approaching the English coast on the return trip from Creil, France. The Navigator and Pilot were unable to find an emergency airfield on which to land. The crew was ordered to bail out while crossing the English coast. Three engines were out and the 4th was sputtering on and off. Seven crewmen made successful parachute jumps on a country side hill, but the pilot and tail gunner did not survive their parachute jumps.

Below is an image of "Paper Dollie" from May, 1944, after a landing mishap:

 

 

Interesting story about the plane and crew. Did the history say why the pilot and tail gunner did not survive their jump? Just wondering what happened to them.

 

...Kat

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, cutiger83 said:

Interesting story about the plane and crew. Did the history say why the pilot and tail gunner did not survive their jump? Just wondering what happened to them.

 

...Kat

Not mentioned on the TV show specifically, but the details are here: http://www.303rdbg.com/358miller.html

 

Apparently the tail gunner's parachute hung up on the tail plane of the aircraft and the pilot, who was last to jump, had a malfunction where he pulled the rip cord, but the 'chute remained partially in the pack and didn't deploy properly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, pararaftanr2 said:

Not mentioned on the TV show specifically, but the details are here: http://www.303rdbg.com/358miller.html

 

Apparently the tail gunner's parachute hung up on the tail plane of the aircraft and the pilot, who was last to jump, had a malfunction where he pulled the rip cord, but the 'chute remained partially in the pack and didn't deploy properly.

 

Thank you for the info.  I am sure this happened more often than we hear about. 

 

...Kat

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, cutiger83 said:

 

Thank you for the info.  I am sure this happened more often than we hear about. 

 

...Kat

No doubt about that. Doubly tragic in that it would appear the tail gunner opened his 'chute prematurely, for the canopy to get hung up on the plane, and the pilot had a mechanical failure of his.

Many years ago, I asked my late father, a WW2 Army Air Force pilot, if they ever practiced parachute jumps. He said "no, you don't practice something you have to do perfectly the first time".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, cutiger83 said:

 

Thank you for the info.  I am sure this happened more often than we hear about. 

 

...Kat

Here is an interview with a Man who had to jump from a bomber. He describes having to bail out about 12 minutes in. Id watch the whole thing as its very interesting and the Man in the interview is 94 years old describing his experiences. His memory is darn good for 94 !

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  I used to really enjoy their show.  In 2019, I went to the Civil War show in Franklin Tenn so I decided to ride up to Nashville to see their store.  I was all excited.  I was going to walk into this great antique store and be awed.  After paying $20.00 to park and walking into a 50 x 50 Tee shirt shop, lets just say I was more than a little disappointed.  So after buying a tee shirt for my sons and jelly for my wife, I have never been able to see the show the same way.  I used to be part of a Civil War museum in Vicksburg Miss.  We had people come in from time to time who said the were uncomfortable about seeing Confederate items or flags that we had on display.  Did they not see the sign that mentioned Civil War Museum out front?   I suppose we were only to tell one side of the story.

 

David 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, 4th Miss Cav said:

  I used to really enjoy their show.  In 2019, I went to the Civil War show in Franklin Tenn so I decided to ride up to Nashville to see their store.  I was all excited.  I was going to walk into this great antique store and be awed.  After paying $20.00 to park and walking into a 50 x 50 Tee shirt shop, lets just say I was more than a little disappointed.  So after buying a tee shirt for my sons and jelly for my wife, I have never been able to see the show the same way.  I used to be part of a Civil War museum in Vicksburg Miss.  We had people come in from time to time who said the were uncomfortable about seeing Confederate items or flags that we had on display.  Did they not see the sign that mentioned Civil War Museum out front?   I suppose we were only to tell one side of the story.

 

David 

 

Some items in museums should make people feel uncomfortable. Demanding or asking that they be removed from view or more subtly displayed is more disturbing to me. I am glad we missed out on going to their 'antique' shop when we visited Nashville. I have heard and read the same about the Pawn Stars shop.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Living in New Orleans, I am fortunate enough to have the National World War II downtown. There's an antique store nearby with a nice collection of World War II artifacts, including german (Nazi) and Japanese WWII items. It's interesting to see hear the comments from vacationers visiting the store for the first time. Most pass by the display, mumble and look away. As for American Pickers, I watch it every now and then. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...