High Notes for 09-01-2016 – the silver ring
While looking through a small man's jewelry box that I've owned for over fifty years, you know...a four by seven-inch stylized vinyl-covered box to carry tie tacks, old coat buttons and small political buttons. The box is where I've kept a few pennies, a broken arrowhead, a small stone from an early Indian necklace, a set of quarter-sized brass dress U. S. Army uniform buttons. One with a spread-winged eagle perched atop a ship's wheel encircled with 13-stars and a sword and house key...the symbol of the National Guard. The other button, is to be worn on the other collar with the raised letters "U. S.". The buttons have pointed prongs-through-fabric which allowed the attachment that you could secure with round squeezable doo-dads from the back. Every soldier wears the two brass badges on their collars for unit designation from Private up to General.
And among the other memorable items of my past, I found a small silver polished band to be worn as a finger ring. It has the look of a plain gold wedding band, but is made of coin silver. Then I remembered that my life-long friend, Val Minch made the ring and gave it to me 57 or so, years ago, when he came home on leave from Norfolk, Virginia, his ship's home port. Val joined the U. S. Navy in 1957 and became an E-5, repairman maintenance machinist "P-2", which is the highest designation one can get as a machinist.
After I found the ring last week, I telephoned Val at work in his home office where he holds forth as an international hardwood lumber broker. He sells North American oak, hickory, maple, poplar, and other hardwood species to manufacturers around the world, by the railroad container-car-load, and ships them by sea.
Val said "I wondered whatever happened to some of those rings I made so many years ago. The one I gave you started out as a silver half-dollar coin, and I made it by first drilling it to size, then using the concave side of a dinner spoon to hammer away at it to shape it into a ring. I had to use fine tooth files, and fine-grained emery paper to finish, shape and polish them.
When I found the ring it would fit only my pinky-finger on my left hand, and at that, it was still less than tight. I've been wearing it though, as a side-ring to my silver Native-Indian made, Thunderbird-design ring, which I bought many years ago among a load of antiques. On Monday August 22nd, I was standing and peeing into the toilet at Nora Netzer's home, and after I finished relieving my kidneys, the small ring fell off my hand and into the toilet. I had to think quickly and decided I could always wash my hand, so I plunged my hand into the commode bowl and retrieved the ring.
It had been a long time since I'd seen the ring, and I don't remember wearing it because at the time Val gave it to me, I was working as a machine operator at the Ford Motors plant on Red Bank Road, Cincinnati, and jewelry of any kind was forbidden for safety reasons.
If nothing more, I can now show Val my appreciation for his effort, and if I’m asked about the ring, I have good story telling fodder.
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