Monthly Statement:
November 2005

OBJECT #9
DATE SENT: November 30, 2005
SENT TO: Tom Pini
SENT VIA: US Postal Service
DESCRIPTION OF OBJECT: Aluminum mess kit, approximately 7” in diameter (excluding handle attachment) and 2 1/2” high when closed. Kit consists of six interlocking pieces: drinking cup with hooked-handle (4 1/4” x 1 1/2”, 8 oz. capacity), fry pan (6 3/4”x 1 1/2”, 18 oz. capacity), plate/fry pan (6 3/4”x 1 1/2”, 14 oz. capacity), sauce pan (5 1/2”x 1 3/4”, 16 oz capacity), sauce pan lid (5 1/2” x 1/8”, and fry pan handle (missing). Dented and scratched in many places and burned on the bottom of two surfaces (sauce pan and fry pan). The letters M A written in black magic marker on top of saucepan lid. Missing: 1) locking screw, 2) green canvas cover which had a black line drawing of a camping scene on it, 3) handle from sauce pan lid (substituted by drawer pull and screw from kitchen “junk” drawer from parent’s home).
Not Official Boy Scout equipment.

ORIGIN AND APPROXIMATE DATE OF POSSESSION OF OBJECT: Purchased from Sears Roebuck and Company, Union City, NJ, approximately 1965 in preparation for one of my first camping trips to Camp Todd, Newton, NJ, while in the Boy Scouts of America, Troop 19, North Bergen, NJ.

MOST RECENT LOCATION OF OBJECT: In large white cardboard box in front of radiator and first window on south side of my studio with many other historical objects. Box is on top of another cardboard box.

RELATION OF OBJECT TO RECIPIENT: Tom Pini became a member of Troop 19 in 1965 after being a guest at our summer camping trip to Camp Towadena on Fairview Lake in northwestern New Jersey. He was there at the invitation of his cousin Joey, who was already a member, but not one of my friends. I remember meeting Tom at one of our weekly Thursday night meetings. He was from Hoboken, a town that I had a history with since I had lived there as a child and had many family members who still lived there. Tom and I did not become friends immediately, but he was a member of Troop 19, and as such we shared many experiences, among them numerous camping trips. Later, we began to hang out because of mutual friends, and eventually I joined Post 19, the Explorer Post for older boys, many of whom had been Boy Scouts. We went, in the summer of 1975, to Philmont Scout Ranch in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, in a caravan of cars from New Jersey. My mess kit came along with me, as it did on all my camping trips with and without the Boy Scouts as well as independent bike trips I made. Tom and I later attended the same college, where we roomed together. Most recently he has become my tennis teacher and tennis partner. We eat dinners together on occasion, but we have not dined from mess kits in many years.

RESPONSE OF RECIPIENT:

DATE OF RESPONSE:

Process: My plan is to de-accumulate objects I now own during the course of the exhibition year. I will photograph the selected object then send the object with a letter to a person who has some relationship to the object or whom I think might be interested in the object. The letter will discuss the project and tell the receiver they can keep the object, destroy it, give it away, recycle it or anything else they choose. I will ask them to document it in the place they now have it and send their image and/or written description back to me of what they did with it and where it is. I plan on de-accumulating an average of one object per week. The new images/descriptions will be placed in a plastic folder and exhibited along with a photograph of the object as it was in my possession.