Mysterious Americana Catalog
Issue #1
compiled by
Eunice Gate Latch
They’re out there, scaring good folk. We keep them out of government hands so they don’t get any scarier. Good luck collector; I’m praying for you.
collecting
Mysterious American Catalog: ‘Literally Figurative Lightning Rod’
M-A-C (25): ‘Literally Figurative Lightning Rod’
Category: whatsit
Collection Date: October 29th, 1995
Collection Location: (REDACTED), Massachusetts
Collection Report: Reported and logged by its current collector, this MAC is an antique lightning rod with a thick patina. Its midsection bears an oddly shaped bulge that, when viewed from certain angles, resembles a fist deploying the middle finger. It was installed where it currently stands, on the roof of the collector’s compound, where it serves both its intended function and its anomalous one. Continue reading
Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Bindlestiff Call’
M-A-C (24): ‘Bindlestiff Call’
Category: whatsit
Collection Date: N/A
Collection Location: N/A
Collection Report: This rumored MAC has only secondhand accounts, many from those who are known abusers of the Horseshit Protocol: anglers of the one that got away. According to these rumors, the MAC is a gift shop wooden train whistle, little more than a tan rectangular prism.
Blowing on it summons various bindlestiffs, hitchhikers, hobos, and vagrants out of the woodwork, none of whom claim to have heard the whistle, and were merely ‘passing through’. Continue reading
Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Saw Bank’
M-A-C (23): ‘Saw Bank’
Category: doohickey
Collection Date: April 1st, 1967
Collection Location: Wall Street, New York
Collection Report: After a bank raid, and just prior to thirteen suicides from the roof of the (REDACTED) building, in which all those who died had not a single bill or coin on their person, this item was found tipped over on the sidewalk.
M-A-C (23) is a cast iron mechanical bank depicting two lumber workers sawing at a log. The coin slit is positioned just behind the blade, and the lever is the ‘falling’ round of wood on the front. When a coin is deposited and the lever pressed, the figures saw back and forth briefly. Continue reading
Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Sore Spotter’
M-A-C (22): ‘Sore Spotter’
Category: whatsit
Collection Date: September 13th, 2001
Collection Location: (REDACTED), Wisconsin
Collection Report: Teenager D.C. Wingfire was testing out a newly purchased (via her father) dartboard from a yard sale. (Take note that the item was previously flagged under the Horseshit Protocol, but was not collected.) The two engaged in a friendly game.
Through foolishly jumping in front of his daughter’s shot, the father wound up with a dart embedded in his thigh. The wound was judged minor after its removal; the dart was washed and play resumed. Continue reading
Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Dust Pail’
M-A-C (21): ‘Dust Pail’
Category: whatsit
Collection Date: (REDACTED), 1980
Collection Location: (REDACTED), Missouri
Collection Report: Self-proclaimed ‘cityfolk’ (REDACTED) and (REDACTED) entered the dilapidated barn on the rural property they had just purchased, finding nothing unexpected. While cleaning it out a chalky metal milk pail was knocked onto its side. Continue reading
Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Alcaboozit’
M-A-C (20): ‘Alcaboozit’
Category: doohickey
Collection Date: March 11th, 1968
Collection Location: (REDACTED), Alabama
Collection Report: This MAC was technically collected well before the existence of the catalog, sometime during prohibition. It consists of a man-sized dented copper still connected to various tangled lengths of hosing. Taken before modern evidence preservation standards, it sat abandoned in a basement for decades.
Harmless unless used, the moonshine produced by the still conjures up a specific repeatable hallucination entity that refers to itself as ‘Alcaboozit’: a lanky emaciated man in full star-patterned pajamas with ‘too wide a grin too full of too yellow teeth’. He is reported to ‘drift like a bubble and pop in your ear’. Continue reading
Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Freckle Lemonade’
M-A-C (19): ‘Freckle Lemonade’
Category: whatsit
Collection Date: (REDACTED), 1991
Collection Location: (REDACTED), Michigan
Collection Report: Mid-(REDACTED), local police received a report from an irate woman with a densely freckled face further riddled with self-inflicted scratches. She said two children had poisoned her and ‘destroyed her beauty’. Officers were led to the scene, where stood a plywood lemonade stand with a sloppily painted sign: lemonade – 50 cents. Continue reading
Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Haw Haw Hawtty’
M-A-C (18): ‘Haw Haw Hawtty’
Category: whatsit
Collection Date: (REDACTED), 1997
Collection Location: (REDACTED), Florida
Collection Report: A fire at a convenience store/ fast food duo mega-rest stop claimed an unusually high number of lives, seasoned responding firefighters included. One of those responders was (REDACTED), cousin of senior rank collector (REDACTED), prompting unofficial investigation that became official upon discovery of the MAC in the blackened ruins.
M-A-C (18) is a novelty thermometer bent at a forty-five degree angle, molded into the plastic shell of a bikini-clad woman doubled over in laughter, dripping ambiguous tears/sweat. Continue reading
Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Mobster Pot’
M-A-C (17): ‘Mobster Pot’
Category: whatsit
Collection Date: (REDACTED), 2011
Collection Location: (REDACTED), Maine
Collection Report: It took three instances of anomalous behavior for the owner of the ‘mobster pot’ to become suspicious and report it to the authorities. Its form is that of an ordinary lobster pot, manufactured some fifty years prior, showing heavy rust but no structural issues. Its owner had it in continuous use off the same stretch of coast for fifteen years.
The first sign of anything amiss occurred when it was brought up and a human big toe was found in the pincers of one of the trapped lobsters. The digit appeared fresh, and so was put on ice, but too close to some of the catch, resulting in it being consumed before they reached shore.
The incident was reported and the lobster men went back to business as usual. However, three weeks later, an elbow was brought up confined to the same pot, this time without any lobsters present to have carried it. It bore a distinctive tattoo of a (REDACTED) riding a (REDACTED) while (REDACTED), which was later tied to the recent missing person case of (REDACTED).
By the third incident the pot was near to bursting with parts of various bodies, most eventually tied to active missing persons cases. Never was anything larger than an entire bicep found, but they varied in the extreme, from eyeballs and tongues to lungs and the skin off someone’s back.
Fearing what might happen if it was sent down again, the lobster men took a vote, and among the voters was someone who had recently become familiar with the Catalog, who then convinced a majority of the others to turn it over to us rather than the police.
Current Collector: Maude Sirento, senior rank
Notes from Collector: “It was probably always strange, but now those waters are overfished. It doesn’t have anything else to dredge up.”
Current Status: active
Blaine Arcade 