Presidential Signatures

I went to the Pawn Shop to sell my collection of President of the United States signature collection. They are actually autographs of the Presidents. My family has been collecting them since the late 1700s. Back a long time ago it was easy to get a President’s signature. It wasn’t as big a deal to be President. And there was no secret service. A President would be shopping for groceries and you could go right up to him and ask. And they liked it. It was an early version of popularity polling.

But after Lincoln it became increasingly difficult to obtain a President’s signature. To maintain the autograph retrieving tradition, my family had to get jobs working at the White House. That sounds exciting, but as my Uncle Jebidiah wrote in his diary entry from March 17th, 1898, “This job rankles me to the marrow. President Taft is an insolent man. It is with great trepidation that I continue my employment as his bather. But I must restrain my perplexities as I am in a sliver proximity of obtaining his surname script.”

The only signature I had second thoughts about selling was Millard Fillmore’s. He wrote, “Millie.” I imagined that he was a dog. I like the idea of a dog being President.