I found this one on the west side of Ferguson Street between Jerome and Vine. C. Gossett stamps are very plentiful in the neighborhood – probably one of the five most common – but I think this is the first one I have seen with a diagonal placement. I wonder why someone decided to do it that way, this time?
On the southeast corner of Jerome and Ferguson Streets is a pair of V.D. Minnis stamps, around the corner from each other. I used to think all V.D. Minnis stamps were undated, until I found one dated ’07. Still, I took that one to be an odd exception, and the numerous undated ones to be a rule. I am reconsidering that in light of my close inspection of these stamps.
I noticed that both of them have a horizontal line underneath, which corresponds with the hyphen in the 1907 stamp (presumably separating the month and year, though the month had been obliterated from that one). I got down and under the yellow light of a street lamp I looked at it up close, and felt with my fingers. There are depressions on either side of the line, suggesting a worn-away month and year. After a bit more looking and feeling I suddenly thought (though it may be spurred by wishful thinking) that I could make out a very faint year: ’07. I am almost positive the first digit is a zero. It is in front of a 1904 house, so this might be from the first sidewalk that was laid when the subdivision was developed.
I have a new theory about V.D. Minnis stamps, which is that they aren’t undated. The dates have just worn away in almost all cases. This might seem strange, except that the 1907 stamp on Regent Street shows a date that is shallower and cruder than the name, possibly due to being drawn in by hand.
Remember the mystery of Ed Crackins-or-Drackins? I passed a clear stamp tonight, on the west side of Ferguson Street just north of Vine, that solves it. The name is Brackins. I’m sorry this is so dark, but there wasn’t a near enough street lamp, and attempts to capture it with a flash washed it out entirely.
“Brackins” is a more plausible reading of the previous stamp I found than “Crackins,” since the letter isn’t round enough on the left side to be a C. The classifieds I turned up advertising for Ed Crackins were probably OCR glitches, because I can find similar ones spanning the same time period (the 1950s through early 1970s), and more importantly using the same phone number, for Ed Brackins.
On October 29, 1958, the [Lansing] State Journal ran a piece titled “Career Events Set.” The Iota Phi Lambda business women’s sorority and the NAACP were sponsoring a program titled “Careers – Unlimited” at the Friendship Baptist church at 925 West Main Street. (That address appears to have been obliterated by I-496.) The article goes on to list all the professionals who would be providing information at the career fair, and one of them is cement contractor Ed Brackins.
The dates involved suggest that this could be Edward E. Brackins, Sr., 1912-1983, buried in Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in DeWitt (according to Find a Grave). That is just a guess, however, since I can’t find his obituary.
