On Saturday, the SPCA Thrift Store held a yard sale. No, they didn’t sell their yard, but anything you could fit into a bag was yours for $5.
There is something about thrift stores that has always fascinated me. To me, thrift stores are museums for the working class. Just think of the sociological data that can be gathered by taking a stroll though the discarded clothes, furniture, books and music of previous generations.
In 2013, where else could you purchase a medium sized “Where’s The Beef?” T-shirt, a Milli Vanilli cassette single and a copy of “Breakdancing Two: Electric Boogaloo” on VHS tape?
Up yours, Walmart.
By all accounts the yard sale was a success, thus allowing the poorly-funded SPCA to keep their hostel of dogs, cats and kangaroos housed and fed for a little while longer. The usual crop of psycho bargain hunters were on hand (“Hey, is 25 cents the absolute lowest you can go on this couch?”), but one smart shopper walked away with an antique that could end up being worth several thousand dollars.
“I bought it for my husband,” said Constance Hollowell of La Grange. “He’s into all types of music, be it blues from the 1920s, jazz from the 1960s or experimental rock music from last week. His collection is out of control, but since I have more shoes than Thom McAn, I don’t really have a pump to stand on.”
The item in question is a suit believed to have been worn by one Francis Albert Sinatra in the original “Ocean’s 11” movie, released in 1960.
“There’s a tag sewn into the inside pocket of the jacket that reads, ‘heist scene, Ocean’s 11, Frank Sinatra’,” Hollowell said. “The suit is grey and smells like Jack Daniels, so I’m pretty sure it’s authentic.”
Other items found in the suit include a poker chip from the Sands Hotel and Casino, a room service bill signed by Ava Gardner, and an invitation to the 1959 bris of Sammy Davis Jr.
Miller Gaffney is known to millions as the trollop with the short skirts and ability to turn one-syllable words into Shakespearean sonnets on the PBS series “Market Warriors.”
“Conservatively, I’d say this suit would go for $50,000 at auction,” Gaffney said. “If I were buying this item from a man with no backbone, he’d probably let me talk him down to $6. Then I’d pretend I was made of glass, pooch out my bottom lip a little and ask him to carry it to my car for me. He wouldn’t even notice that I was carrying a purse that weighs more than the suit would if Sinatra were in it.”
While no one seems to be questioning the authenticity of the item, just how a suit worn in a movie by Frank Sinatra over 50 years ago made it to the little slice of purgatory known as Kinston is a mystery. Fortune cookie writer and former car cranker for the Bonanno crime family Benmont Tench believes he has the answer.
“Sinatra was tight with Sam Giancana of the Chicago outfit,” Tench said from his home in Jones County. “When they brought Giancana back to the United States in 1974, he became an informant for the FBI. According to the FBI, Giancana was assassinated while cooking sausage and peppers — just before he was supposed to testify about what part the mob and the CIA played in the Kennedy assassination. That story was a hoax.”
Tench contends the feds put Giancana in the witness protection program and hid him in Deep Run.
“Giancana was a store greeter at Walmart,” Tench said. “Sinatra would send him care packages filled with food, booze and clothes. He probably sent the ‘Ocean’s 11’ suit without even knowing what it was.”
Tench says Giancana died in a stand collapse at a 1992 tractor pull in La Grange.
Hollowell says her husband plans to sell the suit on eBay at some point, but right now he’s wearing it around the house.
“The Sinatra Capitol Years box set has been on rotation in our living room ever since this suit came into our lives,” Hollowell said. “He slept in that suit the night I brought it home.”
As The Free Press prepared to leave the Hollowell residence, from behind a closed bathroom door a flush was followed by the refrain, “I faced it all, and stood tall, and did it MYYYYYYYYY WAAAAAAY!”
Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase books, music and Peter Lawford 8-track tapes at jondawson.com.