In the early 1920s, my grandfather bought his young sons, my father and uncle, the World Book Encyclopedia, which they left in pristine condition, judging from how I found the many volumes in his bookcase in the early 1940s.Pop, as he was known to his children and grandchildren, was so pleased when he saw a child related to him actually looking at the books, he told me I could take them home. So, from about the age of 11 or so, I became a devoted reader of the World Books. I saw them as an endless supply of good stories and it was up to me alone to find the interesting ones and skip what didn’t look promising. I don’t remember how many volumes there were but for some reason, I do remember the final one started with Troy and ended with Zwingli. I knew more about that Swiss theologian than most kids.Pop had also added annual volumes that contained the events of each year until he determined the books were never going to be devoured by his sons. But as a result, I also became something of a youthful specialist on the events of 1924 to 1928.I was especially taken with a 1925 trial and a 1927 obituary that I read over and over. The obituary recounted the long, sad life of the “mad empress,” Carlota of Mexico. She was the widow of the Emperor Maximilian, who had been placed on a shaky Mexican throne by Napoleon III of France while the country’s neighbor to the north was distracted by its Civil War. Once the war ended, the United States reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine and the emperor was dethroned by an American supported revolution in 1867.While Maximilian was losing his throne and his life, the 26-year-old empress, a cousin of Queen Victoria, had returned to Europe in a vain attempt to get help from her royal relatives. While going from capital to capital, she suffered a mental breakdown and never knew Maximilian had been captured and executed by a firing squad. She would live for 60 more years, most of them in mental hospitals, and die in her native Belgium in 1927.Carlota is forgotten but the 1925 trial of high school teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in defiance of a Tennessee law turned out to be an early skirmish in a controversy that still scares Republican presidential candidates. The headline in the encyclopedia was “Evolution vs. Fundamentalism.” The trial was dominated by the three-time presidential candidate and old time religion champion William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and the great defense attorney Clarence Darrow championing evolution and Scopes, who was largely ignored. The battle was won by Darrow but lost by his client who was found guilty by the Dayton, Tenn., jury and fined $100, which The Baltimore Sun paid.The trial was made into a play and movie, “Inherit the Wind,” which brilliantly cast Fredric March as a fictional Bryan and Spencer Tracy as Darrow and brilliantly miscast the dancer Gene Kelly as the iconoclastic journalist Henry L. Mencken. (Mencken wasn’t mentioned in the encyclopedia but I discovered him in college and have spent a lifetime reading him. His reporting from Dayton is still considered magnificent, especially his essay on the death of Bryan, who died in his sleep, “while the cock crowed on the dung hill,” the day after the trial.)Even as a kid, I thought the best part of the trial was Darrow’s examination of Bryan, whom he had called as a Biblical authority. Darrow mockingly challenged Bryan to explain how Cain found a wife and Bryan replied he’d leave it to the agnostics to track her down. You didn’t find exchanges like that on the radio, even between Jack Benny and Fred Allen.Back then, I assumed the Scopes spectacle had settled the matter and science had won, but what do kids know? Just recently, one of the leading lights of the Republican Party, Sen. Marco Rubio, told GQ Magazine evolution and creationism were two conflicting theories as if one wasn’t science and the other, myth.But back then, I also assumed kids would always look for good stories in actual books.Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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