The Crow's Nest 3

3

            My thirty year visit ritual was always the same.  I would follow the mother into the front parlor.  She would approach and seat herself at an opened Empire style fall front desk that was against the front wall of the parlor between the two front windows.  She would gesture for me to sit in a large Victorian Renaissance Revival walnut armchair that had been drawn forward from it’s permanent position to the right of the desk.  She always sat in the same older Greek Revival Empire arm chair in front of the desk. 

            Beginning with the first visit and continuing ever after, these were the fix positions of our business meetings.  The meetings were… for me to be offered, review and …presumably… purchase a scanty selection of items brought forth from within the home as “antiques” that I “would want”.  As the Mother had only a vague notion of “antiques” based primarily on what she herself determined was antique, this moment of the meeting always had a potential impasse.  The impasse was that my roving eye very quickly determined that the items brought forth for a meeting… did not make the antiquarian cut.

            The whole of the front parlor room had been the exact same for six generations of the family’s residence:  The exact same from the first day of it’s finished decoration.  The exact same until all of the family was dead and I sold all of the items from their fixed positions… in about ten minutes.  The left wall had a large and traditionally formed Empire “sofa” placed between two built-in bookcases with a very large 1830’s oversize gilt gold framed …portrait… of a free standing resurrected Jesus having his wounds inspected as he showed himself beneath his halo glow.  “Copied from one in the Lourve” was the standard and unchanging explanation of this “not for sale” “masterpiece”.  Well painted, perfectly framed, gigantic and flush with it’s palette of Empire tone opaque reds, greens and grays, the painting was most probably a Portland - Portsmouth – Boston (!) knock off job painting done for EXACTLY what, when and where this… “masterpiece” stood.  This painting, facing me and behind the mother as we transacted, loomed overall, forever.

            Behind me was a smaller transitional Victorian …horsehair covered “sofa” that was positioned forward of a long, long unused Empire Greek Revival fireplace.  I define the style to note that this was NOT a colonial hearth but, in fact, a rural Maine specimen of a bombastic white-gilt gold painted grand decorative inclusion with a black portal at it’s bottom for “a fire” and the top mantel crested with a …tipped slightly forward… oversize robust split turned gilt gold “MIRROR” (Empire looking glass) above… that did have... when after thirty years I did remove it from the wall… a Portland, Maine “maker’s” (read “vendor’s”) label.  It came to Portland by train and PROBABLY came to the home by TRAIN too.

            The mother, due to the exaggerated tipped angle of the looking glass could see herself and… the back top of my head… in the “MIRROR” “IT”S NOT FOR SALE” as we transacted.  To either side of the fireplace were… built in and painted in their original touch-of-gray off-white (that was the color of the whole of the woodwork and trim of the “front parlor”)…. bookcases.  Before these were a gathering of Empire and Victorian chairs and rocking chairs.  Upon the bookcases were …old books.  Upon and before these bookcases; on the tops of them, on the floor, to the sides extending into the corners of the room and… continuing off behind the Jesus painting sofa on the other side was…mounds of boxed, bagged, piled and…DUMPED… PERMENANTLY STORED for …over a century… “stuff” …heaped in just such a manor that an antiques dealer would FOREVER eye it “in hopes” that a treasure would be “seen”.

            The windows and the open and wide entry to this “front parlor” completed the time capsule by having GIGANTIC floor to TWELVE FOOT ceiling high heavy thick massive faded dust soiled for a century dark forest green and ochre earth toned yellow… “drapes” that were, had, and forever after remained “never touched” ever including their original and permanently poised Empire ties tied… .  When the home was sold, “THEY” went with it.

            The wall, aside from Jesus, had perfectly positioned “old framed prints” upon a scanty and subdued patterned, faded …but original… 1830 Empire style …rural-cheap… “wallpaper”.  Originally a bosomy rouge pink, it was now a pink-gray-brown water stained and pealing at the ceiling molding… yuck.

            In the center of the room, on the floor and upon the “cat destroyed” cheap Victorian carpet were, at each meeting, the items “for sale”.  Beginning with the first visit and continuing ever after, once seated there then began a three hour session of …Yankee dickering.