Maggie's Store - Part Two

Maggie's Store

Part Two

            By far the most poignant legend of this era of my career is the splendid specimen, told for decades now, of “how” “your grandmother” “taught you” “to steal stuff” “from cemeteries”.  A great moral lesson it is not.  But too true it is.  Stopping at an any cemetery, we would “ashes to ashes” YOUR “the ashes” of YOUR… not cooled off… dead distant great aunt.  Nobody ever was cooled off because right at THAT particular not cooled off moment the flowers would “litter” that “fresh hole” and... a lot of times... NOT TOO MUCH care was taken in “what” they PUT the “flowers” “in”.  “ANYTHING will DO” and if ANYONE took inventory of them “vessels” it was my grandmother.  She would chuck them “over that bank” (the flowers) and “trunk it” that vessel and the next thing I’d know that Judge would be HANDING IT through the window of his car to HIS WIFE and she’d be making that hen-laying-an-egg noise so that even I knew what that meant.  Of course the recent actions of Mr. Wallet “helping” “negotiations” was never mentioned to “that stuck bitch” so everyone was always “pleased” that “she liked it”.  This legend of my grandmother incessant “skill” of “cleaning up” cemeteries be SO VIVID an exercise in the dealerly “recent acquisition” that I report a follow up incident now twenty years old for you to hold and ...behold.

            Of course I can’t go “anywhere” “up there” without residue such as “THAT” legend being told “over and over” and as soon “as she could walk” my daughter “learned” that I weren’t just “looking” over the banks, walls, tree lines or what ever of the “that border” a “the cemetery” so:

            ONE afternoon we (the family of three) were “up near ” THE cemetery where my family is buried just being good antiques dealers and rare book scouts with a “truck’s full” fresh load of antiques and the “we ate something” lunch behind us and...:  “WHY DON’T WE ...just... GO BY YOUR MOTHER’S GRAVE!” (next to my grandmother’s, grandfather’s and “uncle” who was a pilot and died in W.W.II when his plane crashed).  Of course I understood that when a daughter is growing up it takes a while before she understands that the “they” are dead and buried “there”.  Perhaps, I thought, being NINE years old now AND maybe… having the same name as on the tombstone of the dead grandmother (my mother) a graveyard visit could “make sense” “now”.  So we went there.

            We parked next to the family plot.  We got out of the truck.  We had not stepped but a foot and half from the truck …and two seconds time more… when my daughter reaches down between the two gravestones of my mother and grandmother and brings a “LOOK WHAT I FOUND” right up there in her hand of a… gold (solid 18k) and seed pearl bracelet of such fineness and quality as ANY feminine young thing twice HER age (and ever older) would “delight to wear”.  I was stunned.  I was taken aback.  AND Mom was too.  Both of us just stood there with our jaws dropped open.  Again:  This happened within seconds of exiting the truck.  But there the gold & pearl bracelet now ON my daughter’s wrist be.  If THAT doesn’t prove what… TWO generations of antiquarian witches, dead & buried, can do FOR the distant rising FOURTH generation name sake AT GRAVE SITE... well... I’ve learned along the way the THIS is how THESE TWO operated.