Old New England Glassware in the Home - Part Sixteen - "The Dark Hole"

Old New England Glassware in the Home

Part Sixteen

"The Dark Hole"

            Very few men shop at the glassware tables of the church holiday fairs.  Very few.  I know this.  I also know that if I am a repeating shopper at these glassware tables... I quickly establish relations with ‘the volunteers’ particularly if THEY, too, know what it is I am buying.

            Once that bridge to grandmother’s house is crossed we.... WE... have ‘a lifetime together’ of ‘old glassware’.  “I PUT SOMETHING OUT BACK FOR YOU.  A little salt I think.  It’s very nice and I didn’t want you to miss it”.  It is not about the money.  Acknowledge her ...good taste...  and astute eye... is the profit.  “She knows” is a bronze plaque that is coveted.  “I just knew you would want those”....:

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with my things.  They’re already TRYING to move me to Assisted Living... I can’t have them THERE (her antiques).”

            “Why not; just take a box full.”

            “Well I suppose I could.  But what will happen to it”.

            “Who cares.  When it’s over in there you got no cares.”

            “Yes but I DO care.  I would like to know it goes on.”

            “I’ll buy what I can.”

            “Well I’ll have to show you sometime.  Here:  Let me wrap those for you”.

            It is that simple; the dark hole in the universe of ...old New England glassware...

            In the home.

            While the new-women New England... matches their toenail polish with their flip-flops and... matching those too... “with my”... ‘tote’... and the

            New-men New England... ‘hitches’ their utility trailer ‘on’ and ‘hauls’ a

            Petroleum footprint “geared down’...

            I slip through

            Crack after crack

            Gathering old New England glassware in

            “Their”....:

            “She died last FALL and we are going to PUT THE PROPERTY

            On the market but

            We

            Want to clean it out

            FIRST”.

            “Ok”.

            My first ‘leaving’ is to give notice that I have just designated the hidden anti-hero of the preservation... of the values, behavior and ...good taste... of old New England.  The headless horse...women... who, too, fall through crack after crack... yet prove to be a titanic interwoven system of ...old New England granite fence posts... and THE system of old New England ‘fence viewers” TOO...:  It is a position beyond (?... no... actually ‘of’; I am, of actual fact and profession, that... too) my personal reach and one the reader... cannot fake... ‘knowing of’ or... ‘being of’.  Exclusivity, although not a title position or working policy... remarkably... IS a defining boundary of

            The (old) New England... community... church / civic “volunteer”.

            Staying clear, in my leavings... of all but the antiquarian quips of these ‘those’... for I do not need (?) to define the broad reach of these ‘those’?  I would like to think so: that the reader... ‘gets the picture’:  The reading... are not they (themselves)... ‘those’.  Thy is not a there or a those.  These... they... I ...have intimate antiquarian relations with... for THEY TOO know... “those; they don’t know”.  And they (these volunteers) carry the ‘Bean Supper’ off without a hitch TOO.  It is the occupying army of old New England.  They are granite fence posts.

            One may show up in town and buy-build-teardown-makeover a largest ‘PRIVATE’ home.  PARK in the behind-the-church lot.  Shop downtown.  Painting toenails aqua marine on May Day.  Red, white and blue bunting

            Strawberry

            Festivals

            Sitting in a folding lawn chair.

            “A few bugs but not bad”.

            “Wonderful sandwiches”

            Somebody made the sandwiches.

            Put the bunting

            Found the bunting

            Pictured the bunting

            In the mind’s eye of

            “I was once a little girl I remember

            Standing there below the Church yard

            Wall:  The

            Graveyard that no more may fit into

            My family’s plot.

            Ebenezer was lost at sea in a storm.

            Along the coast in November

            All were drowned.

            I still have

            A set of cordials he gave Maria.  One was broken

            My grandmother told me..

            When her grandfather Jeremiah married Amelia Jenkins in

            Eighteen fifty-two.

            The street is still the same

            You see.”

            Seven cordials are a set of

            Seven but does not include my wondering

            If down the privy hole straight back through shed

            Be tossed and dusted fecal buried

            The broken ‘number eight’.

            It’s been that long for that ‘old shit hole’

            “When was that last used?”

            “They only used that one in the winter

            Anyway”.

            “When I die:  I have thought about this.

            I (my confidence) to you.  When you come in

            And buy them

            Remember me.

            I am leaving them there; just that way

            That they have always been that way

            There from when she (her grandmother) first

            Showed them to me

            There; like that.  Just as we see them now.

            They rest

            And I will rest and

            Know they rest that way too.

So now we are beginning to get to where we may... be beginning to get... to where we

            May well be better off knowing more about the ‘exactly’ what this; the glassware I have been speaking as being included in this ...old New England saga... “is”.  Maybe we are “could we?”.  Do I like the glassware better than the saga?  Or is the saga merely ‘brought physical’ by the glassware?  Or is it the interweave of each ...that spawns a third wholeness... and that wholeness is a

            Solid form... a solid force too... in the

            “It is that simple; the dark hole in the universe of ...old New England glassware...

            In the home.”?