"Zipper" Harris. Part One. "Stumble Blocked".

"Zipper" Harris

Part One

"Stumble Blocked"

            “AVE been TALK’EN bout AUCTION for THREE generations that I can remember.  POTTERS place and they NEVER SHUT-UP.  That Ellen Potter didn’t MARRY until LATE.  KEPT her SILVER SPOONS where the sun don’t shine I told her.  LOT OF HER where the SUN don’t  shine.  If you know what I mean.

            “I’VE been in there off an on now forty YEARS.  I figure.  Them spoons is still in there somewhere too nears as I KNOW.  Lot of things in that dark in there.  I figure I just keep showing up.  MRS. Potter but now I’m ELLEN.  Been that many years. Ellen won’t you SELL ME TODAY.  I been in-shed.  I been in the barn.

            But I ain’t been in the bed.

            YET.”

            “Zipper” Harris is a local longtime antiques picker (finder of antiques).  I’ve known him all my life.  I started being an antiques dealer before he become a picker.  Before that he was just “Zipper”.  “Zip” for short.  That he come by quite early; first grade we all remember.  In first grade when we’d go outside on recess Zip could never zip his jacket up.  The teacher... Mrs. Dunlady... always had to do it.  You know:  With him inside the jacket.  Never could zip it himself.  Next year; second grade, still couldn’t do it.  Went along so in FIFTH GRADE he’s STILL having the teacher zip him up.  So right along we started calling him ZIPPER.  Or Zip.  And that’s stuck.

            Then he become an antiques man.  Picker.  Zipper the picker.

            He parents run a motel out on Two.  Always run it.  You Know:  Nice place nothing fancy TOURIST place.  Zip always worked there.  Now he’s most of the place himself.

            His folks live in the HOUSE and that walks through the old barn out back to where Zip’s built himself a bungalow:  Nice little cabin that’s a HOUSE.  Out back there.  He goes in through the old barn to the parent’s house.  That barn he uses for his antiques.  I’m always in there.  Never been in Zip’s bungalow.  I always go to the front door of the parents house and they let me in to walk through into the barn.  Except in summer when I pull around back of the house to the side door of the barn.  Zip opens that door in the summer and has his antiques sign out by the road.  He sells to the ones who stop.  They go in the side door with their wallet and come back out with no more money and a pile of junk Zip just sold ‘em.  ‘WORKS OUT FINE DON’T IT’ Zip always says to ‘em.

            Everyone is looking to buy the old fly fishing equipments so Zipper figures he’s gonna be special on that.  ‘Cept that... well... it isn’t that easy to get anymore.  BUY IT mostly and Zip don’t like having to do that so most of it he misses out.  Oh he got plenty of the old crud; the old Sears and rob junk.  Nothing FINE any more.  Zip:  He get beat out on that at the sales and auctions.  So he’s just got the old crud he puts outside the barn in the summer trade.  I don’t say anything about this to ‘im.  I know it’s a sore spot.

Most of what he gets I don’t want and he tries powerfully hard to make me want it he says.  Most of the time we fall back to just chat and looking over a prospect if some summer people stop going through. Zip works them hard if he thinks they’ll show color (old gold digger’s panning expression).

            I seen him sell “The POPE’S Hat” to a couple from LONG ISLAND.  Some fraternal thing he called the POPE’S HAT.  They didn’t know nothing.  I think.  Maybe they did.  Anyway:  They bought it.  That’s the kind of stuff he sells there mostly.

            Zip can go a pretty long time without having to find (“buy”) anything.  He got plenty around he’s dragged home.  Always something around like a canoe chair he wants too much for.  And stuff like that.  Some of it been there TWENTY YEARS I swear.  He don’t move on his price.  Funny thing is he actually remembers all their prices.  He’s got one of them Langley’s Root and Herb Bitters bottles; just the aqua common one.  NO PONTIL.  He want twenty-five.  It’s only worth TEN.  But he’s had that in there twenty-five years.  For twenty-five dollars.  Every summer they ask it (the price) over and over.  “STILL GOT IT” some of ‘em say.  The reason he does that is he likes it; that Langley’s.  HEAVEN FORBID he finds a GOOD (old) BOTTLE.

            One time he had a Warner’s (Safe Cure) box with three bottle still in it FULL. Kept ‘em out in the barn they never froze I wonder why.  RIGHT?  Anyway.  He sold ‘em.  The BOX with the bottles still in it.  Summer guy went back and forth for an HOUR and then give Zip the hundred fifty.  After he left Zip celebrated.  Went through the house out to the soda machine and took off a Moxie.  Locked it (the soda machine for the motel) back up and walked around the side of the house to the barn’s antiques door. He sat down and opened it. He SAT in that chair; that old PRIVATE SCHOOL arm chair, sipping it for TWO HOURS.  JESUS you think he’d OFFER me one.  I said so.  He just laughed. I’ve never sat in that chair of his either. 

            You ever been in a house with him?  Jesus.  He stands his ground with a DOLLAR.  And that WORKS TOO.  Tight.  Jesus.  You get all the way in there way to a back shed or something and he gets a dollar out on some old buckets or such.  Then he says the dollar for all the buckets.  Then the old fella says okay real slow the way they do. Then Zip; he’ll say “WELL I don’t know IF I SHOULD for THAT dollar.  Just like that he say that.  Then that old fella... why he’s STUMBLE BLOCKED.  So then Zip says “I’ll tell you what put in them two (old wooden) BOXES and I’ll CALL IT a TRADE.  Course the old fella DOES.

            That’s how he gets all the crud he’s got.  It’s a slow and steady process.  I asked him about a pair of chairs he’s got in there (the antiques shop barn).  I asked in nineteen seventy-seven I swear.  He says he can’t sell ‘em.  “FOLKS” he says “HAVE TWO MORE MATCHING”.  Won’t sell ‘em he says.  Don’t even know what they are ‘cept that they’s IN THE HOUSE.  His he got in the barn.  He says he’s just waiting.  Been forty years.  Damn fool.

            He found a Civil War belt buckle in there.  (Ellen Porter’s house?  Never been clear to me).  He put it out in the barn.  SIX YEARS they (Civil War collectors) all come by and told him it was a “fake”.  Six years of that.  One day one of ‘em brings a summer sport along and they talked that buckle over for an hour.  Then Zip tells him fifty bucks and that it’s a fake.  That fella look back and forth then paid out the fifty.  Zip folded the money into his pocket.  “That buckle ain’t FAKE.” the fella said.  Jesus if you think Zip forgot THAT.  Only ‘better one’ I ever seen get him.

            Zippy’s a funny man get’en to be a funny old man now.  Seems to be.  He don’t know any art.  He knows an old thing; that something is old.  But he don’t know its ART.  I told him once.  Now probably thirty years ago.  I come on to an early tall clock up in the attic of the Schooner Winthrop House.  The case was lying down under the eves.  The bonnet was off and pushed in-under too.  The movement was in a box.  Must have been put up there after the Civil War.  All the Winthrop boys were killed in that war.  Union boys.  Whole family went to Hell after that.  No one had been in that attic for a whole century.  So Zip’s up there with me.  He sees the old clock and starts his engine.  “Shut-up” I tell him.

            So the cleanout goes along a couple of days and I take that clock out early the third morning.  I take it right out to the truck and take it right home.  It said “Dover” on the dial.  That’s Dover New Hampshire not Dover England.  Zip is going along with me on all of this.  So he starts his mouth engine up once we’re on the road to my place.

            “Campbell’s” he tells me “got a clock just like this right inside their (antiques) store door.  Come face to face with it every time I go in.  Want seven hundred dollars for it.”  That was it right there for Zip.  My tall clock was just the same as Campbell’s and worth seven hundred dollars.

            I poked that a little as we drove. Did he see the movement?  You mean the works in the box?  Yes.  No he figured they were all there fine.  Did he see me take off and save the finials on the bonnet.  He seen me take off the ‘decorations’.  Did he see me make him take the top end of the case so I wouldn’t have to worry about him chipping the feet on the base.  No he didn’t notice that except that I took “the heavy end”.

            I told him it’s a tall clock, not a grandfather’s clock and the ‘works’ is called a ‘movement’ and is regarded as sculpture; three dimensional art.  He wanted to know if ‘it will work’ (go tick-tock):  “CAMPBELL’S DOES.  HAD A CLOCK MAN FIX IT”.  I give up.  I said the case and bonnet are sculpture too.  “BIG LONG BOX AIN’T IT” he says.  I give  up.  Thirty years ago right then.  Never ever made another try at Zip about art.  Just no point.  I hid that clock in my barn for a decade.  Money in the bank you know.  Zip forgot about it after he told me along that Campbell “SOLD HIS GRANDFATHER”.

            Campbell’s old tall clock was import: Welsh.  Used to import boat loads of ‘em.  They are all the same; cheap junk that people think-look-rich... so that they appear think-look-rich but didn’t have to spend much ($300-$400).  These days those folk have found out the truth and now they won’t even buy ‘em.  I’ve never owned one.

            Ellen Potter has a tall clock too and you bet Zip been ogling that for thirty years.  It a “Hoadley”; a cheap Connecticut wooden movement that peddlers sold from their wagons.  The family would go in town and have the case locally made.  Many times a coffin maker would make a case.  Usually they are plain with a dark brown stain finish.  Some cases are paint decorated fancy and I pay attention to those.  I did glimpse the Potter tall clock when I went to that Ephraim Howe Honor home tour... twenty years ago.  A glimpse is all I needed.  They had to screw those clocks to the wall to make ‘em level so they would work (go tick-tock).  That’s a warning sign right there as to their quality.  Zip, of course, thinks it’s worth seven hundred dollars.  You can see how it is easier just to give up and shut up when it comes to explaining art to Zip.  “ANTIQUES” as he calls them is another  matter.

Maine Fashion: What I Wear When I Manage Snow In February In Maine

Maine Fashion:

What I Wear When I

Manage Snow 

In February

In Maine

Bottom to Top; Toe to Head:

L. L. Bean Hunting Boots.  I may choose from five pairs.  All pairs from Thrift Shops, church sales or estate sales.  I have never purchased a new pair.  You can find them new pretty easy.  People buy these and never wear them all the time; a constant.

Two pairs of socks:  These last for years.  Inner pair 30 Below Icelandic purchased from the Vermont Country store in Weston Vermont.  I buy a pair or two when ever I go by.  Outer pair Wigwam Diabetic.  These “diabetic” are on sale a lot.  As the outer pair they ‘aren’t tight’.  All mine have holes in them; heal and toe, from constant usage.  The last ones I bought from Sam’s Outfitters in Brattleboro, Vermont.  I stop most every time we go by.  This sock and boot set is worn year round.  YES:  In July too. 

Gaiters; “the gaiters”:  Currently I have two pairs from Mountain Hard Wear I purchased at some gear type outlet in North Conway, NH.  Off the rack, I walked to checkout and paid full price in cash.  All of this outfit was bought with cash.  No charge card.  These gaiters are the most expensive and foundation piece of my outfit.  I wear them YEAR ROUND and they have the crap beat out of them.  Forest slash protection (cutting; chain saw usage) and tick protection (I NEVER FIND A TICK ON ME) when wearing this outfit.  NO TICS.  NONE.  This is ‘hot’ in July but ‘you get used to it’ and if you don’t like it you weren’t working in the woods anyway.  In February it should be obvious these are a must for snow management across the whole task list. 

Carhartt double layer (“slash layer”) on upper leg front brown duck pants.  NOT BOUGHT NEW.  These are hard to find in thrift shops, etc until you know the secret:  GO TO THE BETTER (more well to do) church thrifts and sales.  There at... perfect never used pairs turn up from good homes who bought a pair once and never worn them or wore them once to go to the mail box and now the wife has donated them so... six bucks and they are mine.  These, too, generally are found in ‘girth is a factor’ waist sizes so they usually ‘fit loose’ on me no problem.  This is important in actual usage for they are sweat soaked in July and wet-frozen-solid in February.  You get used to it... LOOSE.  ‘Tight’ just means your not doing anything.

            Carpenter suspenders.  The ones they sell in the tool section at the local old style hardware store.  They are in the isle with the hammers.  OR:  I find them in the thrifts or, better, never used at the church sales.  Usually for, like, two dollars.  A lot of men wear these.  THEY HOLD YOUR PANTS UP.  That’s why we wear them.  I have eight or ten pairs attached to work pants at all times.  That’s the way they are stored: ON THE PANTS ‘ready to go’.  They last for years (twenty-five years).

            Two dirty old white undershirts.  Worn out rejects from coat and tie usage now used as sweat soaked protection ‘bottom layer’.  YES THEY GET sweat soaked during snow management in February.  July should be obvious.  I have fourteen sets ‘in rotation’  In July I might use three or four sets a day for ‘sweat soaked’ conditions.  GUESS WHAT:  IF it is a Blizzard... I’ll run through three sets a day in February.  FOR REAL.  And these old shirts can stand up by themselves.  These are outdoor farm shed only undershirts.  They are not pretend.  Until you wear them all the time... you don’t.  And:  NO TIC ever makes it ‘that deep’ to this ‘bottom layer.

            The scarf.  My uncle, long dead, gave this to me when I was six.  I have worn it as I wear it for, what?  SIXTY years.  That’s that huh.  It goes under the suspenders and on top of the undershirts.

            Old (vintage) L. L. Bean River Driver Shirt.  It goes over the undershirts, suspenders and scarf and is not tucked in.  Only the undershirts are tucked in.  These shirts are a known classic.  I pick these off at church thrifts and sales.  Often find them ‘new’.  Six bucks is high.  Two dollars is a classic find.  They X the label or cut them off so criminals cannot exchange them for credit at Bean’s.  I have a good slug of these in service.  Sweat soaked in July they are the outer layer.  In February they are the inner ‘stop the wind’ layer.  A VERY IMPORTANT LAYER.  These are ‘stays in the shed’ grade too.  Okay:  ALL of these clothes never... come inside... unless it is a “BAD” “BLIZZARD”.  Again:  All these clothes are never inside.  These are real farm clothes so the LIVE ON A FARM.  They are not house clothes.  They do not live in a house.

            Carhartt heavy grade sweat shirt.  Regular ‘large’ fit with hood and pouch.  Constant usage so “dirty”.  That means “dirty”.  If it is new and clean it will not be for long.  Used year round as a ‘core layer’.  Rain, snow, mud... whatever.  If you ‘hit’ one of these “new with tags” at a thrift BUY IT.  It won’t be there ten minutes later.  As noted earlier the Church Sales are the best source for this grade sweatshirt.  These ‘cost a lot’ to begin with so to find them I shop in the best neighborhoods.  I know the qualities so spot ‘em easy.

            An extra large high school sports and gym grade outer sweatshirt.  I talking blizzard in February in Maine here so once you pull this one on over the Carhartt grade above and step outside you will know right away why your wearing this one TOO.  These one may find ‘new with tags’ at thrifts pretty easy.  A lot of times you can find them with a goofy printing like “I LIKE IKE” or whatever.  Right now mine are plain.  Okay so ah lets clear this up here:  These are never cleaned (“washed”) except by ‘work in the rain’, etc.  WHEN they get TOO BAD to be around... throw them out (use as rags in the barn).  Again:  NEVER WASH... THROW OUT.

            Head gear... for winter snow management:  L. L. Bean safety orange hunting ball cap insulated with ear flaps.  I lucked into this ‘new with tags’ at a church sale for a buck.  HEY:  I got lucky.  You will too

            L. L. Bean cross country skier’s head lamp... a beat up old one ...now seen being used by working Maine men who have become ‘addicted to it’ as preferred lighting “BECAUSE THEY WORK” and are ‘hands free’.  Fresh batteries at the start of the blizzard.  Back up set available ‘lock and load’.  These are now ‘I am lost without it’ status because I am “ALWAYS WORKING IN THE DARK”.  It is always dark in Maine in a blizzard.  Its dark right now while I’m writing this. I am wearing the stupid head lamp RIGHT NOW.  This is a go to the store and buy one off the rack deal.  It takes longer to do now because there are a lot to choose from and... good luck with that.  The big one is ‘can I turn this on and off wearing gloves’.

            Crummy “Navy” blue cap.  These are found ‘new’ easy for under a dollar.  It is what it is; an ‘under cap’ cap.

            Hand knitted safety orange colored heavy wool cap.  My wife made two of these for my thirty years, at least, ago.  I use them fall and winter as ‘top layer’.  Soiled (“dirty”) but ‘she made it for me’.  Okay?  Your not gonna get one of these easy.  IF you have a Maine woman make you one of these to wear when you manage snow... you are... probably an “In Maine” and “live that way” too.  Otherwise:  “Have it professionally done”.

            Gloves:  Safety orange rubber dipped work gloves.  They do not stay dry and are not warm but they do ‘protect’ the hands (frostbite alert).  It’s a blizzard in February in Maine.  The weather is brutal on the hands.  These are, in my opinion, the best cosmetic solution to a ‘no win’ problem of “wet and cold” hands.  Note the duck tape repairs.  Doing those on ALL work gloves ALL the time extends the ‘life’ of a pair a REAL LOT.