The Horse's Grave - Part One

The Horse's Grave

Part One

            The circumstances that lead to the escapade began well before I understood antiquarian directives.  A footpath crossed the back of an overgrown garden between a dilapidated Federal home, a Victorian mansion in grievous decay and the rear of an 1870’s tenement building that once housed mill workers and their families but then was approaching the public designation of “CONDEMNED”.  Before my very young eyes, the rear of my grandmother’s dress clung to the viperous reach of the tangled weeds that not only overhung the footpath but also my head.

            As we walked, these grasses grew taller, the surrounding roof tops smaller and the truculent sun, held directly above in its blue sea, more dazzling.  With these dizzy effects, I, upon reaching The Horse’s Grave, was already in need of protective grandmothering.

            But no comforting noise could I hear.  What I did hear was always the same:  A sudden silence created by my grandmother’s cease in movement along the path.  Then the back filling of this empty sound by the static murmur of insects that had not ceased their oratory in the grass beside me and:  The return of sound as a grassy swish as my grandmother parted these tall grasses to her left and sidestepped into this forest of illegal meadow plants.

            The growth was illegal only to my grandmother who vividly recounted perpetually what a “Fine garden” this field “was once”.  With her motion off the path, a movement whereupon she vanished before my eyes for the tall grass closed behind her, I stood alone while she, very knowingly, stepped to the only proof of the once grand and controlled landscape she “remembered”.  I followed; parting the grass and searching the ground for her “stepping place”.

            We did not wade in the grass very far.  Following her dress that was now pulled up and back so that it was in my face, I arrived blind behind her within the shade of a growth of very old Lilac bushes.  Beneath the border of this shade and one further and fatal step forward, should one be so ill prepared as to travel here without foreknowledge, one would “fall in” The Horse’s Grave.  To “fall in” The Horse’s Grave was, and remains to this day, one of the greatest of fates that could happen to me.  To “fall in” The Horse’s Grave I understood to mean prompt termination of my, to then, short life.  I give notice here that I... never fell in... The Horse’s Grave.

            Other things did though and the first action of my grandmother was to review what had happen at The Grave since she last visited.  Comment, usually accompanied with woodcraft gesture toward a spot or two on the edge of The Grave, affirmed her notices that such & such had “gone in”.  The most particular of these poor creatures, a personal designation on my part for... they were nothing but victims of a sure demise, were usually “a raccoon” or “a skunk”.  The raccoons left a bigger notice of their visit for... they were “eating frogs”.  Sometimes... there was a piece of a dead and eaten frog as positive proof that this had happened.  I would follow the detection of this body part with a long and complete scan of The Horse’s Grave for any surviving frogs.

            That is why we had come to The Horse’s Grave:  To see the frogs.  Where else could I see frogs but at The Horse’s Grave?  This was the only source of frogs that I knew of; this hole of water called The Horse’s Grave.

            What The Horse’s Grave is (for it be still today... in this same reclusion that I have described for you)... is a modest Victorian era kidney shaped pool of ice cold water welling up from beneath the muck of it’s bottom within a precisely defined fitted stone border that is completely covered with moss to rustic perfection.  At the far side of this sculpted hole of dark, shaded water, between the clumps of Lilacs, a single lower stone allows perpetual escape of water.  This water, from this hidden source, forms a trickle, then a stream that, by the time it reached “the street”, formed a boundary then known to me only as “way” “over there”.  This stream at this street was never approached from The Horse’s Grave, but only pointed out to me when walking along this “the street” where this stream was there shown to me as “is the water from The Horse’s Grave”.  This last was always rolled in my small mind by an extended gaze at the tall grass before me that, I had asked for affirmation of many times, “is the same field?”  The repeating query always was answered “Over there; in that clump of trees (the Lilacs): You can see them can’t you?” was where it was; The Horse’s Grave.  I could see them, I said, but... actually... it all didn’t seem possible for, as I understood the cartography of the world... The Horse’s Grave was “not near here”.

            At the edge of The Horse’s Grave, in the tall grass, beneath the shade of the Lilacs, I stood, with my grandmother, motionless.  One did not move without extreme designation for, otherwise, one would “fall in”.  My eyes moved though.  They looked for “the frogs”.  And there they were; on the far side, in the dark, wet, shade; sitting and looking at ...me.

            We would count the frogs, particularly if a body part had been noticed.  We... would long to touch a frog, an obsessive interest, I am sure, of only one member of this duo of visitors.  We would, with no self assuredness on my part, want to catch a frog, something that happened only when my grandmother’s hand flashed downward with a suddenness that spattered water across the pond thereby causing a general popping and splattering around all edges of The Horse’s Grave.  We (in fact only I) would want very much to throw something at the frogs to make them jump, an action that was once demonstrated as possible by my grandmother but thereafter discouraged.  This urge was never acted upon up until... I was old enough to... “go to” The Horse’s Grave... alone.  It is from that moment; the era of solo travel to “The Horse’s Grave”, that my tale twists to a more haunted blackness then that cold, clear water ever knew of.

A Family of Scoundrels - Part Two

A Family of Scoundrels

Part Two

By I. M. Picker

            My Grandmother taught me the use of linguistics in the trade.  She taught me the ratios of setting, style, timing, inflection, body language and smile.  She taught me to “show them the money”, the angle to stand to “see” into the barn; to peek past the clean and see the dirty, the old, the “junk”.  She suggested the development of vocabulary and its theater:  A Romeo & Juliet at the barn door, basement stairs or attic window.  The old fainting couch fills with the form of the swooning seller while the buyer refreshes that old treasure in its first fresh air in decades (centuries?) as it passes to the back of the... truck.  It’s an aura that is never cute, clean, polite or... given.  It is love and death.  One learns these things and their special soul.

            It is a special soul.  It is by far more vibrant to me than any THING I have ever owned.  It speaks in a linguistic clarity surpassing any fine art or prose.  My sense of “these things”, a wisdom of human sensation, rests as a utopia in my portfolio that many of my fellows seem to search for.  Language selection is a vital part of “these things”.

            Early in my career, when I was old enough to drive and be a dealer, but still young enough to lie in my childhood bedroom and consider HOW I could find “treasure” that day, I had an experience that began with language use and... has ended with it.  That is, if this incident has ended.

            My teenage stupor was roused in the barn yard by an older neighbor who rushed over to tell me “they” were “cleaning out a house” that we both knew had been closed for several years after “they” put the old witch that resided there in a “home” where she promptly... died.  “They” were from Connecticut.  “They” had appeared at the home and were now stuffing “junk” from the main home into large, plastic garbage bags and putting them into the back of the old truck of the aging town handy man AND drunk.  His name was “Stub” or “Stubby”.  I promptly went to the street corner and confirmed this report.  The truck was nearly loaded.  “They’re going to the dump.” I said.

            My friend said nothing.  “We’ll follow the truck.” I continued.  We did.  It went to the dump, the old fashion kind, along a bank of the river, where one backs up and dumps over the bank.  He backed up and dumped.  We waited, watching.  He left... to get the second load.  There was already a second load.  We had seen the mound of dark plastic bags on the screen enclosed porch.

            Over the edge of the bank I went.  My friend stood looking at me from above.  The bank was open to the heavens with a scenic vista of white pine trees dotting the river edge fading to a mountain landscape in the distance.  Aside from the raw mounds of rural Maine afoul that included the smell, rats, mushings, oozing and the visual disparity of this, it was a rather natural setting.  For myself, to whom the side of the town dump bank was familiar from extensive rat hunts,[1] these circumstance offered no ...trepidation.  My older friend, a mere antique hobbyist and sensible to his position in the community, wavered.  Looking down on me was his propensity turned to action.

            I tore open the first bag and spilled forth the treasure.  Treasure it was, the kind that one expects from people from Connecticut who have finally gotten their hands on “the old bitches” material obsessions and go to “cleaning it out”.  I beheld.  My friend beheld as I ferried the “junk” to him and he to our ...truck.  It was a direct line.

            “Go buy some beer.  Two six packs”.  He looked down at me.  I wasn’t old enough to buy, let alone drink, beer.  “GO GET IT.” I shouted to his blank stare.  “AT THE STORE on the hill.  BEFORE HE GETS BACK”.  He stopped staring at me, waffled and... left.  I rummaged; we’re talking about thirty bags in the load.  It takes time to sort that much “treasure” out of the “junk” on the hillside of a town dump.  He returned, with the beer.  Stubby returned, backing in.

            “HE’S BACK.” yelled my friend, this time staring away from the top of the bank.  I scrambled up and saw the truck swinging to back up.  I took one six pack and walked straight toward the reversing truck.  The driver’s side window was down.  As it moved toward me I stepped to it, presented the six pack to the window and said:

            “DUMP IT OVER THERE.” pointing to the clean far end of the bank.  He did that, taking the six pack first.  NO FURTHER WORDS WERE EXCHANGED, ever again.  As I said, this is about linguistics and their use to ...buy and sell... antiques.  My friend was awe struck.  He never went over the bank.  I started on the new pile.  We soon had the truck full.  Stubby returned with another load.  It took him longer to get there this time, the beer was cutting in.  I gave him the second six pack, non-verbally.  He took it non-verbally, dumped the load “over there” and ... left.  “I can’t believe it” my friend said.

            We decided the promptest solution was to re-load the bags, take them to my grandmother’s barn and sort them there.  We did this.  Stubby returned with another load while we took our first load to Grandmother’s house.  She, understandably, became, as we say in the trade, “interested”.  She knew the house, the stuff, the situation and acknowledged my act of, well, ...choreographing the ballet in progress.  She eyed the bags, tore one open.  “How many are left?” she said.

            “Two loads” I replied.  My friend was still waffling.  As I noted, he was a hobbyist, not a dealer.  He collected.  WE were dealers.  He muttered and pushed at some of the “finds”.  My Grandmother chatted him, filling the vocabulary void between an excited teenager and a responsible citizen of the community.  She continued to chat him.  And chat him.  He stopped peeking at the stuff.  Then he... “didn’t want any of it” he said.  Then he “didn’t want to go back”.  I went back.

            I got the loads, each time driving by the home to see if Stubby was still loading.  I knew it wouldn’t last much longer.  Subby would get drunk and “not show”.  The people from Connecticut would tire of throwing out “junk” and go off to the motel and to “clean up”.  This went as forecast; the house was locked up, the yard vacant.  I brought another load into the barn.

            My Grandmother was going through the bags.  She knew an antique so the residue of her sorting was confined to the “new” “collectibles”, subjects on the information highway of the antiques world she had not studied nor cared to.  I sorted these.  “How much is left?” she asked.

            “Just the stuff from the first load, in the garbage over the bank.  It’s too dirty to bring here.  I’m gonna finish it there”.

            “Let’s go.” she said.  My grandmother was in the truck and we... went.  We went to the dump.  WE ...went over the bank.  We had the place to ourselves, tearing the bags open with our backs to the mountain vista, river and pines.  Sea gulls hovered, rats scurried and garbage smelled.  We worked together, commenting on the discoveries and making small piles that I would ferry to the truck.  We worked side by side.

            Suddenly at the crest of the dump, a family appeared, trash in hand.  A local, prominent family, trash in hand.  “Mrs. Ashby, is that YOU?” the father said.  We both looked up.  The foursome family looked back.  The son was my age, the daughter a year older.  We were in school together.  “What are YOU DOING?” the father continued.

            She explained, as best as antique dealers can to the lay population that doesn’t know this refined business exists, that there is a material oblivion and that there is... .  Obviously, it did no good.  My grandmother, using her linguistic skills, did not try to enlighten.  They tossed their bags by us, stared again and left.  We continued our work, disregarding them and, in fact, forgetting them.  Their sighting of us did come up at dinner, in casual conversation.  The main conversation was on “buying the estate”.  The how to do it and the linguistics of that, among other considerations.  We devised the trajectory.  My grandmother would hit ’em a dawn, cash in hand, before they started “work”.  I would be along side to compliment the “We’ll get it ALL OUT NOW” clause that we always offered with the “YOU CAN KEEP ANYTHING YOU WANT” clause.  People from Connecticut have taste, know what they’re doing, what’s valuable and... what isn’t, especially in old witch’s homes in rural Maine.  Our plan worked; my Grandmother used the proper linguistics.

            This family at the top edge of the dump faded into my past.  I lived as an antiques dealer and did an antiques dealer’s world.  My girlfriend would become my wife and... a dealer too.  We would wander together being dealers.  One day, over a decade later, we had one of those chance encounters one has in life with someone from the past.  In this case it was the son of the family.  It was one of those neo-college days encounters, when both youths are passing to “career” (and destiny) of “choice”.  The fumbling conversation on the street extended to an invitation to the parent’s home on the “they’d love to see you” clause we ... hate.  My wife and I went, per invitation and endured one of those ridiculous movements of human interaction.  This situation was complicated because they, the parents, “collected antiques”.  They “ we always have, you know”.  Everything in the home was valuable, bought “right”(cheap) and showed their variably fine taste.  Nothing was for sale.  We withstood a show and tell; a “sharing” as they called it.  I told antiques dealing stories and deflected the inquisition proffered my wife.  Finally, the “Mother”, a women of the home, related to my wife the story, from their vantage point, of my Grandmother and I at the dump.  Self-satisfied at the end of her story she continued by confiding to my wife “You know, he comes from a family of scoundrels”.

            Such fine linguistic use, so carefully chosen, sticks with one.  A courageous compliment paid for the world to hear is actually hard to garner.  My grandmother was not dead yet so I passed it on.  She did not suffer the intellectually vain, nor bothered to respond about them.  Such stunning linguistic gold we treasure in our repertoire.  This example is one of the finest in our collection.  We always repeat it to ourselves when we’re listening to the spoken language used in an attic.  Then we listen past these nuncupative utterances.  We listen to the sound of old things in the attic.  We listen to the soul of this sound.  We are a family of scoundrels.

---

[1]:  We’ve all shot them at the dump, with a twenty-two, right?  It was a former wholesome Maine boy activity, now vanquished by “land fill”.

A Family of Scoundrels - Part One

A Family of Scoundrels

Part One

By I. M. Picker

            Careful language use.  I use that all the time to... buy antiques; old things negotiated verbally and the transaction closed with cash.  Selective language use is so easy and timeless, so fluid and raw, its hard to imagine it carries any puissance in the vast world of used material possessions.

            We were invited to a home of “collectors” outside of New York City.  Venerable, this home aired prosperity, taste, accumulation and refined sensibilities.  “Collectors” is a least favorite type of estate call; one cannot buy a thing because everything is “good”, “bought right”, “valuable” and... “not for sale”.  One sits and looks and touches and gets insufferably bored while the collectors extol taste and value and wave recent acquisitions around your face.  If your lucky, there is something good to eat.  In most cases, even that… “is bad”.  I try to estimate how many hours I’ll be “stuck there”, my word choice.

            In this case, we had to visit with two people; the daughter, a collector carrying on the family tradition as well as aspiring to be a dealer.  And the Mother, at mid-seventies, still bearing the torch of the family’s antiquarian accumulation and taste.  The daughter had first whack on us.  Her full time position as a power person on Wall Street compromises her infatuation of “being a dealer” “full time”.  Wall Street is very safe buying and selling compared to the antiques market.  One sits at the desk, twirls in the chair, looks out the window to the street far below while closing a “buy” or “sell” on the …old style client chat…telephone and then twirls back to the next... old style client chat… buy and sell.  After a few decades of this, the broker surveys the unregulated market of antiques with consternation.  The still darling daughter had been titillated with “being a dealer” long enough to absolutely hate that we “are one”.  Being “a dealer” has always been a very difficult “wish I could” for collectors.  I engage it all the time.

            We chatted briefly.  She’s very nice, don’t get me wrong.  Its just that I AM a dealer and a disparity exists.  I was about to start the requisite “Tales of the Antiques Dealer” story and suffer then die when Ms. Daughter announced in an undertone that she and Mother “had started to clean out the attic”.  I didn’t jerk in my chair.  I didn’t mumble.  I did antiques dealer on my fingertips:  The Attic.  The home was two generations, untouched, unsorted, “un-picked”... NO DEALERS.  They had position, taste, income and STUFF... in the attic.  Had to, could not have possibly thrown ANYTHING out.  I lifted my head from bored complacency to the daughter’s statement as seconds elapsed.  Sense of action issued:  ...Language use.  With no perturbation I enunciated “Attic?  Let’s go there.”

            She paused then repeated “We’re cleaning it out”.

            “Yes, let’s go there.” I …repeated… and looked straight at her.  “There’s nothing for sale here.” I continued, gesturing to the living room.  I straight armed her verbally.

            “Ah... OK, but we must wait for Mother”.  Like a torpedo at mid-ship my language smashed through her haul, she shuddered, listed and took water.  She was boarded and captured.  Please understand that my direct assaults are very pre-meditated.  Please particularly note that they come mere seconds after the initial muttering of the word “attic”.  One must be that fast and adept with language and its use to be this effective… and nasty… when in stranger’s homes and chasing their attics.  Otherwise… they “get away”.  These collectors in their collector’s home… changed.  They were strangers now; an old house, an old attic, an “estate call”, an open surface deposit of material oblivion to be probed with the ...tools of the trade.

            The Mother appeared.  Standing in the center of the room, she twisted as she said “The attic?”.  We were granted the viewing, including a verbalized cover documentation of “buying” “anything”.  Or was it “something”.  I forget what word I chose to INSERT into our voyage.  Off we went.

            We approved of the attic.  A Transitional Victorian home, ca. 1840, the “attic” was a former third floor; the Maid’s quarters.  As dealers describe, it was “untouched and totally original”.  This home above the home remained unchanged from the Civil War era.  Original blue-gray trim outlined the original white washed plaster.  This plaster was very Tom Sawyer style; smeared by rough hands, then smeared with whitewash and then… highlighted in “old blue” paint, the kind of “old blue” dealers ...buy.  Yummy.  We had no trouble smacking our lips and rubbing our hands together at this attractive workspace piled inconclusively full of boxes of... “junk” “everywhere”.  The junk of generations, untouched.  Other dealers could be less responsive to original paint and smeared plaster surface but surely they would sense… a good treasure trove?  After we had left with our plunder, we chatted about the site.  “I liked the way it had so many boxes to go through in every room” was said.

            Once on the third floor, without the Mother who waited on the second floor below, the process was simple.  We would spy and snare something they “HATED”, their language choice.  Saying only a “We will pay (a specific amount) for that” and linguistically including NO OTHER overture, we would move our selected acquisitions to the head of the stairs.  This stairs led past the second floor to the first floor front door.  That led to the back of our truck.  It was a very simple process, once verbally incited; a straight line from attic to truck.

            The touch and go of inception was the first “purchase”.  One must dance, always, on thin ice for those first few.  It must be “hated” and the offer must be “right”.  There will never be the prose to capture the swish of time, space, destiny and oblivion that comes with the first price and the first... “OK”.  Linguistics play a vital role, but supernatural spirits, Gods, fate, timing, oral spacing, inflection and facial expression all manifest too.  Once behind one; “the first few”, the festivity begins.  When selling is successfully initiated in an attic, usually the party continues the… “to sell”.  In this case the discoveries were approved by the daughter, then the price and object verified BY THE DAUGHTER to the Mother at the base of the attic stair.  That the mother didn’t care became evident quickly.  The money (cash) was conveyed.  The daughter liked the feel of real cash.  A “whisk it” into the truck was executed.  We washed our hands in their kitchen.  And left.  It was an agreeable afternoon using properly deployed antiques dealer linguistics in …an old attic.

Wild River (2) - Lunch

Wild River (2) Lunch

            Think your hungry after loading antiques purchased from an old Maine farm deep in the Maine woods?  I am.  It is thirty miles in any direction to “fast food” from that farmyard.  Local fare may be found before mile thirty BUT:  We plan ahead and bring our own local fare when we go to an “up there” interior Maine estate call.  This day, after pulling off the road in a National Forest turn out, stepping down to Wild River to wash up (hands scrubbed and Wild River Water cologne splashed on my face), we unpacked and devoured our made-at-home-before-we-left Maine Woods Lunch “wraps”.  Layered sliced cheddar cheese, left over chicken, blanched broccoli, sliced tomato and two strips of thick bacon were all “wrapped” and microwaved for 45 seconds then “put in the cooler”.  River side, they were gone in about 45 seconds too.

Bean On Wild River

Bean On Wild River

            While talking on the telephone and looking out the window upon a cool and wet Maine spring morning, we decided to let the rhubarb tend itself today while we answered the call by driving north-north west for several hours… to Wild River.  Wild River is on the western boarder of Maine.  It crosses Route 2… just before joining the Androscoggin River for the journey to the sea… at Gilead, Maine.  The river travels from the White Mountains in New Hampshire down through the White Mountain foothills in Maine.  “Wild” in fact and moderately unknown, it once sheltered a vanished timber cutting ghost town called Hastings and a few private hunting camps.  Today the river is in National Forest. 

            One of the camps was called the “Dew Drop Inn” and was L.L. Bean’s.  We mean the real L.L. Bean; the man and we mean “was his” before the Bean Boot “is his”.  In that area, people knew Mr. Bean before he “made the boot” meaning before L.L. Bean became a national treasure and destination.  Our telephone call on a damp Maine morning was from an old acquaintance’s daughter who “are you interested?” “I still have that” but “am going to sell it”.

            The acquaintance; her father, was deceased.  Her mother was deceased too.  The family farm; a humble mountain farm, was “theirs”; a husband and wife with brood.  Remote is the location.  We had purchased the “old things” a quarter of a century beforefrom the parents.  Except the “what they kept”.  By antiquarian standards, nothing they “kept” was a “that precious”.  Except?

            We drove “up there”, then along the Androscoggin River and finally turned on to “the road” “to get in there”.  Nothing had changed in the farm yard in the quarter century… except the addition of a … powerful display… of the family’s fleet of ATV’s.  It was wet and raining so I was wearing L.L. Bean boots.

            I have, probably, seven or eight pairs of Bean Boots in active use.  All are accumulated from old estates.  I have never bought a new pair and have no plans to.  In the estate trade they “always turn up”.  The best source?  The best condition, old, unused pairs of Bean Boots I get… are from …out of state upper income north east coastal suburban communities surrounding very large metroplex regions.  Why?  Because they come to Maine, visit L.L. Bean, actually buy a pair of boots, take them back to where they come from, wear them once and… never wear them again.  Bean Boots from a Maine estate, including my own personal fleet, are “worn to death” and “not for sale”.  ALL of my pairs are still active and carefully selected for an outing based on …what I am wearing them for… right then.  This includes the low and semiformal Maine “visiting” “go shoes” pair I selected for today; good enough for protection but “low key” and “formal” enough to show off as …a dress shoe (a Maine wingtip?).  Before departing the home, I wore my “old beater” “shuffle” pair out to ground feed Mr. Cardinal.  Those, in addition to not having been tied up in a quarter century at least, have big holes in the toes that get my sock tips wet.  I don’t like that but I… always… wear them anyways.  Beyond the always appropriate “old beater” styling, they “in the my (Maine farm) yard” “send the right message”.  In Maine you ARE JUDGED by WHAT Bean Boots your wearing.  The “from away” are judged BY wearing Bean Boots meaning the “new ones” THEY are wearing; they “send the right message” TOO.  Think your being judged by the Bean Boots your wearing?  Need to study the etiquette?  You do, I don’t.  And… don’t buy your “fleet” new.  AND all this does explain why there is a very active secondary market for truly old worn Bean Boots.  They are …actually hard to find “that fit”.

            In the muddy yard we were greeted by the muddy truck ruts, “the Mrs.”, the barking chained giant dog and the “socked in” wood smoke curling around the yard.  “Mr.” appeared at his barn door and half lift arm waved down to us.  I half lift arm waved back.  The males were done communicating for the day.  The Mrs. said “Come inside”.  For the record, “inside” on these very remote Maine woods farms can be a little hard to distinguish from “outside”.  It is the space where the woodstove blasts dry heat and all the wet wools starts to announce to the nose that it is wet moments after entering this space that is usually “the kitchen”.  Doing an obsessive wiping of your Bean Boots on the doorway mats… is NOT appropriate.  You are either “The People” or NOT “The People”.  If you are a NOT your are … NOT THERE (in the kitchen).  And your muddy new Bean Boots are NOT THERE EITHER.  Once in that “kitchen” one is in a …very Maine woods.

            “In the Maine woods” means business.  No one is there to look at the trees including those with permanent residence status.  “We STILL HAVE THAT I TOLD YOU” the Mrs. announced as her large wet form swirled in her kitchen and the resulting shake off of water droplets popped and snapped on the hot woodstove.  “WE STILL HAVE THAT BUT ITS TIME FOR IT TO GO SO I CALLED YOU.  YOU’RE THE ONE DAD SAID.  MOTHER TOO.  BEEN NOW HOW LONG?  DON’T MATTER. TIME FOR IT TO GO I SAY.” with this all stated as a kitchen cupboard door was opened to show the …domestic paper file of the whole farm from “forever”… neatly tucked onto the right side of two lower shelves and held in place with two used-like-bookend old clear pattern glass sugar bowl (missing the lid) and a side handled (probably once had a lid too) “open sugar”.  Out was selected a small brown envelope carrying an old 1930’s postage and a to the Father address.  Slipping a small mounted photograph out of that she turned to me with extending hand and arm in the now steam filling kitchen and hands me…

 

            Her father’s old photograph of L.L. Bean and a companion in the Maine woods by the Dew Drop Inn holding their rifles in a fresh morning snow just before going hunting.  The photograph is in perfect condition and had lived in the envelope since received.  Bean is a young man and has not created L.L. Bean boots yet.  It is a known “earliest (?)” image of him and certainly a splendid youthful image of him doing the right thing in the right place at the right time.  “DADDY KNEW HIM YOU KNOW.” She said with emphasized pride as my hand received the photograph and my mind confirmed that what I was seeing was just as fine as the last time I saw it… at least 25 years before.  “$$$$$$ YOU SAID THEN IF WE EVER SO HERE IT IS FOR YOU NOW WANT IT?”.  Concentrating on the image I paused and then said calmly and firmly “Oh yes it is fine; as I remember it, very good, no problem” and… handing the image to my wife for her inspection… I stepped to the kitchen table beside the Mrs. and I and… paid cash.  This was spread Monopoly money style on the table for her to easily see “it” “all there”.  I understood that this was more cash displayed on a table at that farm then SHE could remember.

            She, smiling down on the money, did not touch it.  She said “YOU WANT TO LOOK AROUND ME?  MAYBE SOMETHING?”  “NOTHING HERE” her arm lift gesture meaning …nothing for sale in the kitchen.

            “EVEN THAT?  TWENTY ON THAT” I said pointing to the wooden handled iron two tined Civil War era toasting fork hanging behind the woodstove (JUST WHERE IT WAS WHEN IT “FOR SALE?” “NO” TWENTY-FIVE YEARS BEFORE).

            “That’s Daddy’s.  WAS DADDY’S.  …  OH TAKE THAT.  HE AIN’T USING IT ANYMORE”.

            I put another twenty down on the table slightly separate from the other money.  Then we walked through the house doing just what we just did; pointing, stating cash price, paying, and watching the cash fold and be put …in her wet wool jacket pocket.  No one ever batted an eye, mentioned a word about the wet and muddy Bean Boots, talked about the money or any of the things and…

            Before anyone could have caught up to the whole of this we were back in the hot kitchen from the …cold house… having “ALL PAID” and taking the purchases outside to the truck with the old photograph “I put it in my purse” while the Mrs. shouted up to the barn “CHETTY!” and roused her husband from the back of the barn to shout “HE’S COMING UP!” as he appeared at the barn front.  “HE WON’T SELL ANYTHING HE SAYS JUST WAIT HE DON’T KNOW YOU GO IN THE BACK – WAY BACK.” She loudly confided to me.

            We did “go in the back” with Chester on guard to protect his “stuff” but I distanced the “in daily use” “tool barn” and “men stuff” traveling quickly to the back barn “more stuff” piled all over and… zeroed in on the old workbench that …used to be right up barn front and had been “NO NOT THAT NOT FOR SALE”… that probably was made and used on the farm BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR but NOW was… “not being used”.  As I stepped to it glowing in my own “I REMEMBER THAT” I felt Chester, who was my shadow, tighten just behind me so I said in a clear concise voice “two hundred fifty cash now today” and touched the top.

            Silence.

            The Mrs. moves her feet.

            Silence.  Then:

            “Oh… I GUESS.”  says Chester.

            I count the cash out on the bench before his eyes and hand it to him.  He folds it and puts it in the front pocket of HIS wet wool jacket.  The Mrs., smiling at Chester, says nothing.  We spend the next hour creeping through all the darkest regions of the barn using my small flashlight and having Chester ever more contentedly saying “Oh… I GUESS”.

            The Bean photograph is a known image and is pictured in a Bean Co. book as the photographs show.  The old writing on the back of the one we purchased identified the second man differently than the book does.  Who’s right we don’t know.

           

NYC Trash Picking & Cupcakes

NYC Trash Picking & Cupcakes

            This past week’s New Yorker cover portraying a dog having a yard sale on the steps of his residential brownstone is a gracious tipped hat to a very big shadow industry that we actively pursue.  We “go yard sale-ing” on brownstone steps from Mount Vernon (lower Westchester County) south.  Like all yard sales anywhere, we chance upon, pull up …or walk by… and start using familiar phrases like “How much is that?”.  We pay in exact cash promptly.  An leave.

            Of the same scenario but of bigger scale is …picking the trash.  I guess the thing to say here is that we will return to this subject again and again for, in fairness, we do it all the time where ever we go and have done it for at least forty years.  In the NYC region and including the steps before a brownstone that lead to the sidewalk and end at the gutter, we act on the dynamic that “every thing goes on the street”.  Once a thing placed at the gutter, it is fair (and a highly competitive) game.  “Put out” as trash… often is …treasure.  Walking on NYC streets we seek “put out” trash… to pick.  Again, this is a highly competitive activity.  A “put out” often has a gutter side stay of under fifteen seconds.

            “Swoop in” is too slow and too late.  It’s really a who’s there, what’s there, “can I?” and the “it is GONE”.  Grab it and move away from the guttered “put out” zone holding on tight until one reaches an appropriate distanced perch where one may look back and… see “if there is anything else” “left”.  For the antiquarian eye this last… actually WORKS for there will often be left “the old stuff”.  This is because the other gutter grabbers “don’t know that (antiques)” so “don’t want that”.  But take action… and… should one discover one does not want what one grabbed, one may always “put it back”.

            Today’s midtown morning began with an early Korean lunch (10:30 AM) at New Wonjo (W. 32^nd at 5^th).  We shared vegetarian dumplings and I continued the dumplings theme by having them in broth with beef strips, clear noodles and vegetables.  Fortified we went over to Madison and subwayed forty blocks north.  Then walked east to 2^nd.  Then north for twenty blocks… looking for trash.

            Nothing.

            Then, forty feet ahead at the gutter I see human congestion and a group of three “in twenties” endeavoring to drag an “entertainment center” furniture unit out and away from a mound of rubbish.  Many others are gathered round and poking.  Approaching I see nothing but cardboard, composite board scraps, paper, posters… broken lamps, frames… paperback books being gathered, boxes over turned and spilled to suddenly “THERE!” spy a narrow abstract oil painting.  I, reaching above the book grabbing, pull the frame upward and free the painting.  I start walking backward as those behind me yield while I am stepping on more trash.  I continue backing but looking down I see I am stepping on another frame so step back again, bend down and lift a SECOND companion painting from its face down and treaded on… gutter side gallery display.  With that painting falling out of its frame from being walked on… I continue the backward escape, retreat to the “safe perch”.  I look back at the pile and see only human heads and shoulders.  Resting the paintings on the ground and against my left side I scan them and look back at the gutter pile again.  A woman who saw me pull the first painting from the pile is standing by the curb looking at me and the paintings.  I look at her.  She diverts her eyes.  I put the paintings, laid face to face, up under my arm.  We leave, walking north.  Glancing back at half a block distance we see the crowd thinning: “It’s over”.  Our whole visit was well under three minutes.

            We don’t stop and look at the paintings for several blocks.  No more trash piles appear so the street settles back to “calm”.  We stop, look at the fronts and then look them all over.  Signed “SAXON”, oil on prepared canvas board in original frames and with the artist’s name and “Studio X” 123^rd Street address labels, the two companion painting show mid 1960-1970 (?) vigorous oil compositions with found object inclusions that suggest the “green one” is about soul food and food stamps while the “red one” is a self portrait(?).  Face to face and under my arm again we continue walking.  We “did good” is the verdict.  Two blocks later… cupcakes.

            If we can grab oil paintings off the trash, we can grab four cupcakes too?  On Second heading north at half way between 85^th & 86^th, Two Little Red Hens Bakery beckoned.  We knew it was there.  Crowded but with us glowing in trash picking glory, we “Four Brooklyn Blackouts please”.  That left five.  The woman behind me bought three while my cell phone camera tried to snapped the action.  Boxed and string tied shut, we had to… back out of there too.  The Blackouts; dark chocolate on dark chocolate and with chocolate pudding in the center, one eats quietly with a plate, fork and napkin.  You don’t have to believe me; there are many expostulations.  We found they go perfectly with trash picking oil paintings.

Rowing Down A New England River; A Rare Book

Rowing Down A River

I report on an old book I found in the library of an estate we purchased a few weeks ago.  I have sold off the whole library except this one book that I liked the look of and am reading.  It is Henry Parker Fellows; BOATING TRIPS ON NEW ENGLAND RIVERS, Cupples, Upham & Co. with The Old Corner Bookstore, 176 pp. (and an attractive advertisement for row boat equipment on pp.(177), Boston, 1884.  It is the only book Fellows wrote and evidently the only edition excepting modern computer reprints.  A handful of copies are on the internet for $50 to $110. Aside from the actual book for sale, there is nothing ABOUT the book or its author out there that I can find.  The book is a charming, verifiable and relaxing read of a pre-industrial last gasp camping trip; the true tale of two men rowing down three Massachusetts rivers; the Nashua, Housatonic and Concord.  The narrative is a carefully described regular guy in a leaky row boat accounting of …rowing the rivers.  Dragging over dams, ducking under bridges, fences and trees, scraping bottom and cascading rapids while all along reporting natural wonder, antiquarian sites and industrial destruction… are all mingled with human contacts, eggs and milk from farms, waking tours of villages, grilling steaks on the river bank, sleeping in the pup tent with it ALWAYS about to rain, always with WET camping gear and… pleasing accounts of dining at a few center of the village 1880’s hotels too.  In fact it is all VERY 1884 with a JUST in the row boat on the river NOW pure truth spoken style.  The result is a taking the reader way back to a very real era of possibility …that is no longer is possible… but herein laid bare to become a refreshingly NOT PRETENDED in the rivers accounting.  Putting that boat in, taking the boat out, wrecking the boat, swamping the boat and retrieving the wet and floating away down river equipment… with helps from the river bank communities ADD authentic adventure to the pleasingly historic-at-its-date narrative.  Today… to consider putting an old row boat in … a local New England river of one’s choice… and then taking a ten day no schedule at all camping trip down that river to its end at the Atlantic ocean… is not going to happen except in the mind’s eye.  This tranquil antiquarian book read IS as close as I can get to a real river ride in a leaky row boat.  It is a little gem of an outdoor New England read; the best I’ve found in quite a while.  It is also a true rare book worth hunting for.