Snow Bound ("Privacy of storm" - Emerson).

Snow Bound

("Privacy of Storm" - Emerson)

I republish an old post, from Jan. 3 2010.

The recent storm was actually an "easier" storm than the one in this post.

          The snow began falling Thursday. I plowed. Friday it continued, but turned wet. I plowed. Saturday it continued and, as with the two previous days, the snowfall amount greatly exceed the amount forecast. I plowed again. At four in the afternoon, the predicted "turn-back" began with the now consolidated storm moving inland and west from the ocean. By dark they'd stopped plowing the roads, the winds were steady at 16 mph with forty mph gusts and the "white stuff" was coming sideways at a "white out" "inches an hour". We were snowbound.
          I was by Whittier's farm early last month and snapped the image just before his homestead "got two" (December inches). Whittier's homestead today is identical to the woodcut on the title page of the 1866 "early enough" edition… I read… again… these past evenings. It wasn't the only thing I read but it was the most appropriate.
         Today, Sunday, Jan. 3, I woke up at 2:30 AM, noted the house was still warn and the electric power still on. I got up, as I usually do, came downstairs and noted the internet was on. It had been on and off the whole day before. I stirred the "wood against the chimney back" then a "knotty forestick laid apart, and filled between with curious art. The ragged brush; then, hovering near, we (I) watched the first red blaze appear" (Snow Bound). I looked out the window and confirmed the brief discussion I had with my wife the evening before; that I should bring the snow shovel inside the door instead of leaving it outside beside the door, because it will be… buried. It was. It was still snowing. Blowing. White out.
          I went to my coffee and the internet. The local radar showed the last big blast passing over and would be gone by 4 AM. A clear off by 8 AM. Most of today I am "engaged in snow management activities" excepting this post.
          How deep do my drifts need to be to be snow bound? Three feet and deeper they were this morning, coming up over the hood of the truck. I only got stuck once and that was nothing. I put down some cupfuls of sand from the bucket in the cab and I was "out" That's because then… a five to six in the morning, in the dark, the snow was still quite light and puffed away. Now, at eleven, when I walk outside to the woodshed, I hear men already struggling in their cabs for "its above freezing" and the snow "is getting heavier by the second". It no longer "puffs", it… "sticks". That bit of timing I apply again for …I don't like "sticks" on my snow shovel… so will wait until tomorrow morning to shovel the trails to the mail box, bulk head and far shed doors… unless it "gets cold" (below freezing) again today… and that it may well.
          After plowing I sat in front of our old kitchen fireplace, ate the oatmeal cookies ("still warm are best") made by my daughter, and finished SNOW BOUND. Early editions and even later printings of the very, very, very first edition - first printing of SNOW BOUND are easily found. For reading, ownership and display, I prefer the earlier editions in their green or rust publisher's cloth with gilt title binding and having the frontis portrait of Whittier under a tissue guard and next to the title page with the …very pleasingly accurate… woodcut of his homestead farm. I always find, with each poke of a read, another line or two that spins for me. In this reading it is the noting of the full moon, "above the eastern wood" that was identical… to my snow bound moon and wood. Above that line, the witch's fire and tea rhyme has always …haunted me. I have always responded to chancing on human figures about an under-tree pasture fire… on a late, late, late fall afternoon… just before dark. It's usually coffee… not tea... for me.
     Copies found by poking in… poetry sections… of old New England "used & rare" bookstores will turn up SNOWBOUND in attractively old editions for… sixty… forty… twenty and… even six or two… dollars. The poem, the poet, the poet's homestead and… the physical book… ALL are impeccable classic New England good taste. These days… no one but those guarding the secret treasures of northern New England know about any of this…snow bound… so it is …justly there for the taking. The poem appeals if one truly likes "the old ways" of New England. It identifies deeper if one has actually lived those old ways… and still does ("raised that way"). It should be snowing hard when read and the book is best displayed properly to anticipate "getting it down from that shelf" …when they "stop plowing the roads".

A Door Knock - Part Two

A Door Knock

  Part Two

            From my vantage of ‘the third visit’,  I was not only making progress but… had enjoyed myself.

            I waited.

            Six weeks brought me back to the old house.  It was now the first week of December; late fall.  I knocked on the door.  Twice.  The ritual of greeting, picker’s proposition and admittance was the same and foreshortened.  I was standing before the desk and the small table holding a mug of “black” coffee quickly.  The woman returned to the room with her mug.  She carried an object.  I recognized the object; identified it.  I still did not know the woman’s name.  This didn’t occur to me at the time.

            Seated, she sat her object on the table.  She sipped her coffee and set her mug down.  I seated myself, sipped too and set my mug down… too.  We returned to the exact moment of the last visit’s end; a ‘where do we go from here’ pause.  I acted.  I reached for and retrieved her object.  It was too much to resist.  She smiled as I reached and lifted.

            “Seeing you do that is an assurance that you do know what that is.” She said.

            “Oh I certainly do.” I said having now abandoned my coffee and using two hands to maneuver the object so my eyes could fully rake it in search of every possible detail to… affirm I was holding… and beholding ‘exactly’ ‘what I think it is’.  It was.  It is.  Wonderful:  A wonderful set of 18^th century wrought iron pipe tongs.  A wonderfully perfectly proportioned, delicate, petite and PERFECT …with a perfect old surface… and perfect condition and… breathtakingly perfect “WHERE DID YOU GET THESE?” antiquarian …surprise attack… charge.  “No one has these… especially like this.” I …uttered.

            “I found that years ago.  Here.  In the house.  I was young.  I didn’t know what it was; they are.  And didn’t ask.  I liked them.  I kept them in my dresser drawer.  Every now and then I looked at them.  Squeezed them.  Then put them away again.  Eventually I found out what they are.  Pipe tongs.  Old Robert Bailey told me first.  Showed me how to pick up an ember.  He lighted his old pipe to show me.  Used it all to show me; restricted the bowl and sucked the pipe stem.  Stirred the bowl.  Tamped the bowl.  I was fascinated.  When he left I wanted to do it all again but I didn’t have a pipe!  So I got an old clay pipe and did it all to my hearts content.  Never smoked mind you.  I just played with the tongs.  Eventually that wore out and the tongs have been in my dresser ever since.  You’re the first person I’ve showed them to in years.”

            “Thank you.” I said while still in the rapture of my examination.  I fidgeted and mauled the dainty morsel.  Each iota of fine detail cascaded through my eyes from my hands and climbed to the top of my antiquarian brain to proclaim ‘these are the finest pipe tongs I’ve ever… found’.  ‘?’.  ‘Seen’ I corrected… my antiquarian brain.  LUST had become part of my appreciation; lust to own.  I sat the tongs back on the table.  The dark chasm of denial open between …this woman… and I.

            Obviously… the pipe tongs are NOT for sale.  This SHE has had them in her dresser drawer for a CENTURY.

            Obviously… SHE does not TRULY know how fine a specimen the pipe tongs be… BUT SHE DOES KNOW ‘what they are’.

            Obviously… there is no quick and satisfactory way for I to elbow my way to ownership with out risking an abrupt and hard on my butt landing OUTSIDE this home and next to the driver’s door of my truck.

            Obviously… I have NO trick of the trade game plan to speed deploy to allow me to PERLOIN ‘these’ ‘exceptional example’ into that truck.

            Obviously… I must make something up… now?  Or stall.  Or stall in mid air and plunge?

            “I am correct to assume they are not for sale.” I said.

            “Oh of course not for sale.  I’d be lost without them”.

            “They are a very fine example; beautiful lines, perfect.  The best I’ve seen.”

            “I know they are quite good; valuable.  Pipe tongs bring a great deal of money at auction I see”.

            “Yes.  And these are that good.  Should you ever decide to sell them I would be very pleased to buy them”.

            “Well certainly not now but a time may come.  Few, I know from my own experience, actually know about them.  In fact:  Most do not”.

            “It’s not quite as bad as that.  Let’s just say that they travel in a certain circle and that the sophistication of that circle keeps that circle to itself.”  She looked at me with an expression of query.  “I know the right collectors to show those to and I know the wrong ones too.  In the marketplace those factors for these tongs are equal.  There is a large group of collectors that these would be ‘too advanced for”; they are not there yet as collectors.  Pipe tongs are vulnerable to this; the object is obscure.  Once discovered, the eye has difficulty seeing great specimens so the ladder of discernment is hard to climb.  A collector is alone and must wait for years when it comes to pipe tongs.  Most of the ones in the market are not very good examples.”

            The woman took this statement all in.  Sort of  all in… I figured.  SHE was one of the ones I spoke of.  SHE had no ground of self comparison of ‘hers’ and ‘others’ because she’d …never been to the market place.  The museums.  The reference books.  SHE had never been to her own… personal WALLET.  Never in her life had a twenty dollar bill been “spent” on an …American Colonial wrought iron… “THAT?”.

            Twenty minutes later I was outside in the truck.  The tongs were still on the table when I left.  The coffee was still in the mug and was cold.  The chipper, gay, bantering, smiling and conversationally generous ME was… forced… but done.  Smiling I left my new love behind in the darkness of imprisonment in a dresser drawer of an old woman who haunted the creaking corners of her great, great, great, great grandfather’s old house… that is in miserable condition on a miserable side street in a miserable old Maine village …and with a miserable winter setting in.

A Door Knock - Part One

A Door Knock

Part One

            I had first discovered the old house several years before.  Actually, I did not discover it.  I discerned it.  I was looking for old houses in that neighborhood and discerned that the house “was an old one”.  There was another old house across the street from this old house.  That house was a smaller 1790’s home on a corner lot before a side street.  It was well kept and in fine condition.  The first old house was later; 1815-1820’s Federal.  It is… for it still be… a small version of the New England Federal mansion style.  It was not well kept.  It was not in fine condition.  The front doorway not only spoke its age to me but… “has become shabby”.  Foremost, the original front steps were gone.  This was due to the community dictate of side walk space and… the house’s “too close to the road” poise.  The sidewalk had been “put in” after the “street was widened”.  These left a very short space for “steps down” from a “front door”.  The current steps, of “get the job done” odd job carpenter’s style… did get the job done but left a once grand entry hanging above the street.  To my eye.

            My eye is the foundation tool I use when I hunt for antiques… and old houses.  Most I’s I am around don’t use their eyes for either.  I discerned the house, the doorway and the steps “instantly”.  It all had “my kind of look”; an old house the “has become shabby” that could “be full of antiques”.

            The first time I knocked on the door nothing happened.  I knocked twice hard.  When no one answered, I turned around, looked at the other old house across the street, decided that was “in too good ah shape” and …left.

            About six weeks later I stopped by again.  I went to the front door and knocked.  Promptly an older woman answered the door.  I told her who I was and that I was seeking to buy old stuff that she didn’t want anymore.  Did she have any old stuff she wanted to sell.  “I pay cash.” I said and I held up a large wad of cash. 

            She looked me over.  I am well dressed.  I am clean, shaved and well groomed.  She looked past me to my truck that did have “some” “old stuff” in the back, looked at the cash wad and then at my face and said “I don’t have anything old I want to sell today”.

            “Thank you.” I said.  “May I check back with you the next time I come through?”

            “Well…” she said with a pause that included her looking me over again “I suppose so for one never knows do they”.

            “Thank you” I said again.  “I’ll check back”.  Then I left.  I could feel her watch me; my back, all the way to the truck.  I went around the front of the truck and waved at her as I approached my driver’s door.  When I drove away her door was shut.

            That was my “first visit”.  It is a typical, for me, “first visit”

            Six weeks later I went back.  I generally wait “about” six weeks.  I do not do this “exactly”.  I knocked on the door twice.  The woman answered.  I could hear her come to the door, see her look out the side window by the door and then hear her unlock the door and open it.  Did she have any old stuff she would like to sell today I asked.  I held the cash wad in my hand.  The truck was parked behind me in the same place.  It did have “some” “old stuff” in its back.  She looked me and the et al over as before.

            “What... makes you think that I have antiques I want to sell?” she asked me.  I …noted the word usage ‘antiques’ RIGHT AWAY.  That changed things.  Now… I may presume… she knows about antiques, sort of.  That she probably likes antiques.  That she probably HAS antiques and… that she PROBABLY HAS HEARD about if not DEALT WITH BEFORE… “antiques” “pickers” such as myself… standing at her front door.

            “I can tell by the doorway that this is a fine old home.  Often the owners of an old home like this have old things and antiques they no longer want and wish to sell.” I said.

            She look down from the doorway at me.  “Well… I do have old things and some antiques but I am still using them and do not want to sell them.”

            “That’s fine.  Thank you.” I said.  “And may I check back with you again?

            “Oh… I suppose so.” she said. “For one never knows do they”.

            That was the second visit.  She clearly remembered me and had raised the bar of our relationship to be “about antiques”... not “old stuff”.

            The third visit came in six weeks.  It was at 9:45 on a mid-fall weekday morning.  It was a crisp and slightly soggy morning after a “rained in the night”.

            “Yes, yes.” She said after I started to repeat my pitch from the same position at her door with the truck behind me and the wad of cash uplifting in my left hand.  “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of coffee with me.  I can show you an antique and then I’ll be able to tell what you know”.  Up the steps and into the home I went.  She closed the door behind me.  I stared down the front hall.  A tall clock was at it’s end, against the wall.  A staircase rose to my right.  She ushered me into the room to the left.  I stood at the room center before a Chippendale bracket base desk (New England, 1780) against the far wall.  A small Hepplewhite drop leaf table was to my right with an old (1930’s) stuffed chair on the left and a spindle oak ‘firehouse Windsor’ (1880’s) to the right.  That would be my chair.  She sat in the stuffed chair.  She brought my coffee first. “Black” I had said.  Then she brought hers and sat down.  I, holding my coffee mug, sat down too.  It wasn’t until she sat her mug down on the old surface of the table top that I sat my mug down upon it too.  The old surface showed that mug setting had been “going on for years” with no “care about the surface”.  I faced the desk.  After coffee-tastes-good-on-a-morning-like-this small talk, “Let us get to it”.  She said.

            “What is it.” She continued as a sentence.

            I said what it appeared to be.

            She nodded

            I asked if it was “a family desk”.

            She nodded.  Then she said “What about the hardware.”

            I looked across the room.  “1930’s replacements” I said.

            “Repaired base, replaced lid and refinished.” She said.

            I look hard at the base, said nothing and mentally noted ‘possibly’ to myself.  Pointed out (as a replacement) the lid did, when scrutinized by my eye, show a darker tone so again I noted ‘possibly’.  To myself.

            “My grandmother’s” she said.

            “Older.  Your great, GREAT grandmother’s.” I said

            “No.  My grandfather bought the wreck up the street and had it restored for my grandmother to use.  She used it.  My mother used it.  And now I use it.”

            I looked at her then stood up, stepped to the desk and opened the lid a crack.  I could see the space was full of clutter and closed the lid.  “That’s how I use it.” She said.

            “It is nice.” I said.

            She shifted in her chair and then said carefully “Do you think that is the only antique I have?  (Pause).  Do you think that is the only DESK I have?”

            “I wouldn’t know.”  I said.

            “Most of them do not even know what THAT desk is.” She said.  “Evidently.  You do.  I suspected you would.  Do you like my table?” she continued gesturing to the drop leaf with our coffee mugs on it.

            “Yes.” I said carefully.

            “Most do not.  They do not even notice that it’s here.  This table WAS my great… great… GREAT grandfather’s; his personal breakfast table.  He ate in this room.  Right here.  And would speak with his callers.  Each morning.  Before nine.”

            I peered at the table with renewed interest.

            “It is not for sale.” She said.

            “I didn’t expect it to be.” I said.

            “Good.” She said.  “When you come back I will show you some other things.  By that time I’ll be ready for you”.

            “Thank you.” I said.  After a ‘where do we go from here’ pause.

            That was the end of my third visit. 

The Oldest House - A Follow Up - Bits and Pieces

The Oldest House

A Follow-up

Bits and Pieces

            “That part… (in the previous post; “I don’t want to be outside here tomorrow talking with the owners and all locked out and have a ‘I didn’t go in there’ thing.”)… I LIKED THAT; that you got that in.  TRUE IT IS.  I don’t EVER want that.  But, of course, I’ve HAD THAT HAPPEN.  Don’t like it and it don’t happen NOW like when I was YOUNG.  Oh boy back then.  I WAS BUNK ONCE.  But I know it.

            “So I was thinking about all that.  And I want to show you something.”

            He takes a …jagged but squared-off broken piece of dark olive green glass… out of his pocket, rolls it with his thumb in his palm and then presents it in his palm toward me.  I know exactly what that is.  He knows I do and he continues.

            “You probably remember this.  NOT this piece of glass but where it came from.  Remember… well… twenty-five?  I THINK ITS twenty-SEVEN years NOW.  Ago.  I got that Barter farm.  You remember that?”

            I nod acknowledgement as a flashing memory of a large Victorian farm… up on a hill… outside of town… years ago… BEFORE it was ‘restored’… as it is today as I drive by it all the time… ‘comes back to me’.

            “You remember that one.  Big one.  This is FROM THERE.  This.” he says holding it up by his thumb and forefinger “is the LAST THING I got out of there.  I keep this… well… I KEEP IT for more than JUST THIS but… KEEP IT… to REMIND ME.

            “You remember:  We were in there for TWO WEEKS.  Left alone all ok for that was a BIG clean out.  And I knew it and was right on top of it.  Started at six (AM) everyday.  And of course we emptied it.  And cleaned it.  And then I creeped it.  The whole thing myself.  Never said a word about it to anyone.  I’d do it in bits and pieces EARLY.  No one was around.  It was fun too.  THAT HOUSE; the Victorian one… was built AROUND an early house that was built in 1822.  So I knew that.  And the family.  It was ALL in the same family.  So you know what that means and that’s good:  LAYERS[1].  But that’s not the point

            “The point…  was that there was a lot to creep; barns and sheds.  MOST were attached to the house but one shed was out back off  from the rest.  You had to go out the back door of the ell to get to it.  And of course that ell was part of the OLD house.  And that back door was once THE back door to the old house.  And I still feel that shed was the FIRST barn for the WHOLE FARM.  Anyway…

            “I’d go in and out of there the whole time.  Cleared that shed.  Great old shed and found good things in there.  But back and forth.  Through THAT door.  And I never stopped.  Nope:  Never.  Right to this day I know that.

            “So we got done.  Everything.  And I tell ‘em we’re done and we close out.  So I go over and Mr. Man he’s all real pleased and we walk through everything and its all so cleaned out empty he keeps saying you’d never KNOW the place and THAT’S THAT.  Including going over that shed out the back door.  We go over, walk the building, close it and he LOCKS IT.  You know; the lock out.  Fine who cares I’m done.  We walk back to that back door.  Chit-chat.  We stop there looking at the yard.  Its all over grown. 

            “So THEN… I just happen to look down along the foundation line to the right of the door.  And this little piece of line runs up into the corner where the old ell butts into the Victorian HOUSE.   I just look there for no reason.  And I see THIS piece of GLASS (he hold up the broken piece).  I see it lying there.

            “And I know EXACTLY what it is just like you do only I’m four feet away.  And I see it and I don’t let on but I’m ‘OH NO’.  Yep:  Right there it all hits me.

---

[1] “Layers” in the realm of estate contents and antique hunting… is a big point of hidden value.  Worthy of a whole post - story, the subject will be covered.  Understand it to mean the “layers” of the generations who, all of the same family, always occupied an estate “for generations”.  Preferably seven to eleven generations.  Each generation lived upon the top layer of the last generation further burying the past generation’s “stuff” “in layers”.  Ideally, “nothing” “was thrown out” “ever”.  It (“the family’s stuff”) is “all there (inside the estate buildings) in layers”.

            “So not only do I know I’m looking at a piece to an early blacking bottle (1820-1840 New England made olive green pontiled molded glass and typical form shoe/boot blacking bottle) but I also realize that THIS being the BACK DOOR to the first house that they probably threw the trash out that door RIGHT THERE where that piece of glass was lying so it was a dump of sorts and I had not DUG THAT.  In fact I’d never even LOOKED or THOUGHT TO LOOK or ANYTHING like an IDIOT.

            “All at once that all hits me and Mister Man is going on chit-chat about the BIRDS and I’m staring at the piece of glass over there next to the house like clubbed rabbit.  I ain’t listening to HIM at all and I step over and pick up the piece of glass and look at it.  He stops talking and looks too.  So I’m pretty quick:  I say ‘someone’s gonna get CUT stepping on THAT!’.  I hold it up and then put it in my pocket.

            “That there was the last thing I got out of that place.  But:  I still can’t drive by there without KNOWING I didn’t DIG THAT SPOT.  Right to this day.  AND THIS PIECE of GLASS:  I’ve kept that all along now and I SEE IT all the time… so I KNOW, if you know what I mean.  That’s why I’m showing it to YOU.  I have never shown this to ANYONE until right NOW but you know WHY I am and WHY I have it.  When I FOUND that I was already ‘locked out’.  And don’t I know what being locked out means because of that.

            “I’ve probably had A DOZEN of those bottle MINT since then.” He continues

            “I’ve got a couple right now.  I’ll go get one.” I said.

            “Don’t matter:  That PIECE is the WHOLE STORY.  Don’t matter to me to have a whole one when I got THAT PIECE to haunt me EVERY DAY of my life.  Of course I LIKE IT; like the HAUNT too.  Foolish are we all.”

They Were In The Attic

They were in the attic.

She was a

Nasty little woman.

And so was her husband

Who fancied himself an ogre

As well as an ex-marine.

He was actually a timid fellow

Unpleasant, unhappy

And unsure

Of his ignorance.

She rode hard on him

With her wispy waist band,

Crooked fingers

And curving spine.

Her teeth bit

And tried to bite me:

Try as she could

She tried to bite me.

Some sympathetic fools

Would have concurred that

They were getting

Screwed.

And they were getting screwed by me

For I saw no reason

To restrain myself

Around

Their contemptuous following,

Naughty listening, and evil pilfering

They engaged assuredly presuming that

I did not know it.

I pretended when they lied

I set down empty boxes beside

Whole cabinets of ancient manuscripts

And dump them into those boxes.

She said “I THREW that OUT”

But is was on the rear floor of her car.

She said “It is just so much rubbish”

But folded it up carefully.

“Her money” she said

“Had more meaning

When she counted it

Herself”.

Isn’t that an odd verbalization;

Outright and out of the blue,

When I came up from the basement

Carrying a basket full of old ceramic planters?

She clutched a pink depression glass

Cake plate

That she shook back and forth at me

When she said that.

Was she trying to taunt me?

They had been in the house

For ten hours

After I’d made my offer she said.

I could easily follow how

They had gone through everything

And taken what they wanted

And thought that I would not notice.

Missing things from cupboards, boxes

Shelves, trunks and table tops that

Lead like a pair of footprints

In the snow

To her shaking back and forth

Peripheral voyeurisms

And her husband’s commandeering utterances

Supposed to be obeyed or intimidate me

And slacken what was very obvious to me;

An out right effort to throw me out

Of the home in an effort to garner

It all themselves.

Foolish little toys

They were in the attic

When they took it upon themselves

To carry it all down.

I delighted to tell him that it

Wasn’t what I wanted

Over and over even though

He kept asking “Didn’t I want”

Those two chairs

Up there

That were obviously old.

“No” and he can carry those down too.

And he did.