Old Pickles In The Window

I took Baxter's box of the plain pickle bottles and set the bottles on the board to take their picture. Mrs. Abbott watched and then said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"Taking their picture" I said.
"WHY?"
"I like them."
"WHY? They're DIRTY. WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THEM! I DON'T LIKE THEM." She walked away and spent the next hour touring our gardens with my wife. That's what she means when she said she "wants to look around".
Her "I don't like them" and my "I like them" provides a concise example of an irreconcilable gap in Northern New England decorative taste. "I like them" because the first pickle bottles I ever saw looked just like these, including being dirty. They were lined up in a window "up the back stairs" in the back L of my grandmother's house. I walked by them on the way to my bedroom. Other homes had these plain pickles in windows too; in the home, the sheds and the barns. It was at least a decade after noticing my grandmother's (at about age three) before I ever saw a cathedral pickle bottle. The reason for that was that they were "valuable" and if one found one, one sold it. This action included my grandmother. My learning curve was the same; I take the row of plain dirty pickle bottles in the window as a standard Northern New England domestic decoration and absolutely sell a cathedral if I find it.
The plain pickles lined up in the window are a classic and affordable northern New England decorative statement. So are the cathedral pickles. The difference, that is irreconcilable, is economic. Mrs. Abbott may afford a row of perfect cathedral pickles decorating her home. Her northern New England taste is splendid but… she is "from away" (moved to Maine and brought her money with her). She never saw a row of plain dirty pickles in a shed window from where she "comes from". Indigenous Mainers decorated with the row of plain pickle bottles in the window. This too is splendid taste. Should they possess a cathedral and they glimpse it, they see dollars. Selling that cathedral is too much to resist for their decorative impulse can make do with just plain pickles… in the window.
The smaller plain pickles may be found at flea markets for $2.00 to $12.00 and more. The big fat one on the left will cost a lot more these days; $75.00 to $125.00 with a chance find for much less ($25.00). The tallest bombay swell pickle to the right is very popular and an easily spotted form but are usually $75.00 to $125.00 also. They are possible to find for a bargain but one must be vigilant and act promptly.