Old New England Glassware in the Home - Part Three - "Drink From a Can... May I... Turn on a light?"

Old New England Glassware in the Home

Part Three

"Drink From a Can...

May I...

Turn on a Light?"

            I know the difference.

            I do.

            My eyes do.

            My lips do.

            My fingers scream when I touch

            It;

            That ‘feel’ of

            Old New England glassware. I

            ...discard... the

            Glassware that is

            Not

            “That way”.

            The... ah... second date; 1750’s (Part Two)... is an arbitrary buoy with a blinking light and dinging bell... that I set up on the turbulent coastal waters just off shore of ...glassware in the old New England home.  That start date... for a ‘phase two’ of glassware in the old New England home... should I ...need... to be that simplistic.... carries to... Middlebury College and 1815.  I’ll get back to this.

            I have to ...tend... ‘Winter’ (“Eve”) and ‘Bing’ (Parts One and Two).  They here become a feature of old New England glassware in the home.  They; their ilk, are always coming around to be annoying to such as I with their paper bag of paper towel wrapped ‘glassware’.  I have had to ‘learn this’.  And have.  I have to ‘tend this’.

            I do.

            For eye... my ‘second phase’ of my life with glassware in the old New England home fruitioned after college and my participation in ‘going to’ and ‘working on’

            Martha’s Vineyard (“MV”)

            And ‘THE CAPE’

It was a Movement

(a sort of back-to-the-land’...era... on the Cape).

            OK so right here I already am feeling my way... of my way... BACK from this MV juncture and denote. by ‘I feel’’ an earlier relevant incident but... I’ll get back to that.  This is because I need to work with ‘tend’ and ‘old New England glassware in the home’.

            Tend.

            To old New England glassware on MV did I?

            Well.  It was my first deep exposure to the world of my fellow New Englanders and THEIR ‘tend’ to THEIR ‘glassware’... and how that’s ‘played out’ for

            Them and I.

            Brutally catching the wave of this MV movement, I, there, for the first time... ‘went with someone’ who ‘bought’ plastic ‘wine glasses’ in a paper box.  They took those ‘home’ and then ‘served’ and ‘drank’ “wine” out of them.  “Ah....

            I don’t know about this” was negated by I... not wanting to drink any wine

            Anyway.

            Yeah the boys were all beer from a bottle.  Girls were this ‘wine thing’.  “Oh.”

            Beer from a can

            Too.  Soda from a can?

            A can?

            Drinking from a can in Old New England?  You do that?

            Eve and Bing do.  Ice teas from glass bottles... “but the same stuff comes in a can too”.  That’s a direct quote from Bing.

            This is not looking good taste?

            You got it.

            TWO pairs of flip-flops?  Too?  Ok I love looking a old New England woman’s toes.  That’s right; Eve and Bing are around me wearing flip flops.  “JESUS... CHRIST”.

            So right here then (I on MV) things are changing in the way a beverage touches the lips.

            That ‘cheap’ paper boxed plastic ‘wine glass’ ...design form... is innovated and

            Ah...

            “Takes off”.

            OK so that same year was ground zero day one of Black Dog (BD) (‘Café’) (I won’t touch ‘café’).  I went there.  Then.  The girls said so; “We want to go there”.

            “Girls, girls, girls”.  Everyone knows about that so

            We went there and they served wine

            In plastic ‘wine glasses’ TOO.

            Everything was a BD with red bandana tied around it’s neck.  That’s right:

            “Glassware” in the “old New England home”... stood up in the back of a pickup truck and barked.

            I know because I was right there for it.  I was then, too. as I am now; an antiquarian AND antiques dealer.  I even had a college degree in ‘that’.  What’s ‘that’?  It’s noticing that ‘they’ are drinking out of plastic ‘wine glasses’ that came in a paper box. (design forms... appearing and... disappearing).

            And... They (“girls, girls. girls”) don’t know any better.

            “OK BUDDY... leave her alone”.

            I did.

            NOW they are... ‘Winter’ (‘Eve’) and ‘Bing’... approaching their ....winter eve... and still... ‘don’t know any better’.

            “So low rent.”?

            Or do they know better?

            Or... Yeah there is a little tiny crack in this that if I stick a pry bar in it I can ‘open’ a ‘gray area’ in “this”.  “This” is the ‘don’t know any better” drinking out of ‘plastic’ and a... ‘can’.  (Ok just to design-mind you... people did not always drink out of a can.  It’s a design form that ‘appeared’ and, well, ‘flourishes’... in (old?) New England).

            What does this crack look like and how do I put a pry bar in it?  And, I remind, I am still ‘tend’ ‘Eve’ and ‘Bing’... ilk... as I report this.

            The way this happened for me on MV is very concise.  Summer season ends.  ‘The rest’ of ‘the year’ happens; ‘Labor Day’ ( actually 10/15) to ‘Memorial Day’ ( actually 4/30).  I had parlayed my MV antiquarian interest into a commercial export-import venture after about

            FIVE MINUTES

            “on the island”.  In shortest:  “Lying all over the place” were both old undisturbed New England antiques AND ‘new word preppy’ retail customers who “BUY ANTIQUES” for, like, their “HOUSE” in “MARYLAND”.  Or where ever.  In shortest:  “Can’t fail”.  I did not.

            And ‘off season’ did not stop it.  No.  Just no mopeds.  The stuff and the people I (EYE) “SAW” were year round.  I mean... an old shed that no one goes in for forty years is, like, ‘still there’ in NOVEMBER.  February.  March.  “Yeah” and ‘easy pickings’ that whole thing was.  Anyway, WE had to ‘stay somewhere’ and the plastic wine glass society being what it was... some ‘they’ ‘we know’ ‘rented’ (‘care-took’) a ‘house’ ‘all winter so “YOU GUYS CAN STAY THERE”.

            “Cool” and we did.  So...

            We show up and are shown up to our little nookery cape house bedroom and She says “I fixed it up for you” and I am on routine antiquarian scan and there...

            On the bedside table (one of two) is

            I know at twelve feet and instantly

            An ‘old’ ‘Sandwich Glass Whale Oil (glass) Lamp’

            That has been ‘electrified’ so has a ...light bulb... with a

            Cute little OLD shade on it (Ah... light shades ARE a design form).

            (They are.  I promise.)

            (They are a serious design form... too).

            So I just keep my mouth shut.

            For several days until by some CHANCE

            I was alone in the room and She stepped by,

            Then stepped in... and...

            This is as close to erotic as old New England antiques get...:

            I was happening to be handling the lamp including the shade being off and it being plugged in and on and with the cord stringing off to the wall outlet and...

            She sees me and...

            I say ‘I like the old lamp’ and

            She says...

            “My grandmother gave that to me.”

            And we

            Just stood there naked before the whole universe of

            Glassware in the old New England home.

            Of course her grandmother gave it to her for not only did she

            Have the lamp to GIVE but she also understood that

            THAT LAMP is the proper glassware for her grand daughter to have in her

            Old New England home.

            Especially in the guest bedroom where it suffers a reduced chance of ‘being broken by the cat(s)’.

            It was silent in that room; the two of us.  There.  Each knowing the exact foundation of all old New England right there:  We had just said it all.  That is all.  That is forever.  There is no other old glassware ‘lighting’ (‘lamps’, ‘electric lights’)

            That is proper

            In the

            Old New England home.

            Now Eve and Bing should ‘know this’ but someone dropped the ball in there (the mother’s house that Eve and Bing have been pecking around in for, well, fifteen years... or so).  So what does that mean here?
            It means that I have just stated that electric lighting in the old New England home is traditionally derived from generations of family members taking old obsolete lighting devices and having them ‘up dated’ (“electrified”) so they may STILL be used in the

            Old New England home.

            Just like they always were and so ‘look right’ “TOO”.  Says your(?) grandmother.  Or were you just like Eve and Bing and ‘boxed up’ the old ‘converted’ whale oil and kerosene ‘lamps’ with their cords (‘wires’), plugs, shades and working light bulbs and

            Carted that box out to the back of the garage to

            GET RID OF IT:

            “For the whole box.” I said.

            “Ok.” They said.

            I paid them right there in cash and

            Picked up the box and carried it to my truck.

            “Holy Cow” yard sailors:  Did I just tell you that the lighting YOU bought at B-B and Beyond... or at that ‘House of Light’ store... should be recycled too?  Should ‘go to the dump’?

            Did I?

            ARE YOU?

            Does this mean that one’s taste of glassware in an old New England home is judged by the ‘your table lighting’.  (Ceiling lighting is ‘no’ ‘never’) (that includes ‘chan-dell-leers’ and... ah... ‘fans’)

            Eve and Bing ‘recycled’ (sold to me) the

            Wrong ‘glassware’. 

            They are not alone.  Most of them do it.  Just like the plastic ‘wine glasses’.  It is sad when someone takes the HINT their grandmother LEFT FOR THEM of what is proper

            TASTE

            In lighting in an old New England home and

            Throws it out.

            I (eye), currently, live in a rampant undisturbed abundance of ‘lamp dumping’ from old New England homes.  I mean... it is WAY out of control.  The dumping group is the ‘converted’ lamps and the ‘needs-to-be’ NOTICE that the conversion systems are, for the most part, high quality professionally done ‘conversions’ that... well... there really is a problem here

            Right now.

            I... about half of the time... ‘take off’ the (high quality electrical) ‘conversion’ so the ‘old lamp’ may be sold to the antique lighting collector market that ‘knows’.  The other half is a gray area privied (out housed) by an ‘the electrics’ of the lamp working or... not working, the ‘prospect of sale’ market, the ‘just sits there’ market, the ‘I can use it myself’, the ‘it’s a nice one’ and the... always useful ‘I’ll get to it... sometime’.  Yeah I’ve always got a slug of ‘old lamps’ from ‘grandma’s house’ ‘around’ with

            No Eve and Bing coming around to buy ‘them’.  And I

            Don’t care.

            If... one touches one’s lips to plastic to sip the ‘wine’... what does one need to have an (antique New England lighting device) lamp ‘on’ for anyway?  This (don’t care and plastic wine sipping) does not change that a design form of glassware in the old New England home that... to the knowing eye... signals one’s ‘informed’ (art and history) taste is the ‘lighting’ ‘found in the (your) home’.  One’s ‘lighting’ ‘speaks volumes’.

            As for the bottles (glass and plastic designs) and cans, in an old New England home... one “MAY I” but, please do not “can I?” from a... can.  One’s self aesthetic’ should be self consulted for best results.  Perhaps considering that, for example, Oscar Wilde is watching YOU guzzle may ‘reign in’ before a ‘pitfall’ (pitiful).  And don’t bother me.  Where ever one goes in old New England ‘it is there’ for your eyes to notice.  Too.

            The lamp that is featured in the photographs?  What is it?

            It is... an old New England home classic:  An ‘early American pressed glass’ (EAPG) ‘bull’s eye with fleurs de lys’ pattern glass font on a (originally kerosene burning) stepped and brass cased (notice old polish residue in the cracks of the brass) once white (and noticing the very pleasing age and usage discoloration... that MUST be there to assure excluding the old New England decorative faux pas of ...one’s ‘marble’ being the ‘too white’... for “old New England” (“just like teeth” in old New England too)... marble based, brass font supported with the original brass burner support ‘converted’ with a notably high quality fitted support for ‘the electrics’ that are from being ‘converted’ too (electrified) in the twentieth century after long usage that began in the Antebellum North (Beacon Hill, Boston to Sea Captain Thomaston (Maine).  The lamp was made at either the Union Glass Co., Boston or the Sandwich Glass Company, Sandwich, Mass., 1845-1855.

            This lamp amplifies well the ‘understated quality’ aspect of ‘old New England’.  At first one may not note the wholeness of quality found here for it is, in the lamp’s presentation, ‘never shown’.  But, as one’s eye travels in ‘lighting’ observation, the foundation qualities once dashed by... by one’s eye... blossom and... soon...

            One notices the difference concisely

            And nothing else

            “will do”.

Running the Fires

Running the Fires

            I have already employed myself this morning to assure I enjoy myself today by starting two (fireplace) fires.  These I will ‘run’ all day.  To run them I will have to, without comment or notice, come and go in and out including round about.  All day.

            I enjoy this ‘work’.  I am booting on and booting off, jackets on, off, wet, damp, wetter.  Hat wet too.  Hanging all of that around to dry but having to ‘run’ that too so no domestic complaints may be issued.

            Domestic complaints may be issued around and about running fires in fireplaces so the conservation of the fires and the consideration of the fireplace work zone... commonly called ‘policing’ is, too, a ‘work load’ further requiring I going in and out and round about in the never ending litany of “Don’t

            TRACK MUD INTO THE HOUSE!”.  Career goal?

            No.  The workman’s skill is ‘moving out of range’.

            Isn’t this wonderful weather this year.  Rain that is actually heavy drizzles with ‘mist’ and ‘socked in’ and thirty-five degrees that is supposed, the weathermen have harped, to be fifty-two but I can tell it ‘won’t make it’.

            So can they tell too and they have back

            Tracked.  But I am delighted.  That temperature and that drizzle assures no one will bother the whole ‘outside’ all day especially if I do a very good shuffle of

            Running the fires.

The Next Post - Number Two

The Next Post

Number Two

            Five years ago I posted a trite and short puff titled ‘The Next Post’ (Oct. 16, 2009).  Not much to it I felt at the time.

            It has gone on to be ridiculously viewed.  It is barely a read for there is only a scrid of text and three photographs.  Two of the photographs are of the baked cabbage and sausage dinner my wife was making the night before.  The scrid of text speaks of this ‘dinner last night’.  I... did not ever feel that so much and so persistent attention would be paid ‘to that’.

            Shortly after posting it became clear that this post was gathering a following.  Somehow.  Somewhere.  This did not diminish.  This did not expand.  Persistent and steady viewing has now been at it for five years.  I... would “yeah right” once or twice a year for the first three years.  This, for the last two years, extended to “yeah write” (edit it).  Nothing came of that either.

            Falls came and went, come and go.  Leaves fall down and blow away.  Rain soaks, water freezes, ice collects, snow piles.  Fireplace heating roars.  Wind howls.  Two aspects remain constant about the content of that and this post.  They were not noted in the original post.  I am not re-posting the original post.  I am not editing it, tweaking, adding or fixing the original post.  I am posting this post as a ‘number two’ to that post.  It is about... and because of... the ‘baked cabbage and sausage dinner’ my wife makes.  And the two aspects it did not include.

            First aspect.  We eat this all the time.  Again:  We eat this all the time.  Not once or twice a year.  “All the time”.  The full baking dish... with... the TWO sliced cabbages, the mound (a measured quantity) of carrots and the ‘never enough’ (a measured quantity too) onions... that are all grown... less than sixteen feet from the door to the house and actually about twenty feet from the stove they are cooked in... in ‘our gardens’.  (Note plural).  These garden vegetables are enhanced with eight ‘can be cut in half to make sixteen’ usually ‘butcher-behind-the-counter made’ “HOT” (they never are a ‘that hot ‘ [“spicy”]) “Italian” sausage.  Procured locally as we are at a ‘going by there’.  The first post sausage was from Lisbon, Maine.  The ‘number two’ sausages are from KIT-tree (Kittery).  NOT TOO MUCH THOUGHT and only a dash of FEEL goes into these “THEY ARE VERY FRESHLY MADE” sausages.

            Nor is much thought going into the ‘making this’ baking dish fabrication.  Simply cut the cabbage in chunks, sprinkle the mound of carrot in the spaces, poke the too few onion on and FLOAT the sausages on top and

            BAKE IT IN THE OVEN... ‘covered’ with ‘foil wrap’ for... ‘yeah:  longer than that’ to “OH NO I FORGOT ABOUT IT”.  Then take the foil off, up the temperature to, ah... ‘brown’ the top (‘burn it’... a heavy hand... is ...well known to happen).  OK then:

            Divvy up the pan.  ONE large third for the first meal (for two).  ONE large third for the second meal (‘leftovers’).  One half of the last third is for my breakfast.  The last half of the last third... and traditionally the smallest ‘scrid’ left... is for my second breakfast.

            “Breakfast you say?”

            Aspect two:  Breakfast.  A little snarl and testiness from me to you from ‘before you are up’.  IF... one is “LEAVING EARLY” and “GETTING READY TO LEAVE” before that... one is ‘up’** and ‘has coffee’ before ‘hitting’ the (barn) yard to ‘get ready.  Yeah.  So I’m going around with a flashlight on my head in the buildings and about the vehicles and yard with: NO THERE IS NOT electricity IN THE BUILDINGS THIS IS MAINE.  For several hours.  YES SEVERAL HOURS.  I don’t just put a Phillips head screwdriver on the dashboard and drive off.  It’s dark and it’s cold (not including snow ‘management’ and rain ‘events’) and it’s ‘lock and load’ and it’s ‘where did I put my coffee’.  Two thirds of the way through that DANCE that takes place five of seven days ‘at least’... yeah the wife is off doing her dawn scramble dance somewhere too (I do not track that; it’s ‘her problem’).  OK:  Two thirds done... BREAKFAST.

            This means that scrid of the ‘cabbage and sausage’ is... ‘in a bowl and chopped roughly then microwaved three minute (fire hot) with black coffee still warm to be the eat and drink that standing up in the dark “OH I FORGOT THAT-GOT TO GET IT-NOW”.  Then.  Done.  Bowl in sink.  One scrid left for the ‘next day’.

            IF...you find yourself eating left over baked cabbage, carrots, onions and sausage flaming hot in the dark, in the barn yard, standing up. at four in the morning with a ‘mug’ of black-black sort of warm black coffee that YOU MAKE YOUR SELF*** (I never buy commercially prepared coffee and I make enough so I ‘can have’ ‘cold’ black coffee ‘for the rest of the day’) (supply usually lasts ‘till’ ‘about’ ‘noon)’.... and IF you are looking for the “Where did I put that (coffee mug) down?” TOO you are

            Starting...

            To live...

            In Maine.

---

*** :  I have used the ...let us see... the Chemex coffee preparation system... for forty years.  At least.  I never ‘buy’ them (the glass machine) for I have always been ...getting... them from estates.  Usually estates in the Connecticut and Westchester, NY region supply-I regularly and adequately.  I have hoarded, sold, smashed and even ‘know of’ ‘collectors of’.  I know users, both aging veterans and new hipsters.  My favorite place to buy the filters is China Fair, Cambridge.  I see that Whole Foods in Portland (Maine) ‘sells them’ (the machine) ... and the filters.  I have been told repeatedly by ‘how would they know’ that the ‘system’ is ‘making a come back’.

---

** :  Historically for I ... three to three-thirty AM.  Since, like, 1970.  In the last decades... due to THE COMPUTER commerce I am ‘up’ more often two to two-thirty... ish.  Do not forget that we have to DRIVE to ‘God knows where’ doing this (antiquarian pursuit) BEFORE we “START”.  “Gone by five” “is normal”.  I prefer six.  I settle for five thirty... ‘most of the time’.

(Two Other Breakfasts)

Christmas Shopping

Christmas Shopping

I went out past the birdfeeder

And the clothesline frame

On three excursions across

The property.

At three compass points.

The fourth compass point will have to wait.

The Chickadees at the birdfeeder did not notice.

The clothesline frame was empty with the hangers

Scattered on the ground.  I

Did not stop to reflect on that.

On the first excursion I went along the ridge

Above the pond to the

Old White Pine at the high spot - crest.  Then down

To the pond’s edge where

The beavers have cut down three popular trees and

Harvested them for their winter.

It was raining when I stood on the dam.

Actually, it was just drizzling.

I went back to the house up through the forest to the

Old White Pines below the cranberry bog.

At the house I checked the fire.

They had told me that they were going to

That store and there would be many animals there

Including the dogs that bark inside cars in the parking lot.

I went back outside and was a little worried

That I startled the Chickadees but no they were

Just fooling me

In the drizzle.

The second excursion I committed to crossing the stream

On the plank bridge.

The planks are not nailed down so the recent waters had

Floated them around and clogged their tops with old leaves.

I didn’t want to fuss with that so just stepped nimbly across

Like the deer eating the last of the brussel sprouts in the garden

Had stepped away into the wood when I came outside

The house.

“Isn’t there going to be something

Made of pretty colored plastic for me to

Find here in the woods” I asked myself

On the other side of the stream.

Then I went up the trail through the hollow

Past the oak stand to the

Stonewall that, today, had an old dead branch

Fallen across it

That I didn’t touch.

On the third excursion I went from the clothesline frame

Out on the deer ridge to its overlook at the end where

If I cut down all the old trees there I could see the

Atlantic ocean.  I know that because I have

Climbed up one of the old trees and did

See the Atlantic Ocean from there.

I found a blown-down (storm broken) crown from a

Balsam Fir so planned to drag that back after

Setting it out near where I’d be coming through

From below the ridge.

Down there, on the far side, I found a standing dead

Ash tree.  That is pretty unusual on this property.

Eight inches in diameter.

Perfect firewood.

I walked back so as to fetch the Balsam crown

And dragged it back to the woodshed where I

Use them to block out the snow

That blows in

During the winter storms.