Old New England Glassware in the Home - Part Thirty-Two - "Prune Juice. Why?"

Old New England Glassware in the Home

Part Thirty-Two

"Prune Juice.  Why?"

            I didn’t really set out to

            Care

            About glassware.

            I don’t?  Do I?

            Care?

            About the

            “YOU THERE”

            Are there?

            To care?

            Your not there.

            And you don’t care

            About glassware.

            Thank you.

            Seven eighths of my old New England glassware... in the home... is watching the ‘that they’

            “KNOW”

            When this ‘that they’

            Don’t.

            I mean ‘goofy’.  And absolute bad taste.  OVER AND OVER.  Serving ‘bad taste’ “I MADE THEM” ‘sugar’ ‘cookies’ on a BAD TASTE ‘glassware’ nappie?  “I CAN’T be that atrocious; showing off my PRIVATE PART of I... know nothing ...at all... about

            Glassware

            In my home.

            “THANK GOD FOR IDIOTS”.  They cannot even recycle the shit.  A quandary sets in:  “MAYBE NOT THAT”.  “AH... Maybe not THAT?”... “AH...”.  “OUT BY THE ROADSIDE... at the end of the

            DRIVEWAY?”

            “IT’S OK MOM.  Benny didn’t buy the jet; his DAD did.”

            “I KNOW:  We’ll put a TARPAULIN over it.”

            “Great idea.

            And you

Have to

Stay under it

Too.”

            “It’s not FAIR of you to be like this.  I mean REALLY.”

            “Rummage sale?”

            “Will you just get away from my STUFF.”

            “I don’t go near your stuff.”

            “But that’s what I mean:  MY STUFF.  You don’t think it’s GOOD STUFF.”

            You got that part right, ‘Hey Guy’.

            Or is it ‘Brenda Shallow Glass Salad Bowl’.

            They got married; Hey Guy and Brenda.

            And you know what:  They gave ‘em GLASSWARE for

            WEDDING GIFTS.

            “That is soooo cool the way people do that!”

            It’s still there; in the boxes in the attic.

            I mean... not THAT kind of attic.  You know... THOSE KINDS of attics.

            Like you got... attic.

            The stuff there like:  YOU KNOW:  “IN THERE” (the attic).  You put it there?

            “There?”

            THE COOKIES ON THE GLASSWARE:  YOU PUT THEM THERE.  THE dish TOO; the ‘glassware’.  You put that there.

            “Oh... But.

            “NO... BUT:

            YOU LIED to yourself about that; the attic, your attic, the cookies, the nappy.”

            “WHAT THE HELL IS A NAPPIE?  They look like broken pieces of GLASS to me.  I didn’t drop it.  Elma dropped it.  What color is that you said?  Canary...?  What’s that mean?  It came from my mom’s”

            “I don’t think it did.”

            “NO REALLY:  She had it always.  ON LIKE EASTER.  SHE HAD LIKE PICKLE DISHES she used.  That’s the only time I saw it.  She kept it in her

            CHINA CABINET.  I remember that.

            I THINK SHE.  But Elma broke it.  When she was little.  That’s why I still have the pieces in there.  I just put them away.  I don’t know WHY I did that.

            “After I was born there was no glassware.  No... actually there was glassware; all kinds of glassware.  Always around.  Even ‘bottle fed’ was ‘glassware’ I...

            Licked the egg beaters from the mixer they had a WHITE GLASS BOWL they were mixed in I REMEMBER that;

            The chocolate frosting.  I think.

            It wasn’t until LATER that I can remember looking at the POP bottle.  It was glass.  I didn’t know THEN what I do NOW.  Did I?

            MOM’S MOTHER died when I was only TEN.  So I didn’t have much to do with that.  Then we moved.  That was when Dad got the...:  I don’t really see what that has to do with it but if you say so.  That was all stuff; they just put it up in the attic.  I didn’t even know it was there until Mom fell the first time.  Ok... so now we have to do something

            With all this stuff.

            When are you going to be able to look at it?

            Never

            Mind the dirt there were some squirrels living up here a few years ago she had

            Them come and that’s why those boxes were moved but that one was tipped over when the I DON’T KNOW what they TRAPPED them with.  It smelled like POISON.”

            “Nothings?  Is that’s what you said?  I didn’t think they were anything.  They’re still NICE if you were going to have a PARTY couldn’t you just SEE setting them ALL OUT and... well... then you’d have to wash ‘em FIRST I guess.  How many are there?  Ok.”

            “I mean really; you don’t want those?”

            “Ok...”

            When I rode into town

            After sundown

            It was dark

            In the thrift store’s

            Parking lot.

            BUT THEY WERE STILL OPEN.

            Inside the dregs were leaning on their shopping carts in the glassware isle.

            He bought a Martini glass “REALLY COOL” and held it up toward the ceiling light.  “GOD DAMN” is what his friend said.  Mrs. Randolph (Part One) doesn’t work at the stores like this she does her ‘volunteer’ at the church duty calls and she’s always there

            With the best coffee of any of the sales.

            She doesn’t say anything ever but everyone knows she buys it herself (the coffee).

            Over in the metal isle there isn’t anyone so I go back to glassware just for the crowd.  I mean... if someone can hold two wine glasses in their hand they can still search the ‘two more that match’.  “JUST BECAUSE  YOU don’t like them doesn’t MEAN he won’t like them they’re pretty cool really with green stem huh.”

            It was only a buck.  But, I mean, how the Hell about that huh?  I just ‘you go figure’.  They put it out there so it must have come in there but I mean no one.

            What is it?  Its like English something eighteen twenty something strawberry diamond cut all over even the base bottom REALLY all over so must have been a part of a set somewhere... some time long ago they ‘took one home with ‘em’.  Stole it?  Of course.  Pretty keep it and they did for five generations no one noticed it ever until I

            Spy.

            I didn’t go there to do that.  But it was there for me to do that.  And like no one

            There

            Ever

            Would have.

            It’s the same crap over and over in there I could kick myself.  Same shopping cart dregs too.  NOT PRETTY.  Not even CLEAN ever.  What are they gonna do with it.  That’s why it’s still there.  I mean you didn’t go there and ‘clean house’.  I mean their MOM hadn’t been in the home a week and that old place of hers was EMPTY.  So I guess it just some big joke on all of us including me that the eighteen twenty strawberry diamond cut glass cordial; Anglo-Irish but possibly American... or Austrian.  SO WHAT... It’s like put out for a buck.  Some big joke.  Maybe I should stand outside the building and smoke a cigarette or something.  I went through check out and bought just that one item for a dollar.  It was still dark in the parking lot I was like only there for almost fifteen minutes.  I’m gonna wash it and drink out of it.

            “Prune juice.  Why?”

            If you put the small blue Pyrex bowl on the top of your head and beat it with a wooden spoon your like a Zen monk obtaining enlightenment?  If you put it on your little sister’s head and beat it with a spoon when you were six and she was four you had that bowl taken away from you and

            YOU WERE forty-seven years old when you saw it again and remember that ‘clear as yesterday’.

            “So your keeping that bowl.  For the last nineteen years you kept that piece of shit.”

            “YEAH... I HAVE.  Its glassware that MEANS something to me.  NOT LIKE THAT weird shit YOU KEEP.  What are YOU gonna do with all that?  HUH?  WHAT ARE YOU DRINKING?”

            “Prune Juice.  Why?”