Cold Black Coffee - Rambling-Round

Cold Black Coffee

Rambling-Round

Cold black coffee:  Rambling-round.

Cold black coffee “So black a spoon ill standup in it”.

            “YOU STILL GOT THAT (early New England – Maine made - lead glazed earthenware) REDWARE JAR (‘stew pot’) YOU HAD TO THE FORT (local flea market)?”

            “NO.”

            “SELL IT?”

            “NO.”

            (Pause).

            (sip).

            (Pause).

            (Eye contact).

            “NO.” said again.

            “Where is it?”

            “Give it to go to PORTSMOUTH (antiques dealer’s show/sale) LAST WEEK.”

            “Did it go?”

            “Believe so.”

            “You’d think you’d KNOW if it WENT by NOW.”

            “Not this time of year:  Went on to his DAUGHTER’S.  She’s NOW moved BACK from that GEORGIA.  DIVORCED.  MOVING TO NORTH READING (Mass.).”

            “Oh...  Been there... Some.”

            “I picked along there too... Bedford.  Arlington-Lexington.  Good area.  Used to be.”

            “Where’d you find that jar anyway?”

            “Your neighbor’s garage sale.”

            (Pause).

            (Sip).

            (Pause).

            (Eye contact).

            “You still got all your ammo?  You still HOARDING it?”

            “Shut-up.”

            “That new economy trickled down to you guys right away didn’t it.  Seems to me you guys might be the first ones to have been screwed by him.”

            “Shut-up”

            “Nice of him to get to you first.  He drained your swamp didn’t he.  What you do’en ‘bout it?”

            “Let’s put it this way:  I ain’t buying any anymore.  I got my lifetime supplied.”

            “And the junk guns?”

            “Oh I’d gotten rid of most of those this last summer”.

            “Old ten dollar guns not worth ten dollars anymore”.

            “Right.  Where’d you find that jar anyway.”

            “I told you:  Two doors down on the right.”

            (Pause.)

            (Sip.)

            (Pause.)

            “That place don’t even HAVE a garage”.

            “Nope.  PORCH SALE actually.  I always like them PORCH SALES anyway:  Halfway into the house when you start.  Been asking ‘em for old guitars, records and ‘cook where’ I’s CALL IT.  That’s working.  They all got it:  Got that COOK... WHERE.  Jesus.”

            “Cookware?  I seen you with all that.  That sells?”

            “Who cares.  Just throw it out if it don’t.  But.  Jesus.  They all got it.  Boxes of the old shit.  Every which way in there.  Downstairs-backstairs-cellar-attic-garage-shed out back-sister’s house up the street and THEN they take you through their grandmother’s place too.”

            “Works... huh.”

            “Works huh harder than your lazy ass ever has.”

            “What’s that then... you find that jar along doing that?”

            “That’s the whole point:  Get in and GO.  LOOK AROUND STUPID.  I don’t know what they got and THEY DON’T KNOW EITHER.  Next thing I’m back in the truck cab with that old pot and a sip of cold coffee.”

            “How much you gonna get out of that?”

            “The coffee?  It’s cold but black as tar.  I like it that way.

            “No.  What you got on that jar?”

            “Just a here and there.  I don’t want too much; buy a MESS.  Don’t make ‘em a MESS.  Get a little goodies along and get out.  I come back a month later and ... ‘low and behold’... they DO ‘got more’.  I said to one of ‘em “WHERE’D YOU GET ALL THIS (cookware)?” .  The fools BOUGHT IT.”

            “Christmas is on SUNDAY this year.”

            “Yeah I know.”

            “So that does that.”

            “Does that for the whole damn WEEK.  Be TUESDAY January THIRD before I can do anything.”

            “I won’t even TRY.  Just sit around at the FLEA (flea market) and eat cookies.  They got that New Year’s day (antiques) show.  You ever do that?

            “No.”

            “Some say they do pretty good”.

            “I don’t think so; not too much money around that morning (New Year’s day).  Same old – same old.  Seems to me.

            (Pause).

            (Sip).

            (Pause).

            “Didn’t you do something with that Mildred Calihanny’s place one New Years.”

            “Yes.  After the fire.”

            “Fire?”

            “She had a chimney fire New Years eve.  Nothing.  Stomped all around her place pretending to be putting it out.  I went in the attic with Bud.  Shined the flashlight all around in the attic.  No fire there but Jesus was it FULL.  So I went right to her and talked cash.  Went back the next day.  That was New Years.  I’ve known her along time.  Since her sister’s DOG drowned at Kettle Pond.  We were just out of high school then.”

            “Her mother lived a long time at the Benjamin Hardy place.  Housekeeper for the Hardies.  She out lived ‘em all.  Tough birds that family.”

            “Didn’t make cookies?”

            “No:  No cookies there.”

            “What’s happened to all that stuff anyway”

            “Last I heard it was still in Hastings’ barn over across the river.  Sold the (Hardy) place couple years ago.  Wouldn’t ever let me in.”

            “You can’t get Hastings to let you in?”

            “I can get in but it ain’t his to sell.  Was piled right up there; the whole kit and caboodle.  When I seen it.  STILL ALL THERE as far as I know.”

            “You’d think they’d do something.”

            “Oh they will SOMETIME.  Not this week.  Turned cold too.  Can’t get ‘em to stand in a barn ten minutes unless your handing ‘em hundred dollar bills.  I’m not gonna do that.  Wait it out.  Plenty of stuff around.  Anyway.

            “What do you think:  Santa’s gonna come and make it all right?”

            “If he could just put them louvers in my new shed I be happy”.

            “You didn’t stick those in?

            “No... the fall got away from me again.”

            “Get the ladder and go out there.”

            “Yeah... standing on a ladder holding on to galvanized eight pennies (nails) with my finger tips: I’ll just get to it right now.”

            “Come on; winters not THAT bad yet.”

            “I'd rather go down in the basement and...”

            “Count your bricks of twenty-twos.  Count ‘em up and send Uncle Donald the bill.  You know: ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS from SANTA’!”

            “You think he should wear a red suit and go around in a sled?  Toss everyone handfuls of money?  That ah get him the damn Popular Vote.”

            “You gonna be at the flea Saturday.  Suppose to snow again.”

            “Farmer’s Market will be there.  Sort of.  Anyways.  I’ll be there.”

            “BRING along that Bennington (Vermont pottery made blue decorated stoneware) crock:  I’d like look at that again.”

            “Look at it or buy it?

            “You know; talk about it.

            “It’s perfect and it’s great.”

            “Yeah but you got it priced

            It’s gonna sell.  That’s what I’ve been selling:  Collector grade.  Real antiques with obvious quality.  Attractive.  Perfect condition.  Classic heritage, classic history, classic design (art history).  Stand alone decorative appeal.  You know: “I want that in my home”.  Mostly American made; New England.  They’re decorating with things that are stand alone ‘real good’.  YOU... don’t have anything like that to sell.”

            “Now just wait”.

            “No you don’t.  You don’t.  All you got for sale is old crummy stuff.  They want ‘real nice’ perfect and real.  Collector grade.”

"Why Is It This Way?" - Part Two - "The Door Closed"

"Why Is It This Way?"

Part Two

"The Door Closed"

            Each point (aspect) of antiquarian interest (intrigue) is, and as it further refines itself, an ever smaller... already small... smaller ...point (aspect)

Of actual human interest.  Each antiquarian intrigue becomes a further out toward the end of an antiquarian interest diving board.

            Less ‘people’ venture there; to the ‘end’.  There are less there should one get there.  These less are

            Always small in number.

            It has always been this way.

            To ask for.. or to discover... a larger status (state of affairs), one may

            Wish upon a star?  Yes, certainly.  But one speaks to the antiquarian gods alone.

            Both ‘just to the gods’ and, actually, alone... when doing this.  When one comes back from a travel such as that, one will be in the mundane of ‘does the car start?” and taking out the trash ‘please dear’.  That ‘comes back’ utopia is the opposite of ‘always small’; it is a very large...

            That does not, did not and... will not ever... care about... impassioned antiquarian interest.

            OH ONE MAY HAVE a few local and provincial flirts over a “CHAIR” ... “I BOUGHT”... or perhaps a very rare 1850’s daguerreotype photograph ‘image’ of an exterior view of a newly built store... possibly once in a small Maine village... but “no one is sure (yet) where it was”.  Taken.  Someone did ‘take’ the ‘picture’.  But that doesn’t matter.  When one returns from executing curbside trash disposal placement... all of one’s verbose antiquarian banner waving about the discovery of the old photograph has been ‘forgotten’ and ‘moved on from’ by the ‘a very large’.  Only your personal thoughts... hang by their finger tips.  Then...

            Your thoughts drop off and fall... away.  Too.  Periodically you ‘visit’ and ‘flirt’, just yourself... with your “old photograph”.  There is no point in ‘showing it’.  Even to yourself.  You already know what it looks like.  And the rest of them... went to the beach... “anyway”.

            If I take this banter to the commercial side of the antiquarian intrigue... do you sense how fragile that ‘actually is’.  Commercially I am always ‘getting there’ (to the diving board end) and finding either ‘a very few’ (“always small”) or a... no ...one.  That’s how I know about what I am writing.  You... even you... and the other ‘you’... are too..

            NOT THERE.

            Yes:  You have distinguished between a door mat and a Persian rug upon a “floor”.  And... you’ve carried that up a ladder to a few more decorative accessories that you either... found, discovered, bought, inherited or... purloined ‘along a way’ of a ‘that’ that is actually a murky definition of how you “SEE” the antiquarian ...what.

            Do you

            “SEE”?

            Not very much... in the ‘murky’.  I go on without your participation.  You denote that your ‘collection’ is ‘complete’ “anyway”.  So you go to the beach too.  “Always small” becomes even smaller; a smaller ‘always small’.  I have to wait it out.  Soon enough another wandering thought-as-apparition emerges through the murk.  “I am” says they ‘collect’ Bennington Pottery tobacco jars.  Or was it snuff jars; who knows a difference?

            I do.

            They do.

            So I am in luck?  Today?  I have a tobacco jar and a snuff jar

            “BOTH SIGNED”

            “Isn’t that cute” (that you had to take the household trash out BEFORE) you could further explore this interest of yours in... well...

            “OLD”

            “THINGS”.

            “That IS too bad that they are ALL THAT:  You always have ‘old things’.”

            While I am ‘accommodating’ with that... another arrives wanting to know if I will “take sixty’ for a “that”.  This is in the very small at the board’s end too.  So I say yes.  I know my chance very well here... there and ‘about that’.  But they know too... that I know... too and we have a brief conversation about the ‘cleaning up’ of the ‘surface’ with this including a fingernail scrape ‘test’ to ‘assure’.  These are all just fireflies in the murk at the end of the board of ‘always small’.  I like fireflies.

            Do you?

            If the defining is ‘always small’, ‘diving board end’, ‘murk’ and ‘fireflies’...as the ‘is it this way’ “Why?” and...

            Always has been

            Since ever an “I” may remember

            Ever...

            Is that an ‘it’ or an ‘anything’... at all?  If the Persian rug and the door mat are on the floor of the front hall floor of the front door to the...

            Wait patiently...

            You walk on them

            Throughout the home.

            If the ‘stand’ is a ‘table’ and the chest is a ‘dresser’ and the bedstead ‘was my mother’s’ and the timepiece is ‘the old clock’ that ‘stopped working’... do you look back over your shoulder to the closed front door that is keeping out the murk and the fireflies?  That really is the boundary of ‘always small’.  Just close the door.  It is gone.

            “It” is an individual’s actual interest in “antiques”.  This is the that that has always actually been the way it has always been ever since... “I” may remember.  It is not a something that is “happening now”.

            “YOUNG PEOPLE” have always been “NOT INTERESTED” in “ANTIQUES”.  I know this fully for I was once a young person highly interested in antiques and noticed fully the “no one else was”.  Except “OLD PEOPLE”.  So that takes care of that:  Antiques interest is an ‘always small’ gathering of “OLD PEOPLE”.  Let us just “BANK” on that.

            And move on to “the DEALERS”

            This is the occurrence that there is a workable notion that one may “MAKE MONEY” by (buying and) selling “ANTIQUES”.  Even television shows demonstrate this

            Perchance.

            I remember when this ‘that’ “did not”.  No... ‘back then’ it was a very small ‘always small’ to be an ‘antiques dealer’.  No one asked me about it... back then.  Most didn’t even know I could be, in front of them, an “antiques man”.  Originally we (antiques dealers) were a ‘curiosities vendors’... with some old books and paintings “thrown” into that mix.  A sorrowful plight?  No... really... no one noticed ‘at all’.

            But then the enhanced escapade escaped into a wild movement of ‘things’ called antiques that, as I opened with (Part One), are actually ‘crud’; old vans full of smelly crud.

            Yes... that is what it is.  Do not believe me.  Look down your front hall standing on the Persian rug... in past the door mat... and notice the ‘old (serpentine front) Hepplewhite New England made satin wood inlayed “Federal” “card table”. Then look on further past to the tall clock; the ‘grandfather’s clock’.  Do you smell anything?  Of course not.

            Crud is crass.  It is not a curiosity.  It is not a decorative art.  It is not art.  It is crass crud... that, usually, smells when it is closed up in an old van and has the sun beat upon that closed up unit (“always small”?).

I turn the tide?  I just did?  The always small... is always small... and now buried within the crud... industry... that is pandered and peddled as ‘antiques’ ‘business’.  Bantered, driven, parked, yard saled, flea marketed, auctioned, stall shopped, store fronted and hoarded... crud... is industry.  And not small.  It is very large... the secondary market; used things.  It... here; in our USA but cinched down to New England... is the largest and the finest in the world.  No place else is better... anywhere ever.  Crud.  That is the one word of the largest ‘what it is’.   It does not effect you at all; just close the door.  The crud, like the ‘very small’ antiques intrigue... is gone.  Too.

Then.... what is the... “Why is it this way”

            It is only that...; has always been only that and... is always small.  Keep the door closed.  It will never be seen unless, of course, one ‘stumbles across’ a ‘real antique’ when out and about... and does actually notice that; a ‘real’ ‘antique’.  Then one may address it; that... the ‘antique’ stumbled upon.  Otherwise just ‘don’t’.  Stay back somewhere between the Persian rug and the door mat in the front hall of the front door to the intrigue of the very small apparition appreciated as ‘antiques’.  It is this way... and that is why.