“The things you see, when you haven’t got a gun!” my dear Mother-in-law used to exclaim when
she found herself amongst strange people.
I love to watch people. Yesterday Marty and I made our regular Sunday
morning visit to a stretch of pine woods north of Hollis , New Hampshire
Here are acres of tables spread with
stuff. There are old comic books,
compact disks, 1940s-era radios, old garden tools, furniture, bottles and jars,
kitchen equipment, World War II shell cases, uniforms and souvenirs, stuffed
animals and antlers, all manner of recent cribs, strollers, toys, scooters, bicycles,
plants, home-made preserves, ball caps and shirts for causes that never quite
caught on, and there are trucks that have just disgorged a complete cargo of
the stuff people pay money to store somewhere, then either die, get divorced,
or just forget about it.
These trucks disgorge mostly used
clothes, and this stuff is a magnet for the growing South Asian population of New England . There
are many little women pawing through the clothes, while they converse amongst
themselves in Tagalog, Khmer, Urdu or perhaps Vietnamese.
And the people! Perhaps it is because there is a fried dough
concession nearby, as the average shopper at this market seems to be about 100
lbs. above the weight of the average American.
There’s a young man wearing a size
XXXXXXL T-shirt that says “Mr. Big” and he’s so fat he needs a cane to keep
himself steady. He’s accompanied by an
equally fat girl friend. And they both
are covered with tattoos. Trailing them a short distance behind is another very
large, older woman, driving an electric cart.
She is also festooned with tattoos.
I know that many young people today
think it is “cool” to have tattoos, but it seems that fat people especially
like to embellish their flesh with elaborate skin engravings. At this show, it seems most people, fat and
otherwise, have tattoos, and the men have a lot of extra hair on their faces
and head, as well.
We’re there to look for antiques,
and there is one alley, amongst maybe a hundred, where some old-time antique
wholesalers are set up.
We do antique shows, and you can meet some interesting people at them, as well. Marty and I did a few shows this
summer, in Wellesley and Osterville ,
Massachusetts , Little Compton, Rhode Island
and Camden , Maine
When an antique show opens, a few little
sharp-eyed men dart into the show, stopping at each booth long enough to sense
whether there is anything there that meets their discriminating taste. These
are the pickers, who hope to pick up something worth $500 for $50.
They look and act a lot like
squirrels. They pause now and then to sniff the air, and see if they
smell something worth buying. You can just see their tails twitching.
After a few moments, all these eager
little people are gone, off to greener pastures.
Then come the silver and gold buyers. These men sweep each booth with hawk-like
precision. They are on the lookout for precious metals. [At the
moment, silver is $27 an ounce, gold is $1619.]
They will home in on a beautifully tooled, elegant piece of early 19th century silver, and see only how much
it will bring, melted down. For anyone who appreciates the work of fine
old silversmiths or goldsmiths---- delicate carving, stamping, engraving and
chasing... work that probably took many days to do --- the idea of
melting it down seems sinful.
These men usually carry a small scale to weigh any treasure they can get their
hands on.
One started to pull out his little scale in Marty’s booth, and she said, “I’d
like you not to do that. That’s so tacky!”
He put away the scale, and used his finely-tuned hands to estimate the weight
of a pair of Sterling silver serving spoons.
Soon, these men have flown on to their next feeding area, and that leaves the
regular shoppers.
One shopper is a doctor who is moving his office to this town. He and his eight year
old daughter cover the whole show, stopping to look at things that interest
him—his daughter patiently stands by. Most everything interests him, as
he lugs out a huge and expensive wooden ship model in a large glass case; long,
ornate brass candlesticks, six feet tall, paintings, pottery, a Nantucket
basket, and more.
Another shopper is a Caucasian man in a wheelchair, and he is looking for
Mexican silver. He has a young Filipino man pushing him, and his wife is
along, too, along with a Buddhist monk. You don’t see a lot of Buddhist
monks at antique shows.
Antique shows often attract serial talkers. These are people who come to
the show not to look at antiques and perhaps buy. All they want to do is find someone to talk
to. One young man is very good about talking on any subject.
From what I could gather, he is a stochastic deterministic probabilistic
mathematician who likes to collect things. He lives in a house that is
scaled perfectly—every room is just a five-ninths the size of a regular room;
the ceilings are low, and every angle in the house is measured to perfection.
He knows about silver, all about how silver is mined, refined, smelted, how
silverware is carved, molded, hammered… and pottery, where you get the clay for
fine porcelain, the firing process, the difference between Dresden china, Imari
porcelain from Japan, Celadon from China and Korea, English porcelain, the rug
weaving techniques of the Kurds, the Bakhtiaris, the Baluchis, Turkomans,
Qashqais. He can tell you about ship models, post cards, brass bookends,
19th century toys,
paintings by known Cape Cod, Cape Ann and
other artists, antique advertising; Civil War firearms and uniform
buttons.
He often drops out of the antique world to tell you about design of a nuclear
power plant (he once helped design one, he says); or the finer points of deep
sea diving, or celestial navigation, or design of lighter-than-air balloons,
blimps and dirigibles.
Unidentified Stochastic Talker (back to
camera) at Elm Bank
He’s an authority, he tells you, on World War I military history, as well as
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and once studied extinct languages of South
Sea Islanders, including the Kuuk
Thaayorre, who give compass directions instead of “in front of” or “next
to”.
Once you have been attacked by this man, and he has exhausted all the air in
the room, and you have found a way to escape, he moves on to the next
unsuspecting victim.
A large woman always visits this show, and many others, sweeping in on a large,
motorized wheelchair with one of those tiny little Shi Tzu dogs climbing out of
her pocket. She’s followed by her husband, a wiry little man with a
cowboy hat and boots.
Finally, the show is over, and it's time to put all
our goods back into the van and head for home.
The Personal Navigator offers these books and
papers:
Shipbuilder
and Marine-Engine Builder, The, September, 1939 Hood, A.G., Editor; London ,
England Victoria St. ,
Westminster
American Mercury, The, A Monthly Review Edited by H.L. Mencken & George Jean Nathan, January
1924; Vol. I No. 1, First Issue Mencken, H.L., Editor 1924 New
York , NY Lincoln Lincoln Hoover
Cuban Scouts Going on
Outpost Duty
Cannons and Camera: Sea and Land Battles of
the Spanish-American War in Cuba, Camp Life, and the Return of the Soldiers;
First Edition Photographs and
Narrative by Hemment, John C.1898. New York , NY Cuba Adams .
Hemment had earlier photographed the Battleship Maine extensively, and when he
arrived inCuba he found she had
just been blown up. His description of the Spaniards and the Cubans is colorful
and portrays the sharp enmity between Americans and Spaniards. Interesting and
detailed photos of recovery of parts of Maine , life in American soldiers' camp, off to the
seat of war in Santiago Morro Castle . Among the Cuban pickets. About mules
in the campaign. Siege of Santiago
Our Katie; or, The Grateful Orphan, A Story
for Children , with three illustrations by Myers, Sarah
A.
1859 New York , NY :
Carlton & Porter, Sunday-School Union . Author writes of her childhood and poor Katie,
whose mother died, then her father. Author's family took in Katie…Katie in
Disgrace….Katie's Reward. Morality tale. 90 pp. 10 x 15.2
cm. Dark cloth on board with
blindstamped design and gilt lettering on spine. On front free endpaper is
"No. 41 Chesterfield Facty S.S. Jan. 1868" 2 cm piece missing from
rear spine. Good. (8196) $40.00. Children's
Sweden: Vägvisare Sundsvall och dess Omnejd--
Almänna Norrländska Industri-och Landtbruks-Utställningen I Sundsvall, 1882
[General Northern Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition, Sundsvall , Sweden ,
1882] 1882 Stockholm , Sweden Sundsvall , Sweden Sweden including
northern part of Gulf of Bothnia , also ads for hotels and other tourist
services. In Swedish. 18 panels 9 c 17.2
cm. Paper on cloth,
lightly soiled, very good. (8211) $38.00. Maps/Travel
Western Journal and Civilian, The; devoted to Agriculture,
Manufactures, Mechanic Arts, Internal Improvement, Commerce, Public Policy and
Polite Literature, May 1855; Vol. XIII No. VI. Tarver, M. & Cobb, H., Editors & Proprietors. St. Louis , MO Ohio Buffalo Dixon Lake Ponchartrain
Railroad. Panama Bounty Land
Rejected Addresses: or the New Theatrum Poetarum, Tenth
Edition 1813 London ,England Drury Lane Theatre England
Contact me at scoulbourn1@verizon.net
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