Collected

Cool, calm and collected, that is the ideal for the modern woman, yes?

Well, one out of three ain't too bad.  When it comes to "collected"  I have quite a bit going on.  I'm not sure where or when it started, but somehow I got the idea that once I had two of anything, it was imperative to get a third and officially begin a "collection".  

Take these for example.  Souvenir place plates.  These specimens, hung on the walls around my laundry room, help lighten the slightly murdery mood that can develop as a side effect of forced drudgery.

The laundry room art display keeps the plates safely out of line of sight of less sentimental/more critical eyes in the house.  At the same time, they serve as reminders of days long ago when I would get a special allowance from my parents as part of our family vacation trips.

My Mom encouraged the practice because she wanted me to learn how to budget and save.  Truth be told I usually got back home after a vacation trip with most of that "special" money still burning away in whatever passed for my pockets those days.

My Dad encouraged the souvenir fund process because it ensured I was a more enthusiastic ally in his quest to stop at every "World's Biggest Ball of String" or "Davy Crockett's Cabin" road side attraction along the way.

Was I interested in said string or reconstructed cabin?  Nope, not in the least, but every one of these places either was itself entirely comprised of, or at least prominently featured a Gift Shop as part of the touristy fun.

As a child, I was all about Gift Shops and Museum Stores.  I speculate I single handedly kept several Taiwanese companies profitable during most of the late 60's.

Not that I needed another tiny photo album, coin purse or teensy cast iron skillet to bolster my sense of innocent wonder, but when said items featured the stamped or painted rendition of some place we had just visited as a family?  The instant nostalgia was often too much to pass by.  

What I was not able to buy during all those years were the omnipresent souvenir place plates.  As a child, I was forced to stick to shopping the smaller items with their matching price points.   And although I carefully eyed them at each stop, the souvenir plates I truly coveted were big ticket items, scaled for folks with deeper pockets (and potentially as yet undeveloped ironic tendencies).

Ostensibly ignoring announcements about how much longer I had to shop from my parents, I would let the pressure mount as I carefully balanced my desire to buy myself something wonderful that I was already holding in my hand, against the wish to have however much money that something wonderful cost stay right in my pocket, banked against some future better purchase at our next unscheduled stop.

That was then.   Now I happily scan the shelves at thrift stores for cast off souvenir plates.  The time spent reminds me of minutes stretching into hours standing blissfully gazing into glass cases and slowly rotating wire racks in various gift shops along our vacation routes.

Now, when I am struggling Sisyphean style at getting dirt back out of things only to be reused and resullied, I can look around and thoroughly enjoy being haunted by the Ghosts of Gift Shops Past.

How about you?  Were you a gift shop devotee as a vacationing child?  Are you still subject to impulse buys while "on the road" that would never tempt you in a million years on a regular day?  Feel free to confess your best/worst buys in the comments section.   I like to think we're all friends here....

Board Silly

Last week I shared with you some of my patriot's purchases from a local thrift store I frequent.

This store also holds a small auction every Saturday afternoon at 2:30 PM. 

There are people visiting "my" thrift shop routinely just to check out the auction. What goes up for auction is anything deemed more valuable than usual, at times true antiques, larger pieces of finer furniture or original art work. Potentially whatever the staff at this store eyeballs and envisions "Auction-worthy!" goes into the mix.

In the run-up to each auction they place on display a black binder filled with one page for each item going up for bids. At the top of every page they write out what they are calling the item (often less helpful than you'd imagine) along with a number (numbers being harder to confuse). 

They list a starting bid, an amount derived from the same completely stupefying process used to price other regular merchandise sold on racks and shelves.  People interested in bidding are instructed to enter a name, a telephone number and a bid, on the corresponding item's page.  

Typically the bidding goes up one dollar at a time but periodically some enthusiast will narrow the competitive field by jumping the dollar amount up into what I consider the Thrift Store Stratosphere. 

I tried attending the auction a few times but had to swear off. My stubbornly competitive nature is a definite drawback when it comes to bidding to buy.

Swept up in the process, I come perilously close to bidding prices potentially much higher than reasonable and absolutely higher than the ceiling I'd pre-determined. Keeping track of the cost faded as the object of the auction morphed to become "do whatever it takes to beat out that b*stard trying to buy my treasure!".  

The auctions were not a good way for me to shop, clearly.   

But I do still covet, dearly, several items I see on auction from time to time. Not to be totally foiled by my competitive nature, I have devised an alternative.I make a bid in the notebook. I don't do this by any particular formula, I go up one dollar over the last bid in the book and leave it there. 

If on the following Saturday afternoon somebody shows up willing to pay a dollar more than I bid (if I am still the highest bid in the book), then so be it.  I lose.  If on the other hand, this is one of those items that seems to appeal to me more than anybody else around - and that does happen rarely - then I win! 

A store employee dutifully calls me to say my bid was the winner and I have until Tuesday to come in and pay and pick up my treasure.  This tends to trigger a several hour to days long spell of being inordinately pleased with myself.  If I win an auction item without going through the in person bidding, in my book, that means the universe decided.   The universe agreed I deserved to win!

Who am I to argue with the universe?

Which is how I ended up with this beauty.A Howard Automatic Folding Ironing Table. "The Finest of Them All". I think it is completely cunning and cannot imagine why nobody else wanted it.   They didn't and I did and I got it for about what it costs for two people to eat burgers and fries at a fast food spot. 

I cannot find anything that tells me how old it is. I am guessing most ironing boards went metal by the 1960s or thereabouts. I can't unearth any information on the original company other than some auctions for equipment which may mean they've gone out of business.

I don't really care. This Automatic Folding Ironing Table is valuable to me. I find older household laundry or kitchen tools and equipment charming, and I am happy happy happy to give this old board a new home.

I may be wrong to idealize the naiveté of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, but I do. Items from that time span are appealing in a way I can't quite explain. It is partly a feeling of connecting through the items to my mother, her sisters, their mother and aunts before them. But that isn't all of it.

The appeal also rests in imagining the original purchaser, male or female, setting up a home, out buying these items with all optimism that these tools and conveniences were going to be part of how their home would function "just so". I believe we all do that with our shopping to one extent or another. It is later perhaps when we realize we've more or less missed the mark once the day to day reality of laundry or meal preparation settles in.

But at the moment when we are out doing the shopping, just then, at that point, it is all still a hypothetical. Our interaction, our relationship with the product is as yet an unrealized vision. As such, it is all still potentially perfect. I believe that is what tugs at me.  That sense of unrealized perfection draws me in like a bee to nectar.

How about you? Do you find any particular type of item appealing in a strongly emotional way? What embodies "perfection" for you when out shopping? It is your turn now and I'd really enjoy hearing from you.