One Tiny Corner of the Underbelly!
All week I have been crawling around in the basement of my store. Thank God it is blissfully cool down there…getting a photo for this blog of the array of goodies is mighty difficult. I remember once standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon…this was years ago when a friend and I did a Thelma and Louise-type road trip…left the kids at home with our husbands and off we went in her white Peugot station wagon. Our husbands agreed to such nonsense…knowing if they didn’t, we would most likely go anyway. Well, that is another story, but the point is this: I am trying to give you a sense of the goodies in this basement! And I am finding that it is akin to that time I attempted a shot of the Grand Canyon with my Brownie Hawk Eye camera! What I am shamelessly attempting to do here is urge you all to hop on a plane if you live far away or come on your bike if you live close and partake of the wealth of my collecting! This basement is full of unnecessary and irresistible objects (trust me, I know…I bought them all!) that will be curbside out front of the store on Friday July 30th for the summer sale. Lots and lots of good stuff from the store shelves and a great sampling of the props from the basement. I need a good purge before Fall rolls in!
Don’t forget…we will be closed for all of August. I will be going on a few adventures in western New York State seeking more antiques for the store and will post from the road! Happy late summer and don’t forget to wear your sunblock!
The Magic Above My Store!
Nine years ago, when I thought about opening a store, I met my future and present landlords. I met also the magic of men who love trains…these “boys” are dedicated, let me assure you of that! They have the whole of the second floor of the building that houses 6 Birch…I understand it is some four thousand square feet up there (my store is a tiny little 450 sq. ft.). Well, on that second floor are miles (or so it seems) of model train tracks…all constructed on waist-high tables. You can stare into villages created with minature people and town squares and trees all hand-made by the train men. There is a swimming scene with folks on teeny tiny beach chairs, and I believe a nude diver about to take a plunge off the tressel into the water below. The cars in the town squares appear vintage and are no bigger than a man’s thumb! There are hills and train smoke and sounds of the passing engines as they move through the mountain tunnels. I can tell you it is pure fantasy….open to the public twice a year. If you are in the neighborhood the first weekend in December or the first weekend in March, head on up the narrow wooden stairs for a delightful awe-inspiring adventure!
The early and mid-fifties of my own childhood was spent with weekend visits to my Zio (uncle) and Zia (aunt) who lived in the Southern Pacific Yard in Sparks, Nevada. Zio was a Section Foreman for the SP, and he lived in a “grand” wooden house painted the color of an egg’s yoke, a bright hard-to-miss mustard yellow. On Saturday, just after lunch, we would gather in the living room, all would be silent while opera was broadcast on the radio. I remember it to be the Met Opera Series; my uncle would close his eyes and swoon while the sounds of Tosca filled the room. My cousin and I would slip out into the garden and wander towards the Round House…a huge wooden structure built entirely of wood with a tin roof and completely round with two giant openings. The wood was black with the soot of the engines that were turned around in this round house. It felt adventurous to a couple of kids wandering through an “off limits” area over train tracks, snooping around for the hobos who would jump onto the next slow moving train for another world far from our own. Is it any wonder I love the train men who are my landlords and the world they inhabit!
The Last of Summer's Leaves
Well, what can be said of a Tuesday…the middle of February, the dead of winter and another snowstorm. My friend Diane labeled it this morning: “restless” that’s what she said. It is true I want to take up belly dancing and get a wild tattoo. I want to throw a few worn out linens in the suitcase and head for the sun. I want some cold outrageous coconut drink, and I want to sip the whole thing poolside with a sweet young pool boy who delivers it to my chaise lounge. I am wearing the worn linen trousers, and the sun is covering my bare feet…my face is, of course, protected by a big colorful shade umbrella.
I went to see Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart yesterday, and I left the theater with an urge to head west. And once I got there, I would walk into one of those bars that dot the side roads of Nevada. I can imagine the smell of such a place, having been there more than a time or two. It would smell of stale smoke and wet wool and spilled beer, and the bar itself would be rubbed smooth. The tall bar stools would have chrome legs and tired leatherette seats. In fact, the whole place would look a bit tired. There would be a juke box playing Western songs, and I would settle right in way over there in the dark corner, and I would watch the world happen.
Parked out front, at odd angles, would be pick-up trucks with dented bodies and back ends littered with assorted pieces of ranch life like shovels and maybe a big black and white Blue Heeler just waiting for his master. There would be hay scattered on the worn bed of the truck and, you just know, there would be a gun rack and bumper stickers from political parties I would have nothing to do with! But I would love the scene for the moment and for that time “restless” would not enter my world!
My mother could get restless, and when she did the whole house would shift. Moving furniture was an art form for her…something one did when all else seemed so the same. Over her lifetime, she shifted the bathroom at the house on the corner of 6th & G Streets three times….the sink, toilet and tub went from Avocado to Harvest Gold. In the end, they were all Mauve…her final and most cherished color! Of course, this shifting, which grew from “restless,” required a plumber and a carpenter and took weeks to manifest…but it cured her “restless” for the time being.
Party Still Life!
Well, I promised a few weeks back, when I posted the ‘Over The Hill’ bag that photos were to follow…now, this is not to imply that I am over the hill…God Forbid! But I am in a new decade of life. It seems there have been so many: there were children decades, married decades, and there were decades of driving a big mustard yellow Volvo on the wide open highways of Northern California. It was that same Volvo that I would park curb side of the brown shingled house on Locust Avenue in Mill Valley, and of a warm summer day, you could find me and my down pillow, with a good book, curled up in the way-back of that mustard car. If the weather was just perfect, not too hot, not too cold, I could catch a nap between pages of the trash novel I was reading. I might call that decade my ‘easy decade’! I might be tempted to think of this new decade as my wild, fun decade! Long gone is the mustard Volvo, the house, the husband, the children are grown…so why not move right into WILD!
Candlelight and Flowers on a Cold January Night
Everyone, young and old, just plain looks better with candlelight! Add to that, remarkable flowers in colors found only in the early summer. I just can’t imagine a better January treat!
Silas and the Blues Band
Dancing fools!
Wally in late September at "The Arb"
The first time I saw Wally, it was November; he was seven weeks old and in the arms of his breeder. He was wrapped in a turquoise towel, his little face peeking out from the folds. I was there to think about getting a dog. Mind you, I say think…up until the moment I laid eyes on him, I was certain I could easily walk away. He cost what felt like a fortune; I thought this whole thing was a bit excessive, even if it was my idea to buy a pug. I didn’t have a clue about dogs, no sense of their purchase price, no idea of the time or monies to follow just to keep the old boy upright! In fact, his purchase price was a bargain given what the next 13 years would bring! Wally (Wallace when he was wearing more formal attire) was a challenge…he had more trainers than I have had husbands, he couldn’t bear the sounds of air brakes or the color yellow of a school bus. I like to think this was his worn chino stage, which he wore with a muscle tee shirt with a pack of unfiltered smokes in the rolled-up sleeve! He was a thug in those days, nearly impossible to train, who slept on sofas and beds and loved the very best to curl up on the coat of some guest…especially if said guest didn’t relate to dogs! Wally saw me through the death of my partner, my father, my mother, and assorted friends who all left this world way too early. Wally stuck it out and knew when to be present with grief. He has aged and is now in his dressing gown stage…I like to imagine it to be one of those silky types with a small print and a lovely silk satin shawl collar and with this he would be wearing a pair of black needlepoint slippers with the image of a fawn pug on each foot. They would be the sort of slippers that the Duke of Windsor wore when he and the “Dutchie” lounged about with their assorted pugs. There is no question that Wally is slowing down and that this will be his last winter. I wonder what will become of Lulu who adores him as much as I do. She is blind and toothless. Wally is her seeing eye companion, and he is my long-time beau. How lucky I have been to have had them both!
