January 13, 2009

• …farmwives sometimes do their spring cleaning in winter,

  because that is the season when they are indoors. So that’s what I’m spending some of these cold wintry days doing. And as I work my way through the rooms, closets and cupboards with vacuum, mop, dust cloth and trash can, I think of how much I love old stuff. All my life I have liked old things, and I am really not discriminating about it. I like the old furniture, dishes, quilts and aprons, books and photographs throughout our home.

                              

  Music? Play me the ‘50s and ‘60s any day; as I’m dusting the furniture, my radio is set to the oldies station. Old places are good to visit, like towns, stores, historic sites and even cemeteries. Old ideas? In Ecclisiastes 1:9, Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and that was written nearly 3000 years ago! Old-fashioned traits, such as common sense, good manners and a sense of decency, would be welcome additions to modern society, from which they seem to generally be missing. My favorite old saying is, “If all our troubles were hung on the line, you would take yours and I would take mine.”

  Outside in the garden, old dependable plants, such as lilacs, day lilies, iris, heirloom tomatoes and pole beans, outperform new varieties. Old sports heroes, such as Wilma Rudolph, Eric Liddell, Walter Payton, Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson, somehow seemed more heroic than modern icons. And if people can be considered “stuff,” well, I’ve always liked old people, too. They have so much to teach us, if only we take the time to listen.

                               

  I rarely buy new stuff; only things like mattresses and appliances come into our home bearing new labels. I have no use for furniture stores full of fine new furnishings. Flea markets and second hand stores are my favorite shopping centers. I’m just drawn to those places like a hummingbird to sweet honeysuckle. And the sweetest draw of all are antique shops.

  One of my hangouts when I was a kid was Wayne and Necie Clark’s second hand store, just off the square in our little town of 600. It was full of junk, used stuff, and antiques. I’d pilfer around in there for hours, picking up and examining all manner of old and odd things. How interesting it all was to me, from old farm implements to ‘30s-era kitchen gadgets! I loved to have Wayne explain what an old tool was used for or how a harness fit on a team of plow horses. Necie loved old churns and had quite a collection. When my grandmother gave me her mother’s old churn, I knew just how it had been used and how valuable it was, thanks to Necie’s interest. Of course, that churn is one of my most treasured possessions today.

                                   

  One of the first old things I ever bought was a teapot, found in Springfield when I was 14 years old. My mom didn’t like old stuff, but I persistently pestered her until she finally stopped at a promising-looking junk store on West Main. It was a hot summer day, and the door to the shop was standing open, with piles of delightfully worn old things on the sidewalk out front.

  Inside, the place was dark and musty smelling, and an old man was snoozing in an old chair. He startled when we went in, then resumed his rest while my eyes adjusted to the dim light. In a minute Mom had seen enough and went back out to the car, but I poked around, looking in overflowing cupboards and on stacked tabletops. Boxes under the tables were spilling out into the aisles. It was a veritable Old Curiosity Shop, right out of Dickens!

  In an old oak kitchen cupboard I found my treasure. The little teapot had a broken lid that had been glued back together, so the price was right for my limited budget (I earned 35 cents an hour baby-sitting in that era, so my purse wasn’t very heavy.) I made my purchase, took it home and proudly set it on my bookshelf, alongside my collection of Nancy Drew books and glass dog figurines. That teapot felt like such a grownup thing to me! I still love it, after all these years.

                            

  Through the years, I’ve been given old things from family members that are not valuable in a monetary sense but are high in sentimental value. My great-grandmother’s locket and thimble, my grandfather’s Bible with family births, marriages and deaths entered in his handwriting, Grandmother’s china-head doll, Granny’s glasses, Stan’s great-grandmother’s china cake plate, quilts made by three of my great-grandmothers, many old family photographs. Treasures all, these things have pride of place in our home.

                          

  A new word being used today is “repurpose.” It’s a verb, and it means to find a new use for something. Repurposing fits in with today’s emphasis on recycling, and it is fun to take something old and give it new life by using it in a unique way. I’ve seen many clever ideas, such as making a bench from an old bed or turning an old outhouse into a garden shed. My favorite repurposed item is an old hardware store table that I put on casters and use as a cutting table for sewing. Why buy something new? This piece has character!

                           

  Today’s new stuff will be tomorrow’s old stuff. So there is one thing of which we can be sure: there will always be old stuff. What is your favorite old thing? What is your favorite idea for repurposing something?

  • 2:21 pm
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