Today's been one of those lower-key days. Nothing blogworthy as
such… and I'm not going to fill these pages with thirty-plus years of the best
and the verse of my writing – actually, I’m mulling over breaking out several
of these themes into their own pages/blogs: Totus Tuus (no entries there yet, though it's increasingly my most
essential facet), Steal My Stuff,
and What Lies Behind. We'll see.
Every so often, though I'm too young for the tall-pants and
blue-hair set, I wander through an antique shop or three (lots of them within
an hour or so of my metropolis of choice). There are quite a few reasons why, besides
just "squandering another useless hour", to shamelessly borrow from Tom and Ray; thus
was an hour wasted this afternoon.
Since some of my fiction involves the concept of time travel, I
enjoy being able to go in to such places and make like Jack Finney: peer at
old-old photos, handle nearly-forgotten everyday objects of several generations
ago, and so on. Finney's two big time-travel novels work extremely well because
the narrator is simply an ordinary guy (with a rather rare talent), one who
gets fascinated by little things (essential in a good story!) like the color
and texture of clothing, the taste of foods, the songs being sung, and so on.
My own historical periods of interest are the Roman and
Byzantine empires, and the early Christian church – although just about any
era, any place, has something fascinating. Yet in reading Finney, and watching
the movies influenced by or based on his work, I do lately take an unavoidable
interest in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era. (Ditto some other eras,
thanks to translating our family-history book.) In antique shops I can imagine
buying a pocketful of old American money (or Roman coins, as one shop in town
has), and then going back to its milieu and spending it.
The same shop that has the Roman coins also has a leather German
World-War-One -era… I want to call it a "shako cap";
this odd-looking, pitched-at-rear cap is a style that goes back at least a further
century. A number of my German ancestors would have worn something like that in
battle in WWI, back at least to the Franco-Prussian War some thirty-five years
earlier, as well as during regular tours of duty with the Imperial Saxon
army/cavalry before that.
For instance, our family genealogist mentions of my great-great
grandfather Heinrich Albert Schildt that "in 1849 he entered the 13th
Royal Saxon Infantry Battalion as a cadet" (my translation), later rising
to First Lieutenant… although the reason why (less than ten years later) he
left the infantry, which he loved, might become the subject of some other blog;
it has the potential to be a rich part of one of those many-generation
historical novels. That shop also sells military medals of various nations,
including a number of variations on the Imperial German Iron Cross, first
through third class, which the genealogist mentions being awarded to a number
of our ancestors.
So, in sum, a leisurely stroll through a large antique shop is
an educational experience, and lets me get an actual look at some of these
things mentioned in our history. I can also fantasize about stepping back in
time – although in greater seriousness, I'm trying to anticipate some of the
ordinary but long-since-forgotten things such a visitor might see.
I've also been mildly interested, for years, in picking up some
antique (1920s or earlier) John-Lennon style reading or
"working-class" glasses. A friend of mine who is a Civil War
reenactor bought an ~1850s pair years ago, and had his prescription ground to
fit them. Cool!!
And speaking of our still-mourned Johnny Moondog: today I got my
hands on my first set of the new Beatles stamps issued
earlier last month by the UK Royal Post. Yes, it too was at that antique shop.
I want to put a set in my album, but another must go to my older daughter who,
a dozen years ago, discovered the Beatles and promptly confiscated every
Beatles-type thing I owned.
A lovely new British coworker has persuaded her brother in the
U.K. to send a set of these stamps over for me, so that will make two.
Bizarrely, she looks a lot like that daughter's mom did most of twenty years
ago, though they're about the same age now. No, I don't have impulses to serve
legal papers on her… instead, we sometimes engage in dueling British accents
(mine fake – but quite good, she says); I gave her a hard time for saying
"mom" instead of "mum" yesterday. It's just not cricket!
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