BUYING ANTIQUES TWICE

Before I was a farmer, I was a business woman.  I wore suits, high heel shoes; loads of different and coordinating jewelry; had my nails and hair done on a regular basis. Oh and I wore nylons every day.

This required shopping for my business attire fairly regularly at the malls.  Gosh do people still spend the day shopping at a mall? Why does that seem so much a waste of time to me now?

Have you ever purchased the same or similar shoes before?  Well I have, I would go into a store and think I really like that shoe.  And forget I already have a pair, maybe in a different color.

Well I have done the same thing with antiques.  This I find very, very strange.  I am a lifetime buyer of antiques and selling antiques.  My Mother did, my sister is in the same boat.  Fads go in and out of antiques, just like in clothes.  Sometimes we would fix up an old Victorian house and I would furnish it with appropriate antiques.  Out goes the Victorian when we built a new house in the country, so I tried to make it antique comfortable country since we had kids and dogs and lots of dirt.

Buying something twice first showed up in antiques, after my Mother died.  We had a huge sale because, well, she was a pretty crazy antique collector too!!!She bought, but she didn't sell.  We paid two ladies to do the estate sale because there was just so much stuff, outbuildings, barn, basement, house, garage.  We were able or allowed to keep whatever we wanted, but by then, what we each kept really didn't make one itty bitty dent in the amount of stuff to be sold.

For a while, I would see my Mother's stuff float in and out of local antique shops since most of the buyers were local people.  But then I started to see some of her items in nearby towns, sometimes in my friend's house!!!  Now that was weird.

A couple years later, I was shopping at a friend's antique shop and found a cute antique straw hat.  I collect straw hats and use them on the wall for "art".  

As I was paying for it, Jean asked me if I knew where this hat came from?  I didn't know.  She said, "your Mother's estate sale"!  Jean had liked it and had it at her house for a while, enjoying it someplace. A day before, she had brought new items into her shop to sell and one of them was the straw hat. The hat belonged to my mother.  Then sometime later I went to our local, Gridley sale and brought home an old tin container I was going to use for buttons.  We are talking maybe 10-12 years later.  I put the buttons in it and on to the shelf it went with the rest of the "stuff".  My daughter came to visit me and we were doing some sewing projects.  She brought back the tin of buttons and said: "I didn't know you kept Grandma's button box".  I told her I didn't, had just purchased it.  But as it turned out, it did belong to my mother and I, ended up buying it back. I knew it looked familiar, I knew it was calling me to take it home.

The last item is a strange item.  I collect porcelain, wood, ceramic, any old hands.  I believe the porcelain may be French, but I originally thought years ago that they might have been to hold gloves.

 But I always have used them to hold my rings and jewelry, in groupings.  

Remember, I was a working gal forever, and every outfit required matching jewelry items-earrings, watches (because keeping tract of your time was important); bracelets, pins.  Matching, matching.  

And as I took them off, they went on these figurenes.  So I got interested in antique hands.  I had purchased like 30 years ago, a wooden hand, never saw one before.  One time, someone told me the object was used for weaving, another said it was used for grabbing hot wash being washed in a bucket.  It was very bleached out and no stain on it, like it could have been washed.  Well, it fell out of favor with me and ended up in a yard sale, like 25 years ago.

Fast forward to last year in Gridley.  I went to the monthly, tent antique sale here in town.  I saw a few items I liked, without thinking, put them at the counter and they were in the bag to go home with me.  When I opened every thing up again to inspect closer and to hang or put away, I thought what an unusual object.  I found the perfect place for it, in my laundry room, don't ask me why.  

Each visit to the laundry room, to do wash, it just kept catching my eye.  Until I thought, I am going to look at some old photos I happen to have of my bathroom a long time ago.  Guess what was there?  Yep, that hand, that washer hand; whatever it was-it is back into my house.  Spooky.  

I guess some things are meant to make a full circle.  

I wonder where those items were before they came back to me?