THE TRIPS WE ENJOY AS A FAMILY

YARD SALE PAINTING, FOUND IN GRAVENHURST THIS MORNING!

THE TRIPS WE ENJOY AS A FAMILY

My father Ed wasn't really a rambling guy by nature. He had simple interests and liked to sit and watch life pass by, usually from a lawn chair on the front lawn. He liked driving around in one of the many junkers we owned, but he could be just as happy sitting in front of the television, on a Sunday, watching hockey, baseball or football. So I don't know what motivated him, to insist on our Sunday afternoon motor trips. I loved to travel but I just didn't understand what he got out of them. My mother and I were never quite sure if his trips were an act of benevolence, to give us some diversity in the week, or because he was restless and needed to see the sights. We spent a fair bit of time at roadside, because something had fallen off the car, or was about to explode. We only had a new car once in my childhood, and it was also a piece of junk, that demanded we keep our travel plans, on a route where there were reliable service stations.

     I can remember as a child of about five or six years old, having regular trips, from our Burlington home, to Niagara Falls, and a little park he loved in Chippewa, where he hosted his famous barbecues. It was on these barbecue stops, that he honed his skills as the family chef. Ed actually became very astute as a cook, and for the last thirty years, of my parents' lives, he handled all the culinary responsibilities. He got his start flipping hamburgers over a charcoal flame, and losing at least half the meat to the exploding fire within, before he could lift them from the grill.

     When we moved to Muskoka, in the mid 1960's, he would pack-up the foam hamper, and we'd motor a few miles to a riverside park, north of urban Bracebridge, known as High Falls. It was a beautiful little woodlot, beside a large cataract, and all through the abutting woodlands, were creeks and curious little trails leading to nowhere in particular. But that didn't matter to an adventurous kid, from an urban neighborhood. The point is, my wanderlust today has a lot to do with those early days, motoring an hour or two from our home, to some location he thought we'd enjoy. I came to depend on this outings as quality recreation, and as our family was a small one, me being an only-child, it was a chance to rekindle relationships that got strained during the work and school week.

     My wife had similar experiences, and always enjoys an interesting motor trip around the region. The difference for Suzanne, is that her family lived in a scenic little community, known as Windermere, on the shore of Muskoka's Lake Rosseau, where her family ran a well known marina, immediately below the historic Windermere House resort. The distance between their house in the Village, the marina, where they also had an apartment, and the family cottage, wasn't a hike of more than three miles. From work to dock took about ten minutes. I lived in an apartment building as a kid, with a small front and backyard, and if it hadn't been for a little woodlot, across the road, I would have grown up in the hinterland, but confined to an urban neighborhood. So even when my father wasn't driving us some place, I was always on the move, by bicycle or on foot. It didn't matter. I adored variety, experience and adventure.

     Gradually, I became a collector. An antique dealer. The need to travel was necessary, because I couldn't stock a shop, from what I was able to buy locally. While I depended on mobility, and sometimes had to rely on a girlfriend to drive me from auction to estate sale, antique shop to antique mall, it was never a case of work trumping the recreation of travel. I was the same guy, who, as a kid, stared out that car window, onto the environs I was passing through. I made a good and silent passenger, because it all amazed me as an eager sightseer. Even today, our weekly adventures, antique and collectible seeking, are never more than fifty percent devoted to the business side, of attending sales or visiting shops. As I've explained in previous columns, this year, there is nothing, even a flat tire, (or muffler having fallen off), that will intrude upon what we find so amazing about the antique hunt. They all remind me of the swell days, when my dad refused to tell us where we were headed, until I could figure out, "hey, we've been here before."

     Suzanne and I never firmly establish an agenda for the a day's antique excursion. We may be as organized as having circled interesting yard sale notices, we found in the local newspaper classified. We definitely are aware of church fundraising sales, auctions in the region, estate sales, and flea markets before we hit the road, coffee and cookies in tow. We allow ourselves to be distracted, by those unscheduled, unknowns of the adventurous life. The other day, for example, I was driving our boys around to yard sales in our bailiwick, as they always look for vintage vinyl and old guitars. At one property, in a neighborhood cluster of sales, I asked my son Andrew if he could check out a painting on a small easel at the end of the driveway. I knew enough about the type of painting, in advance, to hand him money to make the purchase. Now that's experience for you. Buying without leaving the driver's seat. There were very few items at the sale, to begin with, so the only item of interest, was this original naive oil painting, as it turns out, from the early 1890's. The painting depicts a snow-clad shoreline, of a lake in England, and is both signed and has family provenance Andrew was able to gather on his short buying mission. I often do the same for him, when Suzanne and I are on the hunt alone, and we come upon old records and vintage musical instruments.

     But we enjoy the excitement that builds out on the hustings, and mixed with the social side, because we're always meeting friends and colleagues on the road, and at the yard sale. Saturdays become recreational, despite the fact dealers and collectors are out in force, hustling to beat the home decorators, and general mix of sale-goers who enjoy the interaction. We don't hustle as much as we used to, and our pace is well off what it once was, when we were running a small antique shop. We just rely on experience to work for us, and in the case of the English countryside painting, a good purchase was made, for twenty dollars; a painting that is worth upwards of $350 as folk art. We are dealers after all, so we do need to offset the costs of gas and vehicle, but not at the expense of killing ourselves to get to a sale, or an item, ahead of anyone else. We always make finds, and it is usually lucrative, but never as a compromise of the escapism we employ, to distance a little from the wearying work-week. We quite enjoy seeing all the buzz around these sales, and at flea markets and auctions, and we find the social encounters quite fulfilling and entertaining. I like the history of visiting old homes, where sales are being held. Visiting farms and 1800's circa farmsteads, for auctions and estate sales, and leaning against fence-posts, drinking in all the provincial history of the occasion.

     When we attend an auction, on an average, we will only find four or five items we're interested in acquiring, if bidding goes our way. Yet we might stay at the auction well beyond what we have either bought, or wish we had, just because of the interesting character of the sales. Each one is different, as is the mood. Some are quite cheerful, despite a recent death which necessitates the sale. Depending on the auctioneer, some of the sales are like carnivals, and the laughter is contagious. Others admittedly are far more reserved, and sombre, but may produce some amazing and historic antiques. Even if I can't afford to buy them, we often will stick around long enough, to see a grandfather clock, or pine flat-to-the-wall cupboard, or Hoosier, sold off just for reference. It's no hardship hanging around these sales, as there are always chairs or fence posts to settle upon, to watch the activities going on around you. I was at one sale, quite a number of years ago, when a gentleman bid and won a huge concrete dinosaur for his wife's home garden. "You didn't" was all she said, as the glare intensified. He bought it as kind of a joke, as he was kidding at the time with his auctioneer friend, and one thing led to another. The guy was so imbedded in the deal, he had become a celebrity at the auction, and if memory serves correctly, the story of the dinosaur move made it into the local press, as a human interest story. He had to get a small crane to move it the twenty miles to his house. It's true. His wife did have it placed near her garden. Hers was a very unique garden. The dinosaur itself, had been part of a display of similar beasts, at a small entertainment venue, here in Muskoka, known as Dinosaur Park, near Windermere. At almost every auction I've ever been to, something like this happens. It may not be a dinosaur, but it most certainly will be a case of "Why did you buy that ugly thing," or something similar, between partners. I used to do this as well, until Suzanne took my bidding card away. She keeps it tucked into purse, and I can only have it, if I declare my interests first. No concrete dinosaur for her garden.

     We seldom arrive back here, to Birch Hollow, without some interesting stories, about what we've encountered along the sales circuit.  We will have most certainly had meetings with our antique colleagues, and visited for awhile with antique dealers and second hand shop proprietors, and found out what's been going on in our industry. We will have seen deer crossing the road, partridges and ducks in the typical locations, and have, if we're lucky, seen an owl on a farm fence post, that has been hanging around looking for mice; and in course, watched a storm system beat down upon the land, until the breaking sunlight in its wake, reveals a rainbow over the low mist of the meadows. We will enjoy these scenes just as much as we have enjoyed our antique hunting, and stints at local auctions. It may even inspire us to have an unplanned picnic, just to watch it all unfold, in this beautiful hinterland of Ontario. Some times the paintings we buy, look just like the countryside we are passing by, and winding around, via the narrow dirt roads between highland and lowlands.

     I never really understood what my father got from our family outings. He wasn't interested in antiques, or anything specific about nature, that at least I can identify from memory. But he did enjoy the collage of experiences of the rural clime, and the pastoral scenes that seemed to calm him from his demanding profession in the building industry. I don't believe he'd make a special stop to watch an owl on a roadside stump, or get all emotional about a pretty sunset, yet I suspect it was much as an art patron pays respect to an impression of a scene, or an event. That while void of photographic detail, makes sense to a traveller, in the tranquil, dreamy blur of colors and shapes, witnessed while motoring through the landscape. He saw and experienced something he liked, and he shared it with us. My mother and I harvested what we liked of those trips, and it wasn't necessary to comply, or to share similar interests. We found it enjoyable to just be together, for those few short years of existence as a young family.

    Suzanne and I enjoy the liberation afforded by our motor trips. Our boys Andrew and Robert, young businessmen themselves, were raised as I was, as a youngster. We were joyful wanderers, who allowed ourselves the privilege of experience to dictate each day's adventure, and it took us deep into the realm of possibility, each and every time.