GARAGE AND YARD SALES ARE A PICKER'S DELIGHT

GARAGE AND YARD SALES ARE A PICKER'S DELIGHT

     Already this spring and early summer season, my wife Suzanne and I, have made some great finds out on the garage and yard sale circuit, in our region of Ontario. As we have a broad range of antique and collectible interests, we can be satisfied very easily with casual discoveries of old vinegar crocks, vintage pop and soda bottles, collectible toys, games, sports equipment, all the way to pine primitives, furniture, folk art, and advertising memorabilia. We can find a little something at most sales we attend, and that's good for the host, and for the antique pickers amongst us. And the drive is always nice here in rural Ontario. Especially the misty summer mornings, passing through the lush forests and cattle-filled meadows. Although we are antique pickers, by profession, working in conditions like this, is pretty amazing for the soul. It's too much fun to be considered work.

     I have a particular fondness for the unusual. It might be a sculpture, an abstract painting, even a carved alien. That's right! A little green man whittled out of a chunk of Muskoka pine. I got one of those at an auction, one afternoon, in the Village of Utterson, south of Huntsville. A local woodcarver had created the likeness of an alien life form, with fist held over his head, obviously pointing to the power of the universe. It's green and neat. It now has a place of honor, wearing a different hat every business day, in our young lads' music shop here in Gravenhurst. When folks ask about our strangest, finds out on those Saturday sale adventures, I can honestly say the "alien" was one of our best acquisitions. The second, of course, was the dinosaur bone, we found at an estate sale, at a cottage in Bala, here in the District of Muskoka. When I found it, there was a small plastic toy dinosaur glued to the thick curved fragment of bone. Now I'm not sure of the date, it was originally sold to tourists, but this one, and many like it, were sold as souvenirs from Alberta, the plastic dinosaur mounted on the bone, I suppose, to prove that's what it was in fact. There was a reference to where in Alberta, possibly Drumheller, but I just couldn't live with the plastic dinosaur on a legitimate piece of natural history…..so I removed it. I was profoundly interested in the bone's actuality, but not so much the nostalgia of the bone as "a souvenir."

     One Friday afternoon, I came home with a old delivery bicycle from Tamblins Drugs, of Ottawa, complete with basket and license plate, which was required at the time. It was probably from the 1930's to early 1940's. I gave this to a bike collector friend from Toronto, in exchange for music memorabilia and any old guitars, banjos or drums he finds on his weekly jaunts. As my specialty is art, Canadian especially, and folk art most definitely, I have already had one of the best yard sales seasons in many years. I've returned home with some brilliant art panels, some early century landscapes, a few depicting the Muskoka, Algoma, Algonquin and Haliburton regions. On a drive by, of a sale having mostly children's clothing for sale, I spotted a nice winter landscape, quite out of place amongst the small collection of toys being offered for sale. I asked my son Andrew, if he could slip out and have a wee peek, to see if it was a print and not a painting. It was the real McCoy, and he returned to the car with a late 1800's signed, oil on canvas, depiction of a lake shoreline, adorned with snow, and a quaint cottage tucked into a small, nearby woodlot. As it turned out, the painter had been a family member, of the sale host that day, so we got provenance on the art work as a bonus. To an antique or art dealer, provenance is very important, but at these sales, it's often hard to get anything more from the host than "I don't know where we got that one." What was particularly noteworthy about this painting, was that it was inspired by the artist's ancestral home, in the Lake Region of England, and with the snow, looks a little more like Canada. It was in great condition, and had been well looked after by the owner.

     My wife, just this past week, was able to purchase a substantial collection of vintage children's christening gowns, and clothing, from another sale here in Gravenhurst, which was an extraordinary find, considering it was sitting amongst the usual yard sale bric-a-brac, of old slide projectors, and empty carousels, a plethora of garden implements, lawn edging, and about a hundred empty picture frames. This is why, as a picker, you don't judge a sale from a moving vehicle. It pays to get out an have a quick browse. Often times, even a casual conversation, may inspire questioning about collecting interests, and I've had it happen many times, that a sale host will invited the intrepid antique hunter, into the house for a closer look. It's a mistake to judge that even the smallest or newest abode, won't house a great work of art, a selection of historic Canadian or American art, or a vintage motorcycle covered with tarps, deep in the shed; that just might be for sale, if the right price is offered.

     We were at a rural sale, about a decade ago, and I had purchased a magnificent "student lamp," with its original cranberry glass shade. The vintage oil lamp, had a substantial value in brass and glass components, let alone the fact it was a sought-after piece of lighting heritage, that still worked. Ihad a suspicion, the older woman running the sale, possessed a lot more goodies like this lamp, somewhere in her newly constructed home. I had purchased many other interesting antiques from the same woman, in previous years, but the quality was getting much better. So I just asked if she was a wee bit of a collector herself. "No, not really, Mr. Currie. I just dabble a bit," she said, while grabbing for my wife's arm, and motioning me with her curled finger, to follow her into the house. Well, we went into the inner sanctum all right, and we both had chin-on-chest reactions. It was as if we had just then, walked into the twilight zone of museums. We couldn't adjust to the reality in front of us, and as long-time dealers, this was an incredible example, of why you must never judge a book by its cover.

    The rural home was modest, her sales, with a few exceptions, were almost always the same quality, typical of at least half the sales we attend. It's true that she would occasionally draw something she felt was no longer needed, or that a money requirement had unexpectedly surfaced, and selling off some "good stuff" covered any shortfalls. Gads, it was truly eye-opening, what this clever person had gathered over her collecting lifetime. Yet she scolded me, when I called her a collector. "I'm most definitely not a collector. I just buy things I like," she reminded me, showing us yet another room of wonderfully conserved antiques, dolls, and quilts, and so many historic clocks, crocks and old glass. I felt very junior, as a picker, in her company. She confessed her modest joy, at being able to accumulate all the items, by just doing the same thing as we were up to, on yard sale Saturdays. Come to mention it, we had seen her out at various flea markets and Thrift Shops over our years living in the region.

     Many times, I've had my spontaneous judgements smashed, when we attended small, run-of-the-mill sales, only to find something that didn't quite fit in with all the other sale items. Last year, my son was able to buy an incredible "Talking Machine," wax cylinder player / recorder, with its original horn, dating back to the early 1900's, because Andrew asked the right question at the perfect time. At a country sale, near Walker's Point, in Gravenhurst, he asked the sale host if, by chance, they had the companion machine to go along with the cylinders they had boxed for sale. "Yes we do. My husband was going to bring it down here, but didn't think any one would be interested," the woman responded. "I would be very interested to see it, if I could," Andrew replied. The woman yelled at her husband, in a cabin on the hillside, and asked if he would please bring down the talking machine. What we all assumed might be a Talking Machine in parts, broken, and unsalvageable, was in near-mint condition, and still in working order. Andrew paid the five hundred dollar asking price, and was given the remainder of the wax cylinders, some that could be recorded-on by playing music, or talking through the machine's horn. He later found out the horn itself, in pristine condition, would have been worth the asking price alone. As they have a vintage music shop, it fit in beautifully. But not for sale.

     Suzanne and I love the Saturday morning drives. We get a chance to wind-down from the work week, spend some quality time together (at least this is what picker's consider quality time), and make some interesting discoveries at yard sales all across our district. On the way, we will stop-in anywhere with an "antiques for sale" sign, and pull off the road frequently for coffee breaks, and a picnic lunch. We have been doing this from our first days together, back in the early 1980's, and we're still going strong in our middle-age-crazy, that we hope doesn't end because we soon hit senior citizen status. We left the stress of our early antique years back in the 1990's, when we had a formal shop. Now we hand everything we want to sell, over to our boys to thusly present to their clients. We are happily, of the picker-kind today, and we are very much influenced by the romance and allure of the open road.

     When you happen to be out on the yard sale circuit yourself, make sure to take some time along the way, to celebrate the picturesque locale, and the regional architectural heritage that has been preserved by Historical Societies in our province.