Antiques and a University Degree

WHY COLLECT/ WHAT COMFORT DO WE GET FROM OLD STUFF, NOSTALGIA?

WILL YOU BE A HAPPIER PERSON BEING SURROUNDED BY WHAT ITEMS YOU ADORE? CAN'T ANSWER THAT. BUT I'M PRETTY HAPPY. WHAT ABOUT YOU?

WHEN I BEGAN MY FIRST NEWSPAPER GIG WITH THE MUSKOKA LAKES-GEORGIAN BAY BEACON, BACK IN THE WINTER OF 1979, I HAD ALREADY BEEN AN ANTIQUE DEALER FOR THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS. IN 1978 I HAD MY FIRST COLUMN ON ANTIQUES, PUBLISHED IN THE BRACEBRIDGE EXAMINER, WHICH WAS ONLY SEVERAL YEARS OLD AT THIS POINT, AND WORKING OUT OF AN OFFICE IN THE FORMER QUEEN'S HOTEL (PATTERSON HOTEL) ON MANITOBA STREET. OUR ANTIQUE BUSINESS WAS LOCATED IN THE FORMER HOME / MEDICAL OFFICE OF DR. PETER MCGIBBON, ADJACENT TO MEMORIAL PARK. I'VE OFTEN DEBATED, USUALLY WITH MYSELF….BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE CARES, IF I WAS AN ANTIQUE DEALER FIRST, OR A WRITER FIRST. TRUTH IS, IT'S JUST TOO CLOSE TO CALL. IT'S WHY, FOR THE BALANCE OF MY DAYS AS BOTH, I FELT THEY SHOULD BE ONE AND THE SAME, BECAUSE BOTH CAREERS HAVE DEPENDED ON THE OTHER TO SURVIVE WITH AT LEAST SOME PROSPERITY.

TODAY, I HAVE NO IDEA WHY I DECIDED IT WAS IMPORTANT TO GET A DEGREE IN HISTORY. I DO UNDERSTAND WHY I GOT A MINOR IN ENGLISH. NOW THAT MAKES SENSE. BUT AT THE TIME, OUTSIDE OF A REASONABLE INTEREST IN HERITAGE, AND OLD STUFF, I HAD NO IDEA OF BECOMING AN HISTORIAN, OR FOR THAT MATTER AN ANTIQUE DEALER…..ALTHOUGH THERE WERE EARLY SIGNS THIS WAS A DISTINCT POSSIBILITY DOWN THE ROAD.

The point is, while qualified as a writer, and having a general interest in old glass, as a starting point, I began writing about digging bottles at old Muskoka homesteads, in those early Examiner columns, cutting my teeth as a writer, and as a collector / dealer. Still wondering at the end of the day, why I had spent so much money on a university degree, only to arrive at the same point as I was, when I signed over my first tuition cheque to York University.

It's not to suggest university didn't inspire me, because it did. I had some exceptional professors and enjoyed some truly interesting forays into Canadian literature and history, that most certainly planted the seed for a future amalgamation between those interests. After graduation, hugging my girlfriend, shaking my parents hands, tossing up my cap like they do in the movies, I came crashing down like a bag of bricks. So now what? Who is going to hire a self appointed historian writer-kind, the ink still wet on the diploma?

About one hundred percent of advisors, I could have gone to before enrolling in the first place, would have said, "Ted, don't graduate with a degree in history and a minor in english……if you expect to get a quick return on your tuition investment!" That's pretty basic. If I approached you, and said something like….."So, what do you think of a guy who has a degree in Canadian history, and a minor in english? And if you could, would you hire me?" Without experience, I was as unemployable. Employers actually asked me "What did you do that for?" It was as if I'd wasted my time. While my girlfriend then, was being recruited by major corporations, for her computer skills, and many of my chums had job offers in a tight market, I had a diploma on my bedroom wall, and a very worried look on my face most of the time.

Well I hadn't made a mistake actually. I had been writing short stories and comic strips since Grade Five, and collecting things…..especially from the local arena, since my earliest days as a Rink Rat, first in Burlington, and then in Bracebridge. Actually, it didn't matter what rink I was visiting, for an away game (as a player), because I became their rink rat by temporary association…….and would scavenge broken sticks and pucks that went over the boards. So it was destiny that the two hobby activities from childhood, would merge sooner or later. I just needed to spend a little quality time, letting both interests mature a little, and that was my university experience. I loved history, and I couldn't wait for my class on creative writing. It was 1975. I was deciding gradually, that I was going to be surrounded by old things in my life, and I'd write about what that was like. That's when my girlfriend smartened up to the true challenges of our relationship. One night, at a local watering hole, I talked to her about getting married one day, and she said "To who?" The two words, really, that changed my life. She was going places, and there was lots of money to be made, new friends to socialize with, and I was apparently settling for old things, in the old town where we both grew up. So not only did I have a rather hollow diploma on the wall, I had lots of closed-up framed photographs of boyfriend-girlfriend, and a huge amount of self loathing. So how do guys respond, in a situation like this. I went out and found a beautiful young lady, a born again Christian, an accountant in training, and even she could save my soul……she tried. I should have told her in the beginning, that my hero was columnist Paul Rimstead, of the Toronto Sun, an irreverent hometown boy that made the big leagues in the newspaper profession. She found me way too irreverent for my own good, as both a writer and antique dealer. My first scorn as a combined professional. Ted Currie, antique dealer, writer; drinks and parties like there's a pending shortage of both coming. So what looked like a wasted stint at university, actually worked out pretty well in both the short and long run. Here's why it has worked for me. It's simple.

As a fledgling writer, I used to make copious notes about my antiquing adventures. When I'd be out on some long-forgotten homestead, rummaging around the old property dumpsites, I'd take frequent breaks, sit upon some fallen log or hillside, and pen thoughts about the day, the finds, and observations about the landscape around me. It was then that I began a rough outline for a series of short stories I called "Homestead Chronicles," which ran in The Herald-Gazette in the early 1980's, but had been written quite a few years earlier. As a newspaper writer, I used my time off to attend auctions, and travel the countryside looking for lawn and estate sales, flea markets and antique shops.

As the stresses of the writing business grew, and my fear of punching-out my publishers became a real possibility, I spent more and more time delving into antiques and nostalgia. It never became an obsession, like it was for my mentor Dave Brown, but it was a relief valve that saved those editorial overseers, from painful (and irritating) atomic wedgies. Just about everyone at the paper felt this at one point or another. I don't know how they de-stressed, but my hunt for antiques etc., always worked. That and mowing the lawn. Suzanne always knew when I'd had a bad day at the office. I'd come home, and the next thing she'd hear was the lawn mower backfiring and clattering down the yard. I had a lot of bad meetings in those days, so my grass was "putting green" smooth. I loved writing, just not working for a newspaper. If it hadn't been for my diversion in antiques, I would have quit long before I did. My longevity in the day to day newspaper business, was thanks in fact, to accepting a feature editor's position with The Muskoka Sun, the summer publication of The Herald-Gazette, where I could work from home, and look after sons Andrew and Robert……..all of us, contently surrounded by antiques. We always had a collection of vintage toys they could access. A tough job, a difficult balancing act, but a dream situation I got paid to do……and made profits from what I collected, when refinished for re-sale.

When I ask how you feel about antiques, collectibles and nostalgia, and whether or not you feel, as I do, in their midst…….I do go back to my own origins in both professions, and realize clearly that the health of one depended on the health of the other. My former girlfriend thought I was conflicted about what I wanted to do in life. I blame part of that on Woodstock. And the stuff they were passing around. Even though I was mad that she felt this way, and that this diminished my stock in her mind, as a partner, Gail was absolutely right. If I'd been her, I'd have dumped me long before she did. I was a dreamer, and a country philosopher, and a bit of a romantic about it all. I wrote while sitting in summer pastures, in the heart of Muskoka, drinking in the ambience like it was wine. Gail was pursuing a lucrative career in computers, and from what I have heard, she has done extremely well, and of this there was never any doubt on my part. Suzanne, on the other hand, knew I was a bit of a flake, who lived large like Rimstead, and was going to spend a lot of money on antiques over a life time. She signed on to a leaky ship, but we've had a long and enjoyable relationship, that has been so full of adventure, that it could never be any less rewarding in retrospect…..as the story telling, devotees of nostalgia that we remain.

I often look around here at Birch Hollow, and am reminded by this item, or that, of the road trips, and misadventures, we had making those acquisitions. I like that about us. We can give you a story about most of the things we have crammed into Birch Hollow, and they are all little sparks of memory, as we get older, and the miles travelled, a little fewer each year. How pleasing then, to have your children, take up the profession with the same enthusiasm. Oh God, what have we done? Is it any wonder the lads are still single?