In anticipation of our possible trip to the Antique Roadshow taping this summer, I’ve been silently walking around the house wondering what we should take.
Yes, we have hundreds of antiques… but it should be something special.
Something unusual.
Something expensive.
Something the dealers won’t roll their eyes at once we step away from the appraisal desk.
In a perfect world I would have taken this…
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A large Audubon print of canvas back ducks in Baltimore harbor.
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Years ago we thought this was the real deal. It was the right elephant folio size to be an original…
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It had the correct identifiers…
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The right printer and date.
It was a gift to my parents from a wealthy family friend and had been hanging on my parents wall since the 1960’s. My mother always told me it was worth a fortune.
She was right about that..
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But when my husband and I took it to Christie’s auction house in NYC 30 years ago we were told it was an only a good quality restrike from the 1940’s, worth approximately $3,000.
While that’s not chump change, and it may have appreciated some since then….
As previously reported, we now own a vintage buckboard/carriage/old thing.
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It’s prominently placed on the lawn in front of the barn for optimum viewing, because… that was the whole point of buying it.
Right?
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Well, not quite.
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Because every evening about 7:00, my husband pushes it in the shed.
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Every evening, and every time rain is forecast… or the ground is wet, or the wind is blowing or the frog in the field across the street is croaking too loudly.
You get the idea.
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Putting it in the shed is not an easy chore. It’s a really tight fit…
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And something tells me the damn thing is going to spend more time inside than out.
As we were driving back from the hardware store where we purchased yet more materials for the front porch, we saw this on someone’s front lawn and the husband was so enamored… he pulled into their driveway for a picture.
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Bizarre yet wonderful.
Also on the way home?
He stopped for a pie.
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The husband loves pie. And even after complaining vociferously about the growing cost of our renovation projects… purchased a blueberry for $30.
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Yes.
I completely believe that’s real natural beauty.
🥴
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Sounds like my kind of beer.
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I’d never seen this before and thought it was clever.
My husband scoffed and said, “That’s a swamp cooler. Where have you been?”
Not in a swamp apparently.
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The husband’s truck is in the shop… again. He loves that old relic but I swear it spends as much time at the repair shop as it does on the road. Thankfully our mechanic is an old friend and treats us right.
While I love seeing the animals at a fair, my husband prefers the old and rusty things in the village of yesteryear.
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Some interest him from an engineering stand point, some remind him of his childhood on the farm.
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Yes, he spread his share of manure when he was a boy.
Good times.
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There’s a wonderful museum at the Fryeburg Fair filled with antiques. The old wall phone I want to put in the man cave, the one that I’ve been endlessly searching for was right there in the middle… in perfect shape and mocking me with its unavailability.
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Husband got a kick out of these old washing machines.
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This one was called Easy and never has a product been more egregiously misnamed.
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The husband, pointing out all the rusty crap he has at home.
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I can’t imagine dragging this behemoth around every time I wanted to take a picture.
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And because no post about old tools is complete without a game of Name That Crap..
In case you hadn’t guessed our recent scenic drive up the coast wasn’t random, it had a particular destination in mind.
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The often heard of, always praised… BCB.
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It didn’t fail to impress.
The place is huge.
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As advertised… it’s a giant chicken barn with the bottom floor devoted to a multi dealer antique store and the top floor home to over 200,000 books which sounded like pure heaven to me .
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We entered the building and turned left, happily strolling in and out of treasure filled booths. Husband is obsessed with old glass water jugs, but he already had this one and reluctantly put it back.
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I saw Benjamin Franklin… complete with kite.
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And the type of vintage crank phone I’ve been wanting for the man cave/Barn Mahal… though this one was in terrible shape… so there it stayed.
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The downstairs seemed to go on forever but when we were through with the left side of the barn and returned to the middle entrance to peruse the right side, the temperature started rising. ( Husband is seen here examining a wooden egg crate, but we already have 3… so I said no ) This old building has no air conditioning and it being the middle of summer… things were starting to get downright uncomfortable. For some reason the farther right you went the hotter it got so I was basically speed walking through the stalls trying to work my way back to a cooler section.
And because I don’t need any more vintage wooden crates for my vinyl record collection?
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A veritable mountain of vintage wooden crates for my vinyl record collection.
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And this … because a big chicken barn needs a randomly placed big chicken.
I’m ashamed to report I did not have the stamina to peruse the books. I climbed the large staircase, reached the top and literally couldn’t breathe for the heat. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say the temperature rivaled the surface of the sun. Okay, maybe that’s extreme… but honestly, it was unbearable and everyone who ascended to the second floor came right back down. I wish I’d known this before we came, I would have planned a fall or winter visit.
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We took a different route home and drove through one of the prettiest coastal towns in the state, Camden.
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We thought about lunch but the downtown area was packed solid with wall to wall tourists so we just breezed on by….
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With me wanting a hobbit doorway under our porch like this one.
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😊
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 