WWII gas ration book, Army Air Corps ( precursor to the Air Force) birthday card and a warning from Uncle Sam.
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Vintage political.
And then there was this strange little booklet about the different lodges. When you read it, start with the number on the top… it’s a countdown.
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I’ll spare you the entire book…
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Long live the Elks! They know how to hold their liquor.
And finally, my personal favorite…
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An ad from the St. Louis chemical company famous for its miracle cures and odd skeleton graphics. Many products contained quinine and heroin but this particular flyer is for Antikamnia. The formula varied over the years but the main ingredient was acetanilide, a coal tar derivative which caused cyanosis… turning patient’s extremities blue from a lack of oxygen. Deaths were reported as early as 1891. No miracle there I’m afraid.
Not finding any vintage beer or whisky crates on our shopping trip to the lakes region, we headed to the mid coast for a different batch of stores.
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We hit the Wiscasset antique mall first. This is my favorite place to shop for treasure. Three floors, numerous dealers and a whole lot of everything under the sun.
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They had boxes galore. Biscuits, seafood, soda pop, ammunition, fruit… everything but what I was looking for.
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Classic!
The next store we tried had a vintage husband attitude corrector…
A beautiful Maine summer day demands a road trip to the lakes…
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Long Lake, pictured here, is in the Sebago Lakes region of our state with the western mountains rising in the distance. The lakeside village of Naples is charming, and perfect for leisurely strolling with random stops to enjoy the views… unless you’re my husband who drove straight through on his way to a store in Windham called the Den of Antiquities.
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This is the view he prefers.
It was a great store with a converted pre Civil War era barn. Treasure was abundant.
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Like this fabulous old slot machine. Please note at $3,950 the price was not even close to fabulous.
Vintage white enamel bed pan used as a display container? Now that’s fabulous.
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I’m still hunting for vintage wooden beer or whisky crates to house my vinyl collection and thought I’d hit the motherload here..
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But in all those boxes, there wasn’t one alcohol related piece of wood in the bunch. Oh sure, I could have bought this …
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But who wants their records stashed in a giant box of rubbers?
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This crate had promise… it said it housed a dozen quarts which denotes liquid, but for the life of me I couldn’t make out the name. Google search came up empty as did all the other customers I asked. Even the owner didn’t have a clue. We shifted it every which way trying to decipher the lettering to no avail. I was struggling to understand what the hell ‘Caitus Guhs’ was when the owner had a eureka moment and figured it out.
The husband and I hit another antique store yesterday, but failed to find any appropriate vintage beer or whisky crates for my vinyl collection. (okay, I did see a Budweiser crate but even I have standards)
I’m afraid the search is proving fruitful in only one aspect.
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And that’s enlarging the number of albums I need to house in the first place. But I was happy to find 13 of the same records I lost decades ago. A few covers are in rough shape, but for $2 each I won’t complain.
And lest you think the husband came home empty handed, he found a treasure for the man cave as well.
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A wood bound mixed drink recipe book from 1941.
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It’s a hoot and has some interesting drawings.
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As with anything the husband purchases, he always tells me to look it up and see if he paid too much.
This was the first listing I saw.
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Yikes! I was impressed he only paid $15 until I saw a bunch of others ranging from $20-100.
Good luck wdan1351. If you manage to sell it for that price? Please let me know.
My vinyl collection is calling for a few more vintage whisky/beer crates so I twisted the husband’s arm and we spent a day antiquing. (You know that’s a lie. He was probably warming up the car while I was still in the shower)
On the way we had lunch at a little farm to table cafe housed in what used to be the Home for the Feeble Minded. It was uninspiring, so no photos. But the grounds at what is now Pinelands Farm are impressive.
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As is their endless mile of fencing.
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Our first stop was a store in a barn. And a beautiful barn it was.
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On the grounds of the owner’s home, it was a lovely place to shop.
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I like our man cave, but found myself knee deep in vintage barn envy at this two hundred year old gem.
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Two full floors of treasure but no wooden crates.
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I was tempted to come home with the Special Scintillator…
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If for no other reason than the name. But the husband vetoed that purchase.
The husband and I were on our way home from the grocery store the other day when he spotted an antique store he’d never been in. I wondered how that was even possible, but hey… it happens.
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When we walked in, I turned right and he turned left. It wasn’t long before I heard him haggling with the owner so I hightailed it over before things got serious.
Old cash registers. Fancy ones I grant you….
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But with a price tag of $2,500? I gave the husband the evil eye.
You know there’s only one answer to the question, “ what do you want to do to celebrate?”
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Antiquing of course.
This time around it was the semi famous, at least in Maine… Elmers Barn. A ramshackle place that looks small from the front but feels like it’s 10 football fields deep once you’re inside.
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In other words, husband heaven.
And because technically it was a barn at one time….
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This lovely fellow greeted us upon arrival.
My husband turned 75 that day and to be honest, for the last few years he’s been feeling his age. The combination of a global plague, retirement, health issues, multiple deaths of friends and family, and the general weariness of aches and pains that are more prevalent when you spend considerable time on this side of the dirt have finally caught up to him. This winter the twinkle in his eye has faded and there’s not much spring in his step. Once the weather turns and he’s able to soak up some sun and fresh air I’m sure he’ll perk back up… but for now all I could offer was a day sifting and sorting through piles ofuseless crap untold treasure and a promise he could buy whatever he wanted without nary an eye roll from me.
Oh, the sacrifices I make for love.
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This was one of the first things we saw when we walked in and I fervently hoped he wouldn’t want to buy it. Dolls in general creep me out, but dolls with dead eyes who look ready to consume your soul in one easy gulp?
No. Thank. You.
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Needless to say we spent hours in this store and saw our share of strange things. Vintage snow sled with training wheels?
Check!
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Taxidermy with stylish chapeaux?
Check!
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I lost the husband in the aptly named ‘tool room’ for a long period of time, but surprisingly after spending half the day in a creaky old barn that promised 3 floors of odd and unusual…. there were very few items that could be described as either. Quite disappointing, that.
And though I fully expected to strain my eyes in a valiant attempt to stop them rolling… my beloved only made one small five dollar purchase that day.
After a verrrrry long day at the antique mall from Hell my husband came home with relatively little in the way of treasure.
I was all for buying an antique wall phone to hang in the man cave and a vintage steamer trunk to use as a coffee table, but no. He wanted none of that.
His final purchases?
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An old wooden egg crate. Do we have egg laying chickens? No.
Moving on…
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The seven pieces of ephemera it took him two and a half hours to find.
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Did we need this classically decorated snake oil salesman’s card that claims to cure cholera?
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I think not, but we own it anyway.
Since my barn phone and steamer trunk were vetoed, I only came home with a handful of vinyl.
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Though one of my selections has a specific purpose.
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My husband went to Woodstock. The largest, greatest rock and roll event in history… he was there on day one.
For about half an hour. He walked around, didn’t like what he saw, and left. (If I had known this before we got married, it would have been a deal breaker.)
So because he turned his back on that once in a lifetime experience …. and kept me in that often cold and dark chicken barn antique mall all damned day…. I bought the original Woodstock album and will force him to listen to it. Over and over again, while I slaughter him in Scrabble.
Onward… through the never ending stalls of useless crap timeless treasure we went.
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Box of 1950’s risqué playing cards?
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Check! There were two.
Vintage hi fi speakers?
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Check! Two as well.
Absurd 6 legged patriotic corner table?
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Yup. That was there as well.
Because I don’t spend nearly as much time examining the junk unique items on sale as the husband, I’m always far ahead of him in the store. So when I see an area I think might be trouble?
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Like an entire room of rust…
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I try to steer him clear. But this time he surprised me and passed by the tool stall of horrors with nary a glance. We were halfway through the store by this time and I was lulled into a false sense of security that we would exit before dark.
And then….
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He found a pile. Actually he found pile upon piles of ephemera. For the uninitiated pickers among us, an explanation.
Ephemera – items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed ones, that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.
There were boxes stacked on boxes, files stuffed in drawers and a floor to ceiling shelf full of ABSOLUTELY nothing worth a damn. But this didn’t deter my husband, oh no. The more he looked and found nothing? The more he was sure there was something. He just knew an undiscovered copy of the constitution or Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten will was waiting to be unearthed .
I walked the entire mall three times, sat down and blogged for half an hour, chatted with other customers and read two old Life magazines. He still wasn’t done.
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I found old shoes that made my bunion hurt just looking at them.
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And World War II German mountain trooper boots I wouldn’t want to hike the Alps in…. but still, the husband wasn’t through.
After 2 hours and 38 minutes…. ( That’s how long he stood there sorting and sifting through stinky brittle old scraps of paper. Yes. I timed it. ) I pulled him away and gave him an ultimatum. He could finish browsing the store before it closed or I was taking the car and leaving him there.
Since it was a 65 mile walk home? He deserted his giant pile of vintage grocery store lists and life insurance policies and resumed browsing.
To be continued….
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 