"Army" Buddies

Secondhand shops swap newness for variety. Finding it an advantageous trade, I rarely step inside a "normal" store. I prefer the beautiful and the ugly, the vintage and the modern, the useful and the obsolete, all vying for shelf space; pans like Grandma used for family dinners; hats like Dad wore, and toys GenX-ers remember from childhood. To fully appreciate the thrift store atmosphere, I'll shop with a friend--preferably one possessing a hair-trigger sense of humor.

My friend, Tammy.

For me, that friend is Tammy.

As we browse, instead of turning to fisticuffs over the same prime merchandise, our division of labor has me taking the kitchenwares for Laura's Last Ditch, Tammy the hair styling tools for What Once Was Lost. Combining business with pleasure, we pause frequently to draw attention to our most chucklesome discoveries. Loud guffaws from the Grand Rapids Salvation Army's aisles may well mean we're shopping.

My autistic son often shops with us. With "Look at this!" our refrain, he, who utters more echolalia than useful speech, proffers arbitrary finds, mimicking the "Look at this!" he's heard so often from the two of us. When it's a plastic ice cube tray rather than a toy, I am amused, a veteran mom no longer nonplussed by his horrific deficit of meaningful communication.

I sold Bridge to Mars in my shop.
Tammy convinced me to buy it. It sold
for $40 within a couple of weeks.

Some thrift store merchandise shares a similar dichotomy of horrific yet amusing: a bare-kneed ceramic nativity shepherd, created by an amateur wanting in skill; a shark in a jar of formaldehyde; a black velvet UFO painting I feel compelled to purchase. When I shop solo and find a tacky gem, I mourn the opportunity to share with Tammy my perverse joy. Regardless, I laugh aloud, semi-consciously hoping a nearby shopper will join my merriment--though no one ever does.

Just after Christmas 2010, I find a peculiar framed photo of a boar-like creature, an attached brass plaque boasting "Javelina Club Founding Member, 1986." My prolonged gaze weighs the laughs it might receive at next year's white elephant gift exchange against its $4.99 price and a year's storage. I replace it on its hook. Tammy goads me that I "need" it, but I refuse to listen.

A javelina. Courtesy: Wes Swaincott's Short Stories

Weeks pass, yet I cannot banish the Javelina Club wall hanging from my mind. I resolve to set my usual tightwaddery aside and spring the $4.99, confident I will rescue Javelina Club from humiliating Salvation-Army-reject status. When Tammy and I return, we approach the back wall of our favorite shopping destination we lovingly refer to as "The Army," ready to laugh anew, then consummate the purchase of what will surely be next Christmas's most outlandish gem. But, it's gone. Bereft of my prize, we leave the store. My good friend shares my disappointment.

Tammy warned me I'd regret not buying it. Nearly a year later, I still, like a fisherman, consider this the one that got away.

Friends come and go. With my outspokenness, hard-to-suppress bossiness, eccentricity, and social anxiety, crowned with a phobia that makes placing a phone call an occasion for angst, I marvel that I have friends at all; indeed, I have scared off or neglected many throughout my life. So I especially appreciate Tammy, who, accepting of my many quirks and foibles, has taken the bait.

And I hope not to let this one get away.


"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
― Elbert Hubbard
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Mooned in the Parking Lot

Olé Tacos restaurant in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, now defunct.

We sat in the car at Olé Tacos. My favorite fast food restaurant, I loved its stiff, nearly petrified, refried beans, spread thickly on a tostada shell. Perhaps this foretold that I would someday forswear meat entirely, in favor of a vegetarian diet.

As we ate, an Asian man, whom my dad pegged as a Moonie, approached our cramped dining room on wheels. Eyeing the children in the back seat, he took a furry little toy from his inventory. Pinching its back, the teddy bear's arms opened, then clung to my dad's collar. My recall lacks. Yet the sheepish look on my father's face and the Moonie's sing-songy couplet remain indelibly etched in my memory: "You like? You buy?"

A clip-on teddy bear like the Moonie
clipped on my dad's collar. For sale
at Laura's Last Ditch.

My dad's to-the-point reply, eliciting titters from the rear of our Chevy Citation, came in a contrasting near-monotone: "I don't like. I don't buy."

Advertisers clip teddy bears on our collars daily, tempting us with the same two questions, framed in ways difficult to resist. And, judging from our overflowing closets, cupboards, and garages, it seems most people affirm "You like? You buy" with an emphatic "Yes!"

I'm not averse to rescuing an occasional hard-to-place vintage oddity that would otherwise be tossed; I'd even sell a clip-on koala were I to find one. My goal at Laura's Last Ditch, though, is to provide practical items people can't find elsewhere, while reducing the number of new products produced--and subsequently thrown away--by offering durable vintage alternatives.That means vintage kitchenwares in abundance.

You like? You buy?

I certainly hope you like. I certainly hope you buy, or at least someone does. After all, even though Olé Tacos is long defunct, my husband and I virtually never eat out, and our low food bills inspire awe in budding frugalistas, we still have a living to make. Yet, I'd be remiss not to pose a third question, neglected by the follower of Sun Myung Moon who picked  the wrong target for his salesmanship in the parking lot nearly 30 years ago.

You need?

If not, instead of making yet another purchase, take the money you might've spent, and use it to bless another.

Then, await my affirmation from this side of cyberspace:

"You don't buy? I like!"

¡Olé!

Next: Walter, 1920-2011

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Walter, 1920-2011

Walter used this Polaroid camera
until just recently. He wanted a
picture with our son.

I wrote about our elderly neighbor, Walter, in Treasures on Earth, Treasures in Heaven. He died two days ago. We will miss him. What a wonderful person, ever eager to assist his Walsh Street neighbors, and always offering a kind word to our autistic son. May everyone have such a great neighbor; may everyone be such a great neighbor.




Next: Frosty, Arsonist: The Dark Side of Christmas Knickknacks Tweet

Frosty, Arsonist: The Dark Side of Christmas Knick Knacks

Frosty: Not so cute when
he starts your house on
fire. Courtesy: MLive

Perhaps black magic was in that old silk hat they found.

Recently I read of a giant snowman snowglobe that, refracting sunlight onto nearby combustibles, caused $1.8 million fire damage to a Michigan couple's home. With no injuries, we detachedly titter at this "can-you-believe-it?" occurrence. The $100 snowman snowglobe proved less than festive.

Merchandise-gathering for my shop, Laura's Last Ditch, draws me to thrift stores, shelves a-burst with snowman decorations and their compatriots: ceramic Santas with elfin helpers, flocked reindeer figurines, angry Grinch ornaments, plush teddies sporting cheaply knit sweaters. I hurry to more practical goods, while my frugal mind reflects: Who purchases these things to begin with? Who will buy, their cuteness morphed to tasteless kitsch? What unrealized dreams dog their former owners, having burned their money on such baubles?

Thrift store shelves overflow
with knickknacks.

Every secondhand store drowns in them. Yet, for each trinket awarded precious shelf space, jaded volunteers deem another unfit. And several never see Thrift Land's back room jungle, instead taking one-way trips to their owners' rubbish bins. Others languish in over-filled Rubbermaid totes, realizing similar fates once time heals the pain of having paid for them.

Mindless spending on holiday tchotchkes dwarfs the nearly two million in damage inflicted by Michigan's errant Frosty. Well-meaning folk frantically buy last-minute gifts; substitute Target's ineffectual retail therapy for meaningful interaction; or plunk a doodad in the cart, deeming it cute, or--for clearance shoppers--too cheap to pass up, collectively wasting billions of dollars, not to mention natural resources.

Courtesy: Sound of Cannons

Has Frosty, arsonist, lit a little fire in your wallet?

We squander for clutter. We shop, while needs go unfilled all around us. We'd donate more if finances weren't so tight; we'd volunteer if we had time.

Courtesy: Mulier Fortis

This year, while others--allowing wee Frosties to incinerate dollars one by one--attempt to spread Christmas cheer by buying more stuff, let us decorate, instead, with a small candle of caring--by serving God, neighbor, and stranger, mirroring a babe in a manger who came to give everything for us.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

May our little flames become wildfire, warming frosty hearts everywhere, making for a very merry Christmas.

Next: Failed dreams, surprising satisfaction: Swimming in SatisfactionTweet

Toast to Thrift

Of six, three had survived The Great Depression. Thrifty stock, we carpooled our way to West Virginia in my grandfather's Ford F150 conversion van--his baby--which he rationalized owning because he rented it to others through his Family Fun Rental Vans business.

Pipestem Resort State Park
Courtesy: West Virginia Department of Commerce

En route from Michigan, my parents, grandparents and I picked up my Great Aunt Ethel at her home in southern Ohio. Our destination: breathtakingly beautiful, uncrowded, and strikingly inexpensive off-season Pipestem Resort State Park in the Appalachian Mountains.

Our first morning, at the restaurant overlooking Bluestone River Gorge, my mom ate a fruit plate. Served on a decorative bed of romaine, she asked the waitress, "I'd hate to see this beautiful lettuce go to waste. Could I get some salad dressing?" Mortified--I was still a teenager, after all--I rejoiced that the hostess hadn't seated other diners within earshot.

After my mom ate her fruit, she was left with a
decorative bed of lettuce. Courtesy: BBQ Junkie

The waitress returned. I bristled upon the sight of two ramekins of salad dressing placed in front of my mother. She ate her "salad," yet one cup of dressing remained. A brainstorming session between a thrifty trio of mom, grandma and Aunt Ethel ensued, the obvious solution--saving it--proving impractical due to lack of a cooler. Worried that the runner-up idea of requesting more lettuce would result in an extra charge, my mom and grandma, chagrined, chose to abandon it.

Then, teetotaling Aunt Ethel grabbed the salad dressing, downing it in one gulp as if it were a shot of whiskey, exclaiming, "I like salad dressing!" While many people do enjoy salad dressing, few favor it enough to drink straight; that's why it doesn't come in 12-packs. A child of The Great Depression, she might've more accurately declared, "I hate waste!"

We could just chuckle about Aunt Ethel, proclaiming it silly to pretend drinking the salad dressing really accomplished anything, other than assuaging consciences.

But perhaps it did. A refreshing change of pace, she set an example, that food is something to be valued, not squandered without a thought. If Aunt Ethel could drink a ramekin of salad dressing that she didn't even buy, how can the rest of us fail to use what we've actually purchased? Yet, estimates state Americans waste over 30% of the food that enters their homes.

Courtesy: Bob's Healthful Kitchen

The book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half Its Food (and what we can do about it) offers ways to curb food waste. And I have some parting thoughts of my own to add:

*People continue to waste food, while donations to charities are down. If you're wasting, you're not giving as you could.
*On Thanksgiving day, we say we're thankful for our food, but a look in our trash cans proves otherwise.
*Many of us require our produce be pristine, or we trash it. But which is really spoiled? The produce, or the person who can't be bothered to cut off a bad spot?

Like Cutsi in my last post, The Mountains of Romania, Aunt Ethel, too, is a generous giver with a big heart. Indeed, with a good dose of thrift, even those of modest means can aspire to philanthropy.

So, next time you cull the old salad dressings languishing in your refrigerator door, drink--to Aunt Ethel!


Up next: We honeymoon at the in-laws', and I meet an incredible woman: The Mountains of RomaniaTweet