Chicago-Indiana-Michigan, episode 6. In which I page through a favorite collection.

When I think about it, I'm not really sure why I was an accounting major for three years.  I did always enjoy math and numbers and did well in my high school accounting class, so it seemed like a natural way to go.  What I forgot to inform the left side of my brain was that my passions lived elsewhere.
I should have heard the wake-up call when I snoozed my way through introductory finance and statistics classes, but I was already settled (stubborn) in my ways, or so I thought.

That's me during a recent visit to my old dorm,

home of The Wicker Lounge 1985-1986.

Frankly, it wasn't numbers and slide rules I had always been crazy about but words and books.  Books seemed to be the first thing I collected as a child--mostly overdue library books from the Warner Public Library (a most beloved, inspirational, and treasured place) until I had accumulated enough piggy bank change to buy my first brand new book at The Book Inn on Broadway and Main in Tarrytown.  I will always remember my first purchased book.  It was actually a slipcased paperback box set of the four original Winnie-the-Pooh paperbacks.  At the time I think it was a grand total of about five dollars and well worth purging my porcine account.  I must have read those books over and over every night for a year.

I'm going to take advantage of a section break here

before my silly sentimentality overwhelms me.

Even before my youthful sleep became Pooh distracted, I had always been a reader.  From that primal Pooh moment when I owned my very own book, however, I was hooked on books.  When I eventually left home for college I packed a trunk full of laundry-number-labeled-clothes and the cardboard box the trunk had arrived in full of books.  What else was there?

I also remember the point when I crossed the literary line from being a book buyer to a book collector and it was just about the same timely time (and at the same propitious place) when I became an unwitting purveyor of vintage men's fashion accessories.  That's one of the things I love about fleamarketing in general and especially about fleamarketing at antique malls--you can and will find almost anything out of context and out of era.

It was during one of my first visits to the Michiana Antique Mall that I came upon what would eventually become a favorite vendor and one which inspired me to collect books rather than just continue to buy them.  Andrews & Rose, a local bookseller of vintage books at the time always had a wonderfully browsable, neatly arranged (I'm all about the neatly arranged) and categorized book display and I always looked forward to perusing the precisely ordered shelves of accumulated volumes that had been gathered from years and miles apart to meet my bibliophilic browse.  Since my first discovery, this vendor's attention to display detail, to the quality and condition and selection of books, and reasonable prices have remained stellar.

This is the first book I purchased at MAM from the Andrews & Rose booth (which has since been widely expanded to cover a major portion of the mall's East end).  It seemed appropriate that an old edition of Browning's poems found its way into the hands, heart, and apartment of this Portuguese-American Domer and newly-declared English major.  That little erasable stamp in the upper right corner seems to be in quite a few of my books now, but I've never had the heart to erase any of these sentimental-to-me reminders of past hunted-and-gathered purchases.

View Andrews & Rose vintage book offerings online.

abebooks.com/home/anrbooks

Here are a few more of the volumes vanquished from Andrews & Rose during my early collecting.

I don't necessarily look for anything technically collectible when I hunt for books.  I'm not looking to resell or make a profit.  I collect because I enjoy my collections.  I don't dissect the title page minutiae although I do feel privileged to find an early edition of a favorite (or soon to be favorite) novel especially with original cover art like the groovy awesomeness of Tom Wolfe's trippy Sixties chronicles.  The simplicity and beautiful font work on The Good Earth reprint are what really drew me back to the similarly spare and beautiful prose, too. I confess, despite the fact that I am a librarian and was an English teacher for over 20 years, that I do judge books by their covers.  At least that's what initially gets them through the (looking glass) door.

I promise to finish Ulysses some day, I really do!  

More from Michiana before heading off to Chicago next time.

Chicago-Indiana-Michigan, episode 5. In which a Catholic school boy confesses.

Perhaps you've already surmised (or haven't given it any thought), but I'm a Catholic school boy.  I may not have always enjoyed the seemingly overbearing strictness at the time (my entire 1970s) but I have embraced and gradually come to appreciate my socio-theo-educational experiences at St. Teresa's in Sleepy Hollow (nee North Tarrytown), New York.  What I failed to embrace at the time was Catholic school boy fashion (navy blue slacks and navy tie).  Daily.  For eight years.  I don't think I wore a tie or navy blue anything for a long time after leaving St. Teresa's for public high school (go Headless Horsemen!) in 1980, but I did eventually make my way back to the blue and gold (go Irish!).  Despite my early and vehement dislike of constricting neckties (including the clip-on variety in the earlier grades) and light blue or white dress shirts, I somehow came around to a rather ironic early collection.

On one of my first visits to the Michiana Antique Mall I stumbled upon a basket of cuff links.  Each matched pair was held together by a stringed tag looped onto itself and each handwritten tag detailed the fact that these were "cuff links" and most of them were Swank cuff links.  Most were not swanky by my 80s standards, but had been manufactured under the Swank label in the 1950s for fashionable businessmen and the women who loved-hated buying gifts for them.  I had never in my life seen a pair of cuff links.  Under closer examination, the basket (a literal woven basket) of what my then untrained eyes had at first collector's glance expected to be vintage clip or screw-back earrings looked more like earrings for alien ears.  I was intrigued enough by the unusual nature of this item (and the fact that most of the tags read $1) that I took the basket to the long counter at the entrance and asked the Midwestern-friendly employee what these mystical metal fasteners were.  Armed with my firsthand shorthand oral history of men's fashion accessories a minute later, I quickly looked through the basket before anyone sneaking up behind me dared plunder my newly-discovered treasure.

I think I bought about a dozen pairs of cuff links that day, most from the dollar basket and a few others I discovered at various locations throughout the mall's booths where the blingy-before-blingy-was-cool accoutrements of former collectors, wearers, and purveyors of formerly fine Fifties fashion trappings had gathered under my amateur collector's gaze and were now dropped diligently by my helpful research assistant at the counter into transparent miniature pouches for safe transfer to a new decade and a new home across the state line.

This is an awful picture.  I will do my treasured cuff link collection better justice another day.  Maybe I should mention that this represents only about a third of the current collection?  (Maybe I shouldn't.  It's a bit embarrassing.)  I went a little crazy for cuff links when I first discovered them and when I first discovered them I discovered them in great abundance.  At the time, there were so many cuff links at MAM and at Picker's that 90% of them were priced at one or two dollars a pair. Eventually, I pared my copious collection down to fifty pair (some with matching tie pins) and symmetrically squeezed them into two shadow boxes that hang by my side of the bed.  Enough have probably been added since that early pruning for a third shadowbox, but I'm not quite ready to admit that yet, so let's keep that superfluous store stored in the nightstand for now.

If you're keeping track,

it's a rather large nightstand.

One day, I'll tell you more about some specific pairs I have found in the ensuing decades because many of them have a special story to share and you can't be a true collector without a special story (or two) (hundred) to share.

In addition to the origin of my cuff links collection, I wanted to share another early MAM treasure.  I think this may have been one of the first items I purchased there because, if you recall, I was looking to give my new college apartment some old character.  And just in case I haven't mentioned it yet, I collect old tins.

I collect old tins.

These were the first.  It's a set of four kitchen storage tins with a very cool retro graphic all around (and I apologize sincerely for not presenting these properly for you to appreciate the graphics, but I hope you get the idea and appreciate their awesomeness as much as I do).

When I first started collecting tins I used them for storage throughout the kitchen and to add character.  Years later when I continued collecting them just for display (in that large empty dust-collecting wasteland of character above the cabinets) I forced myself (with a little help from Mari--she's my clutter enforcer) to pare down the collection, making some itinerant collectors at a few of our "we're bursting at the seems" yard sales quite content with bargain-priced character.

These Farmer's Almanac tins I have kept for sentimental and aesthetic reasons.

When I asked Mari to extract one of her first MAM memories, she came at me with this beauty.  Like most women, Mari has always liked jewelry.  Mari, however, LOVES jewelry.  I like to think I had something to do with getting her started on her lifelong love affair with all that glitters.  After years of unearthing treasures belonging to kindred past spirits, Mari has developed an appreciation for and knowledge of all varieties of gemstones and all manner of luminous natural and man-made materials.

This early piece she says caught her eye because of the color and because of the length (it's doubled up in the photo) and stretches to about three feet in its delicately beaded circumference.  The large glass beads stationed regularly throughout appear to glow from within when the sunlight hits them (much like the mystical stones in Temple of Doom although Mari would be the first to call the authorities to have my poetic license revoked if I actually disengaged that claim from this parenthetical so herein it shall remain).

Mari and I both have favorite vendors at MAM and despite long delays between leisurely fleamarketing visits, they still remain favorites.  I must admit that Michiana Antique Mall is generally geared more towards the serious rather than casual collector.  I'm not saying a casual collector or browser will not find a great find nor am I saying that you must be a serious collector to shop here.  Serious collectors will be very happy to browse MAM and will likely be willing to pay the sometimes surprising price serious collectors are willing to pay.  That being said, there are many many beautiful and reasonably priced collectibles waiting to find a new home with casual browsers although I'm guessing that cuff links basket has long since been deprived of its closeout cache.

More on my favorite MAM vendor and another early collection next time.

Chicago-Indiana-Michigan, episode 4. In which divas drive our travels.

One of the (few? many?) great things about getting older is that (almost) everything old becomes new again. No, I'm not regretting giving up my wicker furniture despite the fact that my VERY comfortable papasan chair from my first apartment, which survived over two years of daily (ab)use and then the 1,500 mile southern migration, did not survive longer than a month after being cat-attacked under what I still believe to be suspicious circumstances.

Mari had the good fortune to never fully appreciate
my late 80s Wicker Mod styling.

During our Fort Wayne road trip, Mari and I discovered a remarkable kinship in most other areas, however, including our musical inclinations and Sade quickly rose to the top of our favorites playlist (in an era before iTunes playlists when I still enjoyed creating mix-tapes). It was only decades later in August 2011, however, when Sade scored a comeback with her Soldier of Love tour that we were able to cross "see Sade in concert" off our list of life adventures. It had been seven long years since our last visit to a most beloved area of the country and Sade's upcoming concert at Chicago's United Center was perfectly timed to become both a special birthday present for Mari and to signal the end of our summer freedom, so this smooth operator decided to go for it.

It was late October the following year when another beloved-by-both and legendary diva (Barbra Streisand) from our life adventures list appeared at Chicago's United Center, too.

Not quite a year A.B. (after Barbra) in June 2013 the American Library Association Annual Conference would be held at McCormick Place in (you guessed it) Chicago.  It was a remarkable honor for me to listen to one of my most treasured authors (authors can be treasures, too, of course) speak and read from her new, unpublished book of essays.  I barely remember the gibberish I muttered to Alice Walker when the hour-long queue finally dissolved in front of me and she handed me her freshly printed and signed book, but I remember walking away and finding a quiet corner to myself (difficult to do in McCormick Place, believe me!) to have a moment.

Each Chicago event was a magnet drawing us back to where it all started for us.

Mari and I started our friendship together as collectors, too.  I wasn't joking when I recommended fleamarketing or a visit to an antique mall as a date, even a first date.  You really get to know someone while metaphysically digging through the past lives of others.  It's like having a wingman and a bit of a buffer to help the conversation along.  Plus there are so many potential conversation starters to be found fleamarketing that awkward silent moments never have a chance to get awkward or silent.  Mari and I learned a lot about each other browsing at Picker's and we still do and still visit every chance we can.

However, there's certainly more to a happy life than one antique mall in Niles, Michigan.

Actually, less than a mile up the road (US-31 AKA Michigan-51) from Picker's Paradise is a second paradise for antique lovers (it's not the lovers that are antique, but we're well on our way, too).  Hard to imagine, but there is a second antique mall just before you get to downtown Niles!  No long romantic laundry-day-discovery story here, but the Michiana Antique Mall is still a favorite place and is always on our Chicago-Indiana-Michigan list.

Visit the site for lots of info, photos, and to search inventory.

michianaantiquemall.com

The MAM is smaller than Picker's and is laid out differently, but is also beautifully browsable and an enjoyably pleasant place to spend a morning or afternoon whether you are on a date, with friends, or enjoying some alone time. Although MAM is also comprised of various varied vendors, the layout is cheerfully open and light with long display rows for easy navigation. Still lots of great nooks and crannies for your collector's eye to explore and lots of great antique furniture here to make you stop and give it a second (or third) thought.

Mari and I have a few MAM items near and dear which we'll show (and tell, of course--lots of tell) next time and perhaps it's time to "link" you to one of my first collections/addictions.