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to listen to one of my most treasured authors (authors can be treasures, too, of course) speak and read from her new, unpublished book of essays.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.

Chicago-Indiana-Michigan, episode 3. In which Mari shares some favorites.

After my great southern migration to deep South Texas in August 1989 and four subsequent summer sessions of graduate school back on campus, there wasn't another Midwest visit for nearly a decade.
As you might guess, a lot can and does change in a decade (just look in my mirror if you don't believe me).  A few of our favorites were gone without a trace when Mari and I returned to South Bend in August 2011.  Fortunately, Barnaby's was still around.

barnabys-pizza.com

It's comforting to return to a favorite location after a long absence to find some things haven't changed and Barnaby's was still able to support my need to be welcomed by hearty comfort food.  Along with its well-worn wooden tables and chairs, the always comfortably casual atmosphere wears a rich patina of Midwest friendliness as well.  It was a favorite place when Mari and I "dated" (in intentional quotes because we never really dated) and is on our travel list when we now visit.  Sadly, the romantic Italian restaurant (including poetically perfect table in front of the fireplace) we enjoyed on Valentine's Day 1989 (the night of my surprise proposal) is no longer there, among other lost favorites, but we do nothing if not roll with the times and look for new old favorites at every travel opportunity.  Besides, even without golden Mojo potatoes from Shakey's, a very cherry shake from Bob's Big Boy, or a super stuffed pizza from the Rathskeller, we will always have Picker's.

Collectors and casual shoppers alike will find everything at Picker's from old Avon pressed glass vases to slightly used slide-rules (and everything in between like what Mari has displayed below).  There are seemingly endless small, easily bubble-wrapable and packable collectibles from across the decades, great vintage jewelry and books, even a wide variety of furniture including desks, dining tables, and always a few lovingly crafted and gently used Hoosiers (tall kitchen cabinets with built-in flour bin and pull-out metal counter for kneading).  My mom was a baker and I am a baker with wonderful childhood kitchen memories and a passion for putting things in their place.  The Hoosier was invented for someone like me!  To this day the best I can do is admire, sigh, and walk away, but one of these days...

view a wonderful online exhibit of original Hoosiers at

amishacres.com/history/cabinet_collection.php

When I first shared Picker's Paradise with Mari she was probably as overwhelmed as I was on that first impromptu visit, but equally excited, too.  It's challenging to know where to begin in such a huge place, but we try to follow our general fleamarketing plan as much as possible and a temptingly titan antique mall is no exception.  We like to make our way to a corner and start methodically (there's always a method to everything wonderful).  In the case of Picker's, which is organized into booths (each with a different consignor), we will peruse one booth at a time then move methodically on to the next, going up one side of the aisle until we reach the end, then doubling back and perusing the opposite side of the aisle.  You can also walk the mall, staying on the central path and browse from side to side, if you are limited for time, but that's no fun.  Besides, you will probably miss that can't miss collectible playing hide-and-seek with your collector's eye in a booth corner or sitting whimsically on a shelf inside my future Hoosier cabinet.  It will still take you a good hour to get through every corridor, just looking from side to side, but that's still no fun.
More fun to stay home and read a good (collectible) book for an hour than to rush through Paradise.

When I asked Mari a few days ago to think about some of her prized Picker's picks, she took a deep breath and sighed (not always a good sign when I ask her a question) because that was kind of a loaded question.  As she pointed out, there are many picked at Picker's items currently in our home (museum) and some that have been passed on to other local collectors (including a beautiful leather-topped kidney-shaped lady's writing desk that was picked by a very excited young couple new to our neighborhood when we sadly just couldn't make it work in our home any longer).  Like her sentimental old husband, though, Mari has some treasured favorites and she's willing to share.

Above right is Mari's very first 
head vase.  She wasn't looking for a head vase nor was she looking to start a collection, but she found one and she did and she didn't even know these little ladies were collectible.  At the time (late 80s) we didn't realize these former florists' freebies from the 1940s and 1950s would become as highly collectible and as eventually difficult to find as they have become.  Like any discriminating collector, Mari is very particular about the 4-5" tall ladies she allows onto her two small shiny white shelves (perhaps she will allow the entire collection to make an appearance here some day).

I also managed to isolate one of Mari's first brooches collected from Picker's Paradise.  This jeweled Maltese cross was one of the first items that met Mari's gaze after I introduced her to the pleasures of a luxuriously leisurely afternoon at Picker's (a great place for a date--especially if you're not really dating!). I always find it amusing to reflect on how a single 2" diameter bauble will catch a collector's eye amidst the nearly infinite variety and number of items at such a gargantuan antique mall.  But caught it did and now it hangs at the bustling bright and twinkling center of Mari's brooch display.  It's one of my favorites, too, partly because, like me, it is one of the oldest pieces in my wife's collection, but also because of the majestically royal countenance of the jewel-toned jewels set symmetrically amongst the elaborately looped whorls of delicately-fashioned metal.

We linger lovingly at another Niles treasure trove next time.

Chicago-Indiana-Michigan, episode 2. In which I present a pair picked at Picker's.

I love the Midwest.  (I know I said that about New York, smart alec, but I love the Midwest in a different way than I love NYC.)  When I think of Indiana, a big smile overcomes my soul as I picture the abundant green and warm expanses of summer and the indulgent white and cool landscapes of winter.  (It's hot and humid in the summer and bitter cold in the winter, but my happy memories have helped a positive spin prevail.) Winter also seems to languish longer than it logically should.  I will never forget the (very early!) morning of my Calculus final exam in December 1984.  It was the last exam of my first college semester and a long nap-filled bus then plane trip home awaited this run-down scholar that afternoon.  With frozen slumbering grass lining the paths, I made my way across campus, sat for my exam, and emerged onto South Quad a few hours later only to find a foot of fluffy snowflakes piling up my previously plod path.  Needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyway) my long looked-forward-to nap-filled bus ride to O'Hare was much longer than anticipated as was my airport stay.  A few years later, there was also a memorable light dusting of snow on the first of May.  Mother nature laughs her tempestuous laugh in the regions affected by lake (Michigan) effect snow and I sometimes envy but always admire the vitality of my former fellow-Hoosiers.  It's for this precise reason, however, that I resist the temptations of a visit to Chicago and South Bend and Niles in the (long) winter months despite the breathtaking wintry beauty I hold so dear in my memory.

Mari and I have had occasion to visit Chicago a few times the past several years and I plan to share with you in future posts some of our favorites (including that Italian beef at Portillo's).  For the contemplative moment, however, I'm going to jump back to where I left off last and share a little bit more of Paradise.

This was the first item I picked up and purchased at Picker's Paradise on that aimlessly enjoyable laundry Saturday.
I don't know why I picked up this little (almost 4" diameter) bowl.  I think it may be a vase, but it seems very weighty (a bit over 2 pounds) to hold just a single flower.  It's marked Avon and I know it's pressed glass (molten glass pressed into a mold) and I'm pretty sure it's from the 80s.  It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be rare or very old, but I've never seen another exactly like it and I kind of like it that way.  (I especially liked that it was tagged at a budget-friendly four dollars.)  Along with my previously romanticized ribbed balm jar, this glass whatnot also found my as yet untrained collector's browse that lazy laundry day afternoon and so I picked it to help give my first apartment the character it desperately needed and it has enjoyed a special spot on various iterations of my nightstand for almost 30 years.

In college, I liked looking at it when I woke up, especially on a bright day with the sun hitting its sculpted curves and precise points as the morning Midwestern sun found its way to my window.  The Avon bowl moved with me to discover South Texas sunrises and has eventually come to contain the three miniature dried roses of my wedding day boutonnière along with rose petals amassed at other significant occasions, not all of them as resoundingly joyous, but equally monumental in the life of this sentimental collector.

Too sentimental for my own damn good.

Another visit to Paradise before my pending post-graduation southern migration yielded this rather unusual vestige of educational days past.  It was my inner Math geek who claimed this neatly packaged prize and to this day I have not (yet!) learned the once simple but now seemingly complicated pleasures of using a slide rule, but I admire the fastidious proficiency with which students of past eras slide-solved word problems pitting trains and planes against miles and elapsed time.  I have no Math geek implement collection; there is no calculator collection with which to join young Master M. J. Allen's once utilitarian (if not exactly treasured) slide rule, so it unfortunately sits singly in the top drawer of my nightstand awaiting a time when it shall be joined to an appropriate display or for a lapse in the space-time continuum that will allow me to put it to daily use.

One of the joys of collecting is just letting it happen.  Just letting the right object find you at the right time. Picker's Paradise has provided plentiful opportunities (for nearly three decades!) for me and Mari to be found.  It's always a treat to share the story of a favorite collectible, especially when it has come from afar. Something about finding that slide rule just as I was about to embark on a career in education seemed remarkably appropriate, so I picked the prophetic implement which had been passed on by my Hoosier confederate from a previous generation and set it on a new trajectory.

Time for some tastily memory-filled nourishment and a few of Mari's Picker's treasures next time.

Visit the friendly site in the meantime.

pickersparadiseantiquemall.weebly.com

Chicago-Indiana-Michigan, episode 1. In which our origin story originates.

With apologies to Holden Caulfield I'm about to wade deep in some of that "David Copperfield kind of crap."

I met my wife in college.  More specifically, I met her on a September evening in 1985.  It was a weekday and it was just past 6:30 PM.  She was briefly introduced to me by a new acquaintance, a very loud freshman from Pittsburgh who roomed a few (too few) doors down the hall from my single room-slash-closet at 427 Fisher Hall (right between the dining hall and the golf course) on the Notre Dame campus.  It was a privilege having a single room as a sophomore and I had looked forward all summer long to the prospect of not having a roommate for the school year.  I had also carefully planned (planning and list-making started at a much earlier age than college, believe me) the layout of my incredibly cozy 7x12 bachelor pad that included closet, sink and a big window under which the previous tenant (a good friend and also a New Yorker) had kept his bed. In my naive but creatively inspired efforts to make the most of my limited (84 square feet!) space, I banished the twin bed to the basement storage/boiler room where we all kept our luggage until semester's end.  Who had room for a bed in the Wicker Lounge?  Dubbed so by my sarcastically lovable dorm-mates and embraced by yours truly, the moniker was eventually fashioned into a sign that rested above my door throughout that 1985-1986 school year.

My mid-80s World Bazaar mod room, complete with barely-fit-through-the-door wicker etagere, wicker desk (doubles-as-a-guest-seat) chair, Donald-Trump-would-be-proud shiny brass storage trunk slash lamp table, and bought-from-a-graduating-senior black pleather recliner, was a popular stop on the dorm tour and my loud but endearing new friend had stopped by as I was sitting down to mentally gear up for a night's work by watching Wheel of Fortune.  He had brought a friend and they both sat and watched the remainder of the show with me, then promptly left.  I thought nothing of that evening until nearly two years later while driving to Fort Wayne to take my National Teacher Exam for Indiana teacher certification.  In the passenger seat was a classmate who also happened to be attending summer classes and who had offered free housing with a cousin in Fort Wayne in exchange for a ride.  Of course, sure thing. Beats getting up at 5:00 AM on the day of the test to drive to Fort Wayne.  (Where the heck was Fort Wayne?!)  Perfect timing.  We both happened to be on campus for the summer and both wanted to get these exams out of the way before the fall semester started, so why not?  It was on that two-hour drive to Fort Wayne with Mari that we realized she had been my unwitting Wheel of Fortune guest and it was on the two-hour return drive to South Bend the following day that I realized I had met the woman I was going to marry.  Met her for the second time actually, but who's counting?

There's nothing like being "stuck" in a car

with a stranger on a road trip to make you fall in love.

I hadn't planned on this little detour through my mind (with thanks to The B-52's for great imagery and one of my favorite songs) just now, but I needed to provide a little backstory for the episodes to come.  Back in the late 80s I enjoyed close proximity to two of my favorite cities:  New York, as you are well aware, and Chicago, only about an hour and a half drive or train ride from South Bend.  Now, a visit to Chicago is a visit to South Bend and a visit to South Bend is always a visit to Chicago and at least one fave, Portillo's, for a Chicago dog and Italian beef sandwich (and dessert).  More on those craveably fantastic faves next time.

A few weeks ago (NYC Markets, episode 6) I shared a photograph of one of my first collectibles purchases, a vintage ribbed glass jar of shaving balm that I had purchased while an undergraduate student shortly after moving into my first apartment.  Here is where it was previously housed.  I'm not quite sure what got into me one spring Saturday morning after doing laundry at the Fluff & Fold, but I headed north for a nice drive instead of south to put away my dryer-warm underwear and ended up just across the Michigan border at Picker's Paradise Antique Mall. (There's an apostrophe on that painted sign out front, but not on the website.  Of course, there WAS no information superhighway yet, just old US-31 North connecting Indiana with Michigan and me with a new old world of collectibles that would forever change my life.  Back to that apostrophe:  after decades of internal debate, the singular setting makes me happy because I'm made to feel as if it is a paradise of my own making, just for me.)

Sometimes, what appears to be a misplaced apostrophe

can actually be kind of comforting.

And that's how it all started.  That almost-forgotten Wheel of Fortune viewing, that day-long NTE exam (with lunch break between test sessions at Wendy's where Mari introduced me to the salty sweet joy of dipping a french fry in a Frosty), that neatly folded pile of waiting warm underwear in the trunk of my car, that right-instead-of-left turn out of Fluff & Fold...  Over the years, I've introduced a few people to Picker's, visited countless times with Mari, and have permanently etched Picker's Paradise (with its singular apostrophe) on my Chicago/South Bend travel list even though it's in Michigan.

And, of course, the NTE exam

is not recognized by the state of Texas.

More on the tempting trifles I've picked at Picker's over the (gulp) decades next time.