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