Antiques Ain't So Bad
When my friend B and I did a cross-country road trip last summer, we were amused by the incomprehensibly large number of "antiques" stores that adorn the otherwise barren stretches of our most boring-to-drive-through states. We never stopped to check any out, but I assumed they were full of items that could probably be best characterized as the accumulated trash of packrats whose death finally allowed it all to be cleared out of their basements.
While I couldn't care less about old silverware, furniture, or mugs, old printed volumes - books and magazines - have always caught my attention. Two years ago in San Francisco, a house around the corner from ours was having an estate sale, and I had a blast sifting through the mounds of pictures, pamphlets, and magazines. I felt triumphant when I paid two bucks for an immaculate hand-drawn map of San Francisco that was produced and given away free by a bank to its customers in I think 1942.
Last weekend when Ladan and I were in Bisbee, Arizona, we stopped into an antiques store in the small downtown area out of curiousity. Most of the store had the typical items that I imagined they would, but upstairs was a section for books, and I made a beeline for it. Once up there, I found a handful of books about airplanes, all previously owned by one man whose name he had written on the inside cover, as well as the year he'd acquired the book. I finally settled on two books: Strategic Air Command, published in 1961, and A History of the United States Air Force, 1907-1957, published in 1957. Aside from their worn covers, both books were in perfect condition. For $6.50, they were mine.
The books are classic Cold War texts: all black and white, very official looking. You'd almost think they were movie props or museum replicas until you realize they're real.
To me, the coolest thing about these books is that if I live to 2061 these books will be 104 and 100 years old, respectively, and will most likely chronicle a time that is radically different from the [future] present. At that time, looking through these books will shine a light on a distant past that very few living people will still remember, as opposed to what they are now, which is simply histories of places and events that our parents lived through when they were young.
Of course, unless I find a worthy successor to pass them onto, they might just end up back in the dusty book section of another antiques store.
While I couldn't care less about old silverware, furniture, or mugs, old printed volumes - books and magazines - have always caught my attention. Two years ago in San Francisco, a house around the corner from ours was having an estate sale, and I had a blast sifting through the mounds of pictures, pamphlets, and magazines. I felt triumphant when I paid two bucks for an immaculate hand-drawn map of San Francisco that was produced and given away free by a bank to its customers in I think 1942.
Last weekend when Ladan and I were in Bisbee, Arizona, we stopped into an antiques store in the small downtown area out of curiousity. Most of the store had the typical items that I imagined they would, but upstairs was a section for books, and I made a beeline for it. Once up there, I found a handful of books about airplanes, all previously owned by one man whose name he had written on the inside cover, as well as the year he'd acquired the book. I finally settled on two books: Strategic Air Command, published in 1961, and A History of the United States Air Force, 1907-1957, published in 1957. Aside from their worn covers, both books were in perfect condition. For $6.50, they were mine.
The books are classic Cold War texts: all black and white, very official looking. You'd almost think they were movie props or museum replicas until you realize they're real.
To me, the coolest thing about these books is that if I live to 2061 these books will be 104 and 100 years old, respectively, and will most likely chronicle a time that is radically different from the [future] present. At that time, looking through these books will shine a light on a distant past that very few living people will still remember, as opposed to what they are now, which is simply histories of places and events that our parents lived through when they were young.
Of course, unless I find a worthy successor to pass them onto, they might just end up back in the dusty book section of another antiques store.
posted by GregP at 2:24 PM
1 Comments:
Old books rock. And you comment about the number of antiques stores applies to the oddly large number of furniture stores that seem to be popping up everywhere.
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