I love Treasures. Unexpected finds. Surprises around corners that don’t scare you. Things that make you wonder and pause. History and stories from fact and imagination. Maybe a little bit of both. I love to search through salvage yards and thrift shops, looking for fun and interesting objects, wondering about their back story.
One of my favorite pastimes is exploring the dusty shelves of thrift shops stocked with their long forgotten mementos, and strolling through the rusty yards of a salvage shop. The memories of the items for sale have long been donated and shredded like a decades old tax record. Dropping the treasure at the donation door providing a sigh of relief, a lighter weight on the donor’s shoulders and renewed possibility for the object to find a new home
When I am looking around I am delighted to find a little humor in the random curio on a shelf. Always there is a little morose pondering, as I take a peek at their treasured past.
Here are some of my recent finds:
Great Destinations
If you haven’t been to Peoria, you haven’t really traveled. And everyone knows someone from Peoria.
The Husky Pavers
This find haunted me for an entire summer. The seal from the concourse in front of Husky Stadium at a salvage yard. Of course you wouldn’t want the commemorative bricks to go to the landfill. As I watched the patio become dismembered over the course of several months, I longed for a backyard project to give The Seal a home. But then – it was a logo which no one was ever really liked that much. Replaced by 2007 it is like a bad branding memory for true fans. Over three visits the pavers became more and more jumbled, making me wonder what happens if you commit to it, then get it home, and a piece of the puzzle was missing?
Creepy Doll Plates
Grandparents across the globe have collected plates like a right of passage to senior citizenship. But who was it that thought a series of collector plates with creepy dolls was a good idea? This is by far my favorite. It makes me think the plate saw something shocking while hanging in the formal living room and froze this way.
Never enough Collectible Plates
I started to see a trend after a few years – and it dawned on me that I had only scratched the surface in the world of collectible plates. The continue to be a source of wonderment and delight at all the different sets there are. Going forward, as I stumble upon them I will start my own virtual collection!
Not to be out done by Dogs playing poker, this is one of a set of cats playing cards, others in the series are cats at gardening and cats in the kitchen.
New to my plate treasure trove, but not new to thrift shops – the Gone with the Wind series. I think there may very well be a dozen or more that I have run across, depicting different scenes in the movie.