My Father's Day Wish Was To Have a Laugh About the Characters We Have Become in the "Buy and Sell" of Old Stuff

Birch Hollow Photo by Suzanne Currie

     The reason that I am fascinated with the early years of our business, (1990's) which has of course become "businesses" now, with each of us owning one, is the reality it was the prolonged and ridiculously painful boot camp of the antique and collectable trade. It was brutal not because that's the way it had to be, but rather, that was what happened because we made many clumsy, half thought-out decisions, that put us at a disadvantage from our founding year of 1986. We had four reasonable years getting started, and then we ran into the cyclone of "this, that and everything" complicating our orbit. The first years were too soft I think, and we started to take for granted we had easily hurdled all the bad stuff that can knock down a rookie retailer inside that all important five year protocol. That's the most vulnerable time for new businesses, and we missed clearing it by a year. Yet in retrospect, it was a ten year jag that taught us to be serious about our budgeting, our ability to scrounge up inventory in the cheapest and most abundant way, and how to make a tiny shop look really, really big and full without breaking the accountant's heart. The accountant of course was Suzanne, who, by the way, did a masterful job keeping us gainfully occupied during those wild and crazy years, when doing business was pretty much a constant free for all, and if it had been the subject of a painting, it could have only been an abstract to an uncorked jazz theme.

     Having now completed fifteen years at our present location, at the former Muskoka Theatre, in Gravenhurst, opposite the Opera House, I thought it was appropriate that we set aside all the serious business talk, and have a few lighter moments thinking about how we managed to make it as a partnership for a decade and a half. Actually, both Andrew and Robert began their music businesses from our house here at Birch Hollow almost two full years before we moved to the theatre building on Muskoka Road. Before this obviously, they were junior partners in Birch Hollow Antiques, and the legacy of Old Mill Antiques, my first foray into the profession, dating back to 1977 in Bracebridge. But seeing as they weren't in the mix back then, and Suzanne and I didn't marry until 1983, I'm happy to agree that we have had at least twenty years as a budding family partnership with the boys. They will, after all, inherit both our businesses at some point down the road, including Suzanne Currie's Cookery Nookery. Point is, we have a lot to be thankful for, getting this far, and no kidding, if we hadn't possessed respectively good senses of humor, I'm not sure we'd still be living in the same town today. We've had some pretty rough moments, and differences of opinion that might have sunk the ship, if not for our longstanding tradition of working through whatever difficulties present. This was the school of hard knocks we all graduated from in the 1990's, when life wasn't simpler than today, but it seemed so much more electric and acute, such that it was hard not to remain alert and proactive to the very next typhoon to knock us off our feet.

     Although at times we wonder jointly why the hell we ever got into this public theatre of the retail industry, and have quit the profession about five times each month since we started, we have always rebooted our enterprise with a resilient sense of humor. My wish on this father's day, over a nice lunch affair in son Robert's Recording Studio, was to have a recall session, where we thought back to some of the lighter, funnier moments of the past fifteen years, of which, honestly, we could write a contemporary sitcom to rival the top five running today. We started off slow, and thoughtfully, and after about an hour of delving back, we started to laugh so hard we might have peed our pants except it was time for desert; and no Currie misses desert for anything except a second helping. I can't repeat these encounters and escapades with customers because that wouldn't be nice or fair to them. But it's the kind of anecdotal history that makes us feel a little better about the more serious side, of assisting our customers get the service they warrant. Yes, and at times, we have thought what you are thinking now, that we might have helped them exit with a boom of good humor; but as we are pacifists these days, and understand the importance of being tolerant and patient, we must be honest, that we have silently thought more aggressively about getting even. I don't think we could run the business another day, if we didn't have this escape clause in our most intimate and mindful sanctuary of playful thought.

     This afternoon, we laughed out loud for most of our Father's Day get-together, and put the seriousness of work and its accounting on temporary hiatus. It gave us reason to look more positively on the coming busy summer season, when honestly, we will have to muster a great wave of positivity, and free flowing good humor. We can withstand a lot of ill will from some customers and when we get a little frustrated after four or five derogatory comments, we can all look high, high above the sales desk, onto a little platform where, (no kidding) we have placed a tiny wee green Buddha with that lovely smiling face, that somehow, in such a pleasant way, makes us smile at adversity, and laugh about life's follies. We move on to the next customer and the next challenge for our partnership.

    I got my wish on Father's Day. That we stay together as a partnership, and never, ever forget the power and resolve of a chortle or two, when times through you a curve, a knuckleball, a screwball, and a spitball in one crazy pitch. We may not hit it out of the park, but we've going to swing at it like we know what we're doing. That's for sure.