When The Serious Side Gets Too Cumbersome, and the Pent-Up Good Humor Gets Ready to Pop - Antique Dealers Have Some Humorous Tales to Share

Birch Hollow Photo by Suzanne Currie

 

     I came back to our Bracebridge antique shop one morning, after doing some minor business down the street, and as I approached our parking lot, (at the former W.W. Kinsey Funeral Home on Manitoba Street), I couldn't help but notice there were a couple of hairy legs hanging out of the back hatch of our Festiva. It was all we could afford but it was a nice shade of blue. As I got closer the large fellow in short-shorts, was deeply imbedded in the boxes of books I had brought to the store earlier that morning. Now, let me footnote this by stating that in our line of work this is not as unusual as it may read initially. The chubby legs turned out to belong to my book collecting friend and mentor, Dave Brown, of Hamilton, and yes, this was our first actual meeting although Suzanne had told me all about him the night before. And she had told me, but should have warned me, that the book-guy she had met the day before while tending the shop, wanted to see some books she had said we were bringing in the next morning. All she had to do was say "estate" and Dave, a life-long bibliophile, would conjure in his mind how old they would be, and probably heavy on natural histories and both Canadiana and American. I don't know how he could predict the books from a very general conversation, but he was good at his recreation. And before I had even got in the shop, Dave was coming behind me with a significant arm load of unpriced books. Oh, how dreadful it was with Dave to horse trade, because this was as much a sport as finding good old books.

     This isn't a story about Dave Brown, and the fact he was my number one tutor for quite a few years, but rather a little inside scoop about what goes on with us antique folks in both the heat of battle and the calm before the storm, that allows us to move forward with each new day. Now in the case of Mr. Brown, that strange meeting in the parking lot of Birch Hollow Antiques led to a wonderful relationship with both an accomplished historian, educator, Outdoor Ed. being his specialty, and a truly insightful bookman, who scoured hundreds of old books shops in Ontario and in the United States, where he frequently travelled with friends. His mates went to baseball games in New York and Chicago, and Dave, who hated sports, went to his favorite book haunts and they met up again after the game. Meeting Dave for the first time, hanging out the back of my car, which looked pretty funny to passersby on upper Manitoba Street, was life altering, because I would be the one selected to write his biography by the subject himself. I agreed to write the text but it was on the understanding he would be contributing with many soon to come interviews. I had a lot of questions. Dave didn't tell me he only had a few months to live. Gosh, I still would have taken on the writing mission, but it did bother me that Dave in the spirit sense, would be with me twenty-four seven to advise and inspire. And Dave did this and more, but that's best saved for another post later in this series. The point I want to make, is that we are not nearly as serious and conservative as I might have alluded from the early entries of this biographical journal. There are so many humorous anecdotes, I could fill a separate text. Here are a few gems from past experiences, in keeping with this opening courtesy Dave Brown's hairy legs.

     A good friend of mine, John Black, one of the regions finest news photographers, who worked with me at Muskoka Publications, was always willing to assist a work-mate with whatever project needed a little of his expertise. John could fix just about anything and he was a whiz at electronics. He was also a practical joker, and I was often his target, especially on a busy press day, when we had fallen behind and might have missed our print-shop deadline. John could pull some stunt, or provide some comic relief, that would help us all get through the rest of the tension-filled afternoon, and still get to the press on schedule. On the day after the paper was successfully published for yet another week, and we had a few moments to abandon the news office, John offered to help Suzanne and I move some furniture into our newly acquired home, on the bottom of what is known to the oldtimers as "Tanbark Hill". The name comes from the fact that in the years of the booming tannery business in Bracebridge, harvested bark used in the leather manufacturing industry, came from uptown to downtown along Ontario Street into what is known even now as "The Hollow." The problem of course, was that the hill before being realigned was terribly steep, and many of the horse drawn wagons would flip going down the slope and dump their load of what was obviously called "Tanbark." I pretty sure it was the bark off hemlock trees.

     The hill is still pretty substantial even today. The distance between our old place and new home, was less than a full urban block, but the hill was a bit of a challenge. John and I packed on a heavy and somewhat awkward load, but as God is my witness, the magnificent pine cupboard and the entire load was adequately tied down. I got to our new abode first, to meet John at the front door. I waited for awhile, wondering if John had been called back to the newspaper office. I was admittedly getting a little worried about the fact he was missing in action. I got a call on our new phone, and was, I believe, talking to the nice bank manager about our newly signed mortgage, when there was a knock on the door. I ran around the corner into the hall, to see John standing there, on the newly installed porch mat, with an armful of boards. All with original paint by the way. That's important to us antique dealers, you know. "Where did you get those boards, John?" I asked, thinking that he had found some boards on the way down, he thought an antique dealer like me would be pleased to have for furniture repairs. "Uh, well, this used to be your pine cupboard Ted," he said, with a most serious look on his face. I thought, son of a gun, he's pranking me again. What a guy. "Okay John, that's pretty funny. So really, where did you get the boards?" "I'm sorry buddy, but somehow the rope broke halfway down the hill, and the cupboard hit the pavement and nearly the car that was coming behind." I cradled the boards he was handing me, and I said what was on my mind. "Well, John, old boy, as long as no one got hurt, and I'm not going to get sued, we can glue this sucker back together." The John showed me the cardboard box of splinters and when the serious moment passed, we broke out laughing. "Well, this is perfect. This is known as 'distressing' and antique, and you know, it might look older now than it did before. I'll call it a primitive piece of pioneer Canadiana."

     We made a major purchase of a giant brass National Cash Register mounted on a pedestal of cash and invoice drawers, that would open when the right keys were struck. It had been a fixture at the former Muskoka Garage, and it was known to even my father-in-law Norm Stripp, a regular at the station in years past, and he couldn't help laugh about us buying this monster of old technology, that weighed "way" to much for the average antique dealer to hustle about should it ever sell. Norm even played around with the keys and the drawers, just as he had been fascinated with, back in his youth when the unit was relatively new. And it was by all means a monster in terms of awkwardness and weight, and that it was top heavy was pretty obvious to most of us. Except one fellow who wouldn't listen to our advice on its eventual removal from our shop. Here's what happened.

     We had the National Register for about a year, when a young lady came in one afternoon, and told us that her boyfriend had been in our shop earlier in the week, and had been trying to figure out how to afford the unit, which was about fifteen hundred bucks. She put a downpayment on it as a birthday present for him, and it took about four months to pay it off. As it turned out, right about this time of year, at our former Manitoba Street location. We were, by the way, in the basement of the building, which also housed Martin Framing above. The staircase was not what one would describe as being steep, but it had about twenty or so stairs and a sharp turn at the top toward the front door. We had a lot of fun getting big items in and out of the basement, but nothing, to that point, had ever been stuck mid-hike upwards.

     On a busy Saturday morning, the chap who now owned the National Register came with an elderly friend, who was going to, apparently, dead lift the pedestal unit up the stairs. Meaning, he didn't have a freight cart or another ten helpers to get this six hundred pound antique up those menacing twenty stairs. A few of my mates were in the shop at the time, and we tried to convince the two lads, that there was no way that massive piece was going up the stairs without a mechanical device on wheels. They were a tad on the bull headed side, and blew us off as being rookies in the moving game. Just for the record. We, in that room at the time, were used to moving large antique pieces for our respective businesses. We knew that all the hubris in the world wasn't going to levitate that cash register out of that basement room and up those twenty stairs. But what could we do? Here were two professional bakers who thought they knew all there was to know about the shipping and handling of honking big antiques.

     The unit was wiggled and tickled to the base of the stairs. There were no alternative stairs in the basement, meaning that there was no exist, if they got the piece stuck on the stairs. Before I could warn our customers that there was going to be a slight and momentary compromise to the staircase in and out of the store, the "bakers delicious" had already started to tip the pedestal forward, with the younger fellow on the bottom, challenged to dead lift about six hundred pounds up one stair at a time. We had no room to assist as the walls and the width of the pedestal prohibited us getting our hands on the side or base. It was up to two bakers. And then, as you might have expected, of a top heavy item like this, the register came down on the baker at the front, standing on about the fourth of fifty stair of twenty. Well sir, the full weight of that beautiful brass cash register knocked the top baker down, sprawling on the upper stairs, with the full weight of the machine wedged into his crotch. I was in a position to interpret the look on his face, and the words he was silently mouth, being, "Jesus Christ, get this thing off of my.......... (genitals)". So here we have a trapped baker who thought he was a mover, and a store with about ten or so customers trapped below. And the conundrum being, how to free the fellow from this terribly compromising position, when we couldn't get even one hand between the pedestal and the wall.

     So what the heck do you do in a case like this. We asked the baker with a cash register in his groin, if he could withstand the weight of one of us climbing over the cabinet, and up and over his head, to be able to mount a top rescue; meaning it would be easier to right the fallen unit by raising the heaviest part versus from the bottom which was impossible. The look on his face said it all. "Over my dead body," which was very nearly the case. Then one kid says to me, "I've got to pee sir." Ah geez. The bathroom is upstairs kid. Can't you hold it?" To cut to the chase, a burly customer came in at the precise moment we were going to call for fire department assistance, and with another customers at the top of the stairs, managed to raise up the fallen register, releasing the poor nearly flattened baker.

     Moral of the story? The two baker lads returned the very next Saturday with a two wheeled trolly and managed without too much assistance to get the National Cash Register up those twenty stairs to freedom. We could have saved them a little agony but what do we know? We're just antique dealers after all.