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| Birch Hollow Photo by Suzanne Currie |
It wouldn't be right at all, to have written so much intimate stuff in the early goings of this new blog site for me, and of course our business, Birch Hollow Antiques, and Suzanne Currie's Cookery Nookery, without justifying all the mystic versions of past events, and the enchantments brushed up against over so many years, well, would be negligent, and I fear the point of the all the verbiage would be lost. You see, when I decided to take the business plunge back in the autumn of 1977, by opening Old Mill Antiques with my partner parents, it was out of a sincere worry that no one was going to hire a fellow with a degree in Canadian history, without having earned, as well, a teaching certificate. I wasn't like Suzanne, who did secure such a degree, and in so doing, would enjoy a lengthy tenure as a secondary school teacher. I was pretty sure I didn't have the patience to teach, and I was definitely not interested in speaking in front of an animated classroom of students thinking me the worst teacher on the planet. So instead of doing the sensible thing and getting my teaching degree anyway, I thought that if I used my historian's savvy, and my collector's passion, I could open a small shop like the mom and pop businesses I used to visit where I lived in Toronto, just a couple of blocks off Jane Street, and a few more blocks north of Bloor.
I used to get off the bus coming from York University, and visit a few charming family operated antique shops, that were obviously running out of time in more ways than one. The owner / operators were all quite elderly, and they weren't really doing to much to enhance their respective collections, because, obviously, they didn't feel it necessary. What I didn't know was that redevelopment of these business sections, neighborhoods apart, but still in transitional zones, the buildings where these shops were located, back in my school days of the mid to late 1970's, were about to be demolished. As fortune had it, however, I had several years to keep up my afternoon visitations, talking with the owners, and enjoying the near-ancient ambience that made such a compelling atmosphere of history and its relics. I can remember one shop bordering Jane Street, at about Runnymede, where I was greeted on each visit by what I determined was sweet amphora pipe tobacco, rising as almost a statement of legacy itself, from the owner's pipe, while he moved about in an old press back armchair; his wife and business partner was always doing some chore around the shop with a bottle of glass cleaner and a rag, taking the dust off oil lamp chimneys, and dusting over the fine flow blue tableware that looked so magnificent on the honey colored top of a long, well used yet preserved harvest table. I was spellbound in these dens of history, and the kindly folks who owned them, and had painstakingly built their fine collections of this and that, earned by unyielding respect. I was heartbroken when the first of the shops was vacated and the building demolished, and in short order a lot of other small collectable businesses were also vacated by both urban renewal and, certainly, a lack of business to cover rising rents, mortgage costs and of course city taxes. But I didn't come out of the several year relationship with these folks, without actually learning a few things about the way I would operate my own antique shop, if and when, I could finally afford a place and the shingle to adorn it, with Old Mill Antiques painted it bright bold lettering.
As I noted in the headline of today's post, I confess that I wanted to guarantee that my modest degree in history, would not limit me from getting ahead in the profession of my choice. And seeing as I wasn't being hustled by employers to join their firms, I hedged my bet by moving ahead quickly to open my first of two shops. Readers of these regular posts would know that my first foray into antique retailing was a minor disaster because my parents decided, as was their right as partners, to divert money into giftware instead of fulfilling the antique commitment. It left me high and dry, and our shop quickly became a place to find a wedding, birthday or Christmas present. That is not what I signed up for, or invested my limited funds to become as a main street retailer. I had to pause and, yes, get a real job as a reporter / photographer with the local print media, leaving my mother to run the shop in my absence, while trying to recoup my losses as a young, inexperienced, failed entrepreneur. But by golly, I did learn from two ends of disaster. I didn't like working for the print media because I have a problem with authority figures. Just ask Suzanne. And I knew that what had been set-up on the antique side of my new productive life, was not what I had witnessed and learned from, by visiting those wonderfully appointed shops of old, where two semi retired partners enjoyed each others company, and loved to visit with wandering browsers like me.
There are times, in this present tense when I get frustrated by the strangest realities brought on by our tenure in the same location, now in year 16, and the fact we have carved out a fairly good place in the antique and collectable market especially in the crazy-busy summer season. Both aspects of our present situation that we should love as the key signs of having made the grade as a surviving and thriving main street business. Isn't that what it's all about? Hard to answer that question positively, at times, when after a busy day at the shop, it takes till midnight to settle down the nerves, in preparation for a decent bedtime that should herald a good night sleep. It can only sound and read as if we are ungrateful about our business successes, especially after we have had such a challenging, interrupted year dealing with the Covid 19 shutdowns. But as semi-retirees, Suzanne and I would love to me more like the cozy-huddled oldtimers, in those shops I used to envy, where the day is full of companionship, casual interactions, some commerce mixed in an atmosphere of historical awe and enchantment; as the faint smoke of illuminated oil lamps sparkle in the low light of the structure, dazzling in the old glass of decanter and medicine bottle, and the merging aroma of spice from old containers still perfume the atmosphere and both pipe smoke and glass cleaner waft in the air from the enterprise of keeping a neat and tidy shop.
We are kept busy and that pays of in good commerce. But it does lose something of its charm and romance, history and legacy, when the shop aisles are full, and folks are lined up with purchases, anxious to get on with their day, by checking out quickly. No, this isn't quite as we planned our retirement enterprise when we set out our plans way, way back, so that we would get it right by the time we did actually reach retirement age. Now, gosh, what a problem, to have too much business, too much success, and too much to look forward to, making it pretty silly of us to think of it as a bad thing, to be so darn fortunate to have what others dream of, when they launch their enterprises in the first place.
Please let me explain further in my next post.
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