other people's stuff.
My favorite antique just store closed. It’s a weird thing to have strong feelings about, but I have been cursed with a heart that has strong feelings about pretty much everything, and a second-hand store closing down is no exception. So it goes.
I discovered this particular store when I was still quite new in Madison. For the last year or so, it has been a place that I’ve enjoyed going on quiet days with nothing to do- little dates with myself. Though the building is a single story, the square footage is probably comparable to one of those McMansion houses with 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, a dining room, and a foyer. The store was huge. You could easily spend an hour and a half wandering around without passing the same thing twice. Some of the inventory changed frequently, while other items remained on display for the entirety of my patronage. One of the consignment stalls exclusively sold cast-iron cookware. Another stall offered an array of Tiffany lamps. One large section of the store was dedicated to beautiful teak-wood furniture. There were also books, weird chairs, salt & pepper shakers, Christmas ornaments, et cetera.
Although I visited often, it was rare that I ever made a purchase. My outings to the antique store usually felt less like a shopping excursion, and more like visiting a museum.
Museums are generally thought of as testaments to The Greats: artists and historians, politicians and scientists. They celebrate the hard workers, geniuses, and overachievers of the world. And rightfully so! They ought to be celebrated.
But what about the rest of us? What about you? And me? And your weird next-door-neighbor with the cats?
I like to believe that second-hand stores are anthropological museums of Us: the nobodies and ne’er-do-wells, the masses of every day folks whose names are forgotten by history. It is where you will find our discarded family heirlooms, decades-old prom dresses, and somebody’s dead dad’s record collection. It is the junk that fills our homes, the gifts we give to each other, and our expensive winter coats that have gone out of style.
You wander around these stores and what you see are “things.” But the excitement- that feeling of amusement and curiosity that you get- it’s not really about the things. It is about the people who the things belonged to. You pick up an ornately patterned pillow, and wonder if a child ever quietly traced her finger along the floral stitching to distract herself from adults fighting in the other room. You find an old copy of The Hobbit, and try to guess from the wear and tear how many times it has been read through. Who was reading it? From what harsh reality did it provide temporary respite? You see a crystal punch bowl with a set of eleven glasses, and imagine how one night, sixty years ago, the glasses were all filled with a fruity rum concoction at the dinner party where somebody’s parents met for the first time. (The twelfth glass is missing because some girl knocked it off an end table, and spent the rest of the night slurring drunken apologies.)
Second hand stores are more than just places for commercial transaction. They are little temples to humanity. Testaments to the tangible minutiae of our lovely, lonely, meaningless little lives- lives filled with love and grief and hilarious stories that no one will ever hear again after our circles have dissipated. Museums of the laymen.