Ivan Potter
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 1:12 pm
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For me, one of the passages of youth to adulthood was the thrill of wandering through the ages of those who came before me. In my earlier years I chased time through the objects of those who left little treasures of memories in out of the way places.
My wife calls this process collecting junk to fill up space in our house. Yet, for me there is still the excitement of rare finds and treasure to be had along the forgotten routes of Kentucky.
When I try to explain my addiction to collecting time objects and historical artifacts, her eyes just roll upward and she usually walks away in disgust.
To the unbeliever and un-antique zombified people we call normal, there is no logic to chasing the past.
I am not a normal collector of stuff. I tell her who must deal with the realities of space and time of the present framed in common sense that all I purchase someday will be used for a museum of “MY LIFE and TIMES as a BABY BOOMER”.
S
till, she is not impressed.
So I stop telling her of past treasures found along the back roads.
-The rare first edition Hemingway book for a dollar being used to show off the color of a wood table.
-The lamp shade with a hundred stamps pasted on the fabric. Of these stamps, 32 were minted in the 1870’s and 1880’s and well worth the three dollars paid for the lamp shade.
So many items over the past 20 years.
Often she who keeps me on the path of common sense explains how our kids will sell everything in one gigantic yard sale when are gone.
No matter. Eighty percent of the fun is the chase.
For the true adventurer of time lost objects, there will be one of Kentucky’s most premier road shows this weekend.
This is the annual Highway 68 400 mile antique sale. If you have never been, grab the old car, throw in two coolers for drinks and food, unfold the maps of west and central Kentucky, and send post cards to friends and intimate family that you will be gone for the next few days in search of treasure.
They will know what you are doing.
And just between you and me, each of them will be secretly envious of the freedom you dare to chase the wind, butterflies and treasure on hot summer days.