Hunting the LIFE of a great Antique is much like tracking the Genealogy of a Family

For the last 15 years I have been "aggressively" working on our family genealogy. As a small child, I had an above average interest in my ancestors, much due to my mother's personal interest in her family history. She would recount the names of our family to me and tell me stories about different individuals as they were shared with her by her mother and aunts throughout the years. Her father's father had been a captured civil war soldier who died in Rock Island, Illinois, where we later moved near, in my teens. My grandfather was a Tennessee postmaster and received personal recognition for his service from President Nixon. My grandmother kept the written document hanging on their bedroom wall with pride. Additionally, my grandmother loved to brag of her early years babysitting Max Baer Jr, who grew up to act the role of Jethro Bodine on the television sitcom, "The Beverly Hillbillies". My mother, as a teenage girl, had worked in a WWII military camp as a cook, serving soldiers, one which became her husband, my father. Dad was fourteen years her senior and the life he lived, involved much traveling including his five years of military service. Dad's tales of travel, likely sparked my mom's interest as the oldest daughter of a poor family of eleven who hadn't gone more than three counties from home. All of their stories combined gave me a true love for history and the genealogy that I have located extends to multiple generations of stories. It is only natural that these tales would also spur my interest in antiques as they too have a history that involves the people that owned them.

I can vividly recall my first trip sneaking through our neighborhood "flea market" after school in Ohio. I was about 8yrs old, and my mother's fear of "child stealers" was immense, so while I wasn't permitted to "window shop" in this way, I was so intrigued by all the unusual old things that I couldn't bring myself to behave her orders. After a couple of trips, I bought an art deco bracelet with the change in my piggy bank and hid it in one of my bedroom drawers. An excellent deal by me, but this inevitably put an end to my childhood trips alone to search out antiques. My mother discovered the bracelet, but while she found ways to keep me from hunting down more deals back then, she didn't cure my interest. That single piece of jewelry actually went on to encourage my interest for the "Great Gatsby" and FScott Fitzgerald. One of my highschool German teachers, who claimed to be a former mistress to Hemmingway, had a huge flair for dramatics and would often share her stories and thoughts of all the great writers. One peek of my bracelet, and she said it reminded her of youth during the "flapper period" and the tales of FScott Fitzgerald's "Daisy". Of course her comment instantly set me on a hunt for all things related. My love of Art Deco grew into a love for Art Nouveau and once I discovered that "The Time Machine" writer, Jules Verne had a glorious home built with Art Nouveau details, it was if I was connecting the dots in the same way you connect the family lines on a genealogy chart. Jules Verne to this very day is my favorite writer, mostly because of his elaborate detail to all the style and historical notes in his stories. Picking up an antique early edition of any of Jules Verne's work, can be like your own personal time machine. The binding, the color of the paper, the smell of the book, any faint owner's inscriptions, it all speaks to me and tells me the history of its life, much in the same way my mother's, grandmother's and father's stories did. The next time you have the urge to antique, don't forget there are more than just written stories in those pages. Where has it traveled and who traveled with it?