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carolsartain

25 Sets of China

It was obvious we had lost our minds. We were in an antique mall in Simi Valley and I couldn’t find my friend. “Joyce! Joyce! Where are you?” Finally I heard a muffled reply that drew me to a display counter. Looking over it, I saw two legs sticking out from a bottom cabinet. “Joyce? What are you doing?” A muted voice answered, “You won’t believe what I found!” Backing out on her hands and knees, she emerged with pieces of a china set clutched in her hands. The seller had put a few items on display and stored the rest at the very back of his cabinet. “There’s more still in there!” she crowed and then she crawled back in. We were hunting for buried treasure and she’d hit pay dirt. Yes, it was a lovely set, American made, hard to find. Yes, her children have inherited it early and admire it to this day. But stop and think for a moment. The woman actually got on her hands and knees and squeezed her entire body into a store cabinet. That may not have been the nuttiest thing we did in our manic search for old dishes, but it was the moment when I realized we were crazed beyond help, because I sort of wished it had been me who crawled under the counter first. My husband, my friend and I had been scouring Southern California every weekend for two years or more. While she and I snatched and grabbed plates, cups, stemware, and teapots, my husband buried himself in used books and magazines. We were never the only ones at any dish destination. There was always lots of company when we arrived. You know the comedy routine where two or three people get stuck in a door frame trying to push past each other at the same time? I witnessed it first hand and it wasn’t done for laughs. I was at an estate sale with a crowd of antique dealers and only a few people were being admitted into the house at a time. Three burly resellers pushed to the front and when the nod was given they hit the doorsill and got stuck. It might have been funny; I might have laughed out loud except I was too busy trying to avoid being trampled by the next set of acquisition-driven warriors waiting to pillage the place. It was this experience that taught me I didn’t want to become a used thing seller. I lacked the Viking blood. These were the days before eBay and Etsy put most antique shops out of business. Yard sales, swap meets, and antique malls were piled full of items after which we lusted. Why did we lust? Nostalgia. Dreams. Acquisitiveness. I’ve never met a plate I didn’t like and seldom met one I didn’t long to own. There’s nothing quite like rounding a corner after you’ve lived on your own for thirty years only to come face-to-face with the same serving bowl your mother used. You must buy it; you simply have to, for nostalgia’s sake. (Then you have to hunt down the other seventy-two pieces that went with it.) In hindsight, I see that it was my friend who lit the fire in our hunter’s hearts. She loved to cook, and entertain, and set a pretty table, and she’d managed to purchase a set of prized Haviland Limoges china. Then the Northridge earthquake hit. She lived in Northridge. As soon the world stopped shaking, I called her in desperation to make sure she and her young son were unharmed. Miraculously, the phone landlines still worked and I got through. Her voice was weak with weeping. “What’s wrong? Did you get hurt?” She could barely speak, “Are you alright?” I frantically demanded. “We’re okay but…but…Carol…I lost the Limoges!” she wailed. Then she burst into sobs. It was so, so sad. As soon as the street fires were out and her neighborhood had electricity, as soon as a decent period of mourning was observed, we started looking for replacements. And then one thing led to another. First we started with Depression Glass. Then that got too expensive so we segued to American potters of the 1930s. She would find something and then I had to have something similar. We were Jadeite Junkies. (That’s an insider’s joke. Google Anchor Hocking Jadeite.) When I was young, my favorite exhibits at the County Fair were the table settings. Of course they were. Only after studying them did I wander to the rabbit bins to pet the bunnies. So it was natural for me to envision using every item I carted through the front door and then deposited in my storage shed. However, I eventually wore out and stopped buying. All right, it’s true, I did make an effort to complete every partial set with purchases from Ebay, but at last even that failed to rouse me. Plus, I ran out of strength to feed people so my cherished tableware aged in packing bins while I aged in the house. Once in a while my sister-in-law would take a look at the floor-to-ceiling cartons of collectibles and mock me. I defended myself by saying, “These represent at least four months of mortgage payments. I’m keeping them as surety against tough times.” She sneered anyway. The truth was I had no intention of selling any of it. I loved every item. In fact, when I arrived home one night to find the house burglarized, ransacked, all valuables stolen, my first reaction was to look in the opened cupboards to see if they’d taken my china. (They hadn’t.) A few years ago, I made an effort to cycle through a few sets, bringing some into the house and carting others back to the garage. My intention was to begin hosting dinners again, putting my dearly beloved tableware to good use. I got as far as one luncheon of salad and sorbet and gave up. I was too tired. Not only that, the cartons were now too heavy for me to lift, especially those that required a ladder to access. The time had come to do something. I decided to purge the place now to save the kids from having to do it later. This took an entire summer. What I discovered in the process was that I’d waited just long enough for the market to dry up, disappear, vanish into thin air. I couldn’t hold enough yard sales to empty the larder, nor did I want to. I’d had years of fun spending less than the equivalent time’s worth of tobacco, liquor, and casinos, so I called it money well spent and set about giving it all away. Friends and family got more than they can use. The man at my favorite thrift store begged me to stop bringing things; he had no more space. Before I could find other thrift stores, an enthusiast showed up and hauled away the last nineteen crates, much to my relief. In the process, I counted twenty-five complete china sets and an equal volume of partial sets, stemware, and accessories. There were patterns I had no recollection of buying. It was like looking at a well-stocked antique mall all over again. Clearly, I had lost my mind. Now there are two empty shelves in my kitchen. I leave them empty as a symbol and reminder. For any collectors reading this who are starting to hyperventilate, you can relax. I didn’t exactly do a complete sweep. I still have six full or partial sets of everything in the house. Company may still come for dinner. When the dust was settled, I stored a few cups and saucers of a kitschy 1943 dinner set for my daughter because she liked them. Looking on Ebay, I noticed a few more pieces and poof! It’s service for eight, maybe fourteen. The fact that my daughter said long ago she didn’t want them had not registered in my brain until it was too late. After that I was cured; I was sure of it. Last weekend, my hunter friend and I went to a Dickens tea in Riverside with the intention of paying our respects to my friend Queen Victoria and her Court afterwards. On our way, we passed a huge antique store we never knew existed, a lone survivor replete with four floors of our favorites. You guessed correctly. Queen Victoria had to manage without us.


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