Porch & room

Here’s another story from my mom.

The trip had been long and tiring; we needed a place to rest for a while and stretch our legs. We seemed to have passed any likely place to stop when we saw a sign that caught our fancy. In large letters the sign said PORCH and ROOM SALE. We had seen signs for garage sales, basement sales, porch sales, barn sales, and yard sales, but this was the first porch and room sale. We decided to investigate.

The porch was small but well-stocked with primitives. We scarcely had time to look at them when the proprietor urged us to come on in. He was of medium height, not exactly fat but built from a square pattern, rather dark, wavy hair receding a little from the forehead. He was probably retired, looked to be 65 or maybe 70.

After his prompting we stepped into the room. At one time it had been a parlor or living room. Now the center was dominated by a table which served as a wrapping-counter. One wall bore a sign announcing that each item was 50 cents. Below the sign a long table filled the space from corner to door. It was loaded with sugar bowls that had lost their mates, odd creamers, jelly bowls – there must’ve been at least 200 pieces of glass and china waiting for a new home.

Another corner held a shelving arrangement. This extended from floor to ceiling and floor to corner, corner to window. How proud he was of this! The boards were salvaged from an old barn. He had put them up with only one nail so that a later tenant could remove them without damaging the walls. I am still puzzled about the construction but can vouch that it was sturdy; he shook it and closely spaced dishes didn’t even rattle.

Another shorter wall had shelves from floor to ceiling. Even the bay window had two series of shelves. And every shelf was completely filled! Here the sunlight sparkled on his better dishes and cut glass pieces. Before we could begin to see everything, our host urged us into another room and then another. These no doubt had been bedrooms, now like the erstwhile living room they filled to over-flowing with someone’s treasures.

We had taken a hasty look at it all, we thought, and started for the outside door. Our host had another idea. “Let me show you something you’ve never seen before,” he offered and led the way through his living room into a kitchen. Here the table was a treasure trove of Depression glass. He spoke knowingly of this pattern and that. We did, indeed see things we had never seen before. A few comments and we again moved toward the door. Our host invited us to view yet another space. “Come on out on the porch,” he urged. “It has something else you’ve never seen.”

The porch was large and fitting into a corner of the house, it had two walls. The other two sides were boarded up a few feet, then screened. Again he had taken advantage of the available space. From a long bench he picked up a metal gadget. “Bet you never saw one like this,” he challenged.

We hadn’t and I hadn’t the least idea what purpose it had served. My husband just with the first guess: a scouring device. This proprietor seemed a bit crestfallen but cheerfully called us on to his ace in the hole. This proved to be an up ground cellar. I had heard of such rooms but had never seen one before. Our guide was delighted. It was a cemented and plastered little room two steps below ground level. He showed us the shelves lined with food, some of it home-canned. And then he pointed to a square chute. It was near the door which led into the kitchen. “Bet you can’t guess what that’s for,” he said. We have similar chutes in our granary; they feed grain from overhead bins into wagons. We played his game; we couldn’t even hazard a guess as to what this one could be.

Gladly, he explained. Outside the house there was a wooden potato bin. It could be filled out-of-doors so there would be no dirt carried into the house. Then when potatoes were needed, one could hold a pan under the chute, pull out the board which acted as a regulator and there they were: instant potatoes.

We admired the chute and again moved toward the front of the house. The lecture and tour were winding down: he had told us his life history, why and how he collects, about purchasing the old house without ever stepping inside it, about his wife’s lengthy illness. He had even thrown in a few of his trade secrets. Asking, in anti-climax, he produced one more surprise. This was an oddly-shaped bottle, unique in pattern. We tried not to let him see that it was more fascinating to him than to us. “A young man like me has to have a job,” he said and added with a chuckle, “I won’t be 78 until September.”

We scanned the shelves in the old parlor again and chose a nicely shaped brown pitcher. The tag said one dollar. The price was cheap. Where else could we have gotten exercise, an informative lecture, and a good pitcher at that price?

Besides that, we had made his day.