Animated Clock Work

Time surrounds me everywhere I go.  Seriously, my house is filled with time pieces.  Not only is my husband the most handsome man I’ve ever met, but he’s ridiculously talented.  He can do anything, and being deemed a horologist is one of them.  You guessed it, we collect antique clocks. I don’t know whether I’ve mastered catching time in a bottle, but I sure hear it all over my house.  Admittedly, I often feel quite like that “Ding Dong” that I hear on the hour, every hour.  I’ll let my husband be the single “Dong” that comes on the half hour.

Mike had to have this General Electric Telechron Model that was listed in the GE catalog, 1941. He kept “walking the planks” so to say.  I’ll tell you what I mean by that.  That man would stalk the aisle where it was located at the antique market that we rent booth space from.  He ALWAYS wants to buy from where we sell!  Like, I would NEVER do that.  (you can’t count my dress form, vases, hats, and my Esther William coloring book)  He says “I gotta check if that clock is still there.”  When he begins to say, “if my clock is still there” then I know it will end up in the collection with the rest of the chiming heathens.  Mike falls off the pirate’s ship plank at some point, usually when Captain Laurie shrugs her shoulders. At least he doesn’t ask for a talking parrot like in one of those credit card commercials (or receive one with frequent purchase reward program).

It’s a gorgeous, sexy, almost mid-century clock.  Kiss, kiss, kiss.  I go to work decorating once it comes home and my husband touches it, opens the back, shines the glass, strokes the wood with a lovely hand and a tad of cleaner.  He does things that we keep secret in his workshop.  After all, Cogsworth in The Beauty in The Beast didn’t want his private parts to be exposed either!  I place it on top of another one of our acquisitions, a 1937 Stromberg Carlson.  That beast has its own story, to be written at a later date by my husband (it weighs like 250-300lbs! HOLY CRAP!) 

Maybe, I live in one BIG Disney movie.  Pirates of the Caribbean or Beauty and the Beast?  Best yet, we have to rewind our recorded TV every  hour in order to hear what just came out of Shemar Moore’s mouth!  Our little mighty 1940’s Cogsworth talks loud! We miss important case discoveries from Criminal Minds and “What did Tim Gunn just say?”   I am amused when the past interferes with the present.  Dear Lordy, Shemar Moore is very important. That must mean that Mike would rather hear from Heidi Klum rather than Tim Gunn?  Augh- the clock just chimed, sorry Mike can’t find the remote! “Make it work!”  Good thing Mike gets paid to make clocks work.

The Topping on the Cake

In honor of my husband’s Easter birthday and a suggestion by my good friend Edwina, here is a post regarding cake.  Who doesn’t love cake? I mean what can bring an office together faster than birthday cake?  ”Hey Frank, did you go to the break room and get a piece of cake yet? No, whose birthday is it? I don’t know, but there’s cake.”   Cake brings enemies together and turns them into instant “frien-enemies“  Shazahm - just like that!  A simple office cake can be a nice sheet cake from a grocery store bakery. Ordered the day prior, picked up on the day, simple personalization optional.  Done. Birthday celebration over with.  Luck strikes if you throw in birthday plates, napkins and half the day off.

However, there is a special cake that is saved for home and family members only.  The kind where the wife or mother (that’s me) spends time making the cake from scratch AND makes home-made butter cream frosting.  My mouth is drooling at the thought.  From childhood to adulthood your cake can be chosen based on your personal preference that year. Shall it be german chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, double chocolate?  The decor on top can reflect your current interests.  Men might have a golf green complete with tee’s and a plastic man wearing knickers.  A child might have the latest cartoon character.  Better yet, back in the 1970′s it was quite P.C. to have little red plastic Indians and white cowboys holding guns.

This whole blog idea came from a nudge as I have stated from Edwina all the way in Australia.  She runs a lovely blog showing off all her vintage collectables that are also for sale.  She posted some good ol’ vintage cake toppers and my mind became flooded with childhood memories of birthdays gone by.  My most memorable cake, who knows what age it was declared for, was little plastic ballerinas.  They had crowns, just like princesses and were molded into some graceful position. (as graceful as cheap plastic molded in Hong Kong could get)  As my mother NEVER made anything other than sheet cakes, and most certainly NEVER took the time to make home-made butter cream frosting, the ballerina’s, let’s say, ”took the cake“.  Having been a dancer then with many dreams of twirling myself on stage, it was that personal touch that told me that I was special.  It was MY birthday.  It was a celebration of me.  Well, isn’t that what birthdays are for?  It’s the best day of the year.  Celebrating you.

I have had the fun of decorating my kitchen in antique/vintage kitchen decor.  That of course includes cake servers and an ubber cool 3 gallon crock that reads “CAKE” in bold typographic letters.  Word has it that it was housed in a bakery serving up mini cakes in the late 1800′s.  Now it’s in my kitchen displayed with love.  I snag up from auction, unless the bidding gets too high, vintage cake carriers.  I can sell those pretty fast, as they are all over Pinterest and magazines. Unfortunately, I haven’t sold a one, simply because I haven’t let them leave my house!  (the hazards of buying and selling antiques).  I must add that I covet an antique cake server that my mother has that was her mothers.  Oh, it’s so pretty.  Mustard yellow bakelite handle,  held by many of my loved ones serving up birthday cake from years gone by.  Oh, how cake has served us well! No pun, well maybe a little.  I find myself wanting cake and I didn’t even know it was so important to me.  I thought I liked pie better. (I even had cherry pie one year for my birthday. My mother was grateful because she only had to go to the store for that one)  Thank you Edwina, I feel the urge to collect vintage cake toppers.  I am admittedly, trying to blame my Aussie friend.  However, what she doesn’t know is that I have for some reason acquired wedding toppers and have saved all my and my brothers toppers from the past.  I guess the joke is on me, I’ve been a collector for years and didn’t even know it.  Here are a few pictures of my shelving in my kitchen.

For all the years we have left to celebrate birthdays please do so in style.  Decorate that cake for your loved ones!  Request your unique style for your birthday cake! Don’t hide behind that age! Don’t shy away from attention!  It’s your day.  The day we celebrate you.  Honey, your top of the cake! Have your cake and eat it too!

Here is a very yummy cake recipe I strongly recommend.  Posted many years ago in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine Chocolate Edition, formerly named “Deep Chocolate Cake with Double Malt Topping”    Here it is currently listed as “Chocolate cake with Malt Topping”  It’s my choice for my birthdays past and will be my future requests (if that’s what my mood would like!)  You will work hard for that cake, not a simple recipe.  But, I will tell you this, it’s worth every birthday memory in the making.  Celebrate the right way in honor of being born to us any which way that you feel happy and surrounded with love.

p.s.  you do not have to actually admit how old you are on your cake.  As you can see, despite how it looks, I am older than my husband.  Unless, those are five candles lit next to the number 5?  I’m forever 18, and he’s forever 5.  Don’t believe me?  You should see his best kindergartner handwriting. Just keep them guessing, just keep them guessing.

It’s in the trunk

You always hope there is something inside a trunk when you open the lid.  Sometimes when lucky, there is a tray/insert inside and you get another chance at discovering something underneath.  One more moment of hope and anticipation.  Funny how our minds think that no one else had the same thoughts, like there was no one before us doing the very same thing.  However, that is exactly what we are looking for.  That someone before us that left something behind. I say ‘something’ because our minds are never too specific on what it has to be.  Of course the joke is always money, but truly we seek something that is more valuable.  Now, there’s the theory of GEO caching where all you truly do find is junk inside of a box.  That is different in a way because you are actively seeking the next station to find your treasure.  A trunk, now that’s a whole nother adventure on its own.  We stumble upon trunks. They feel mysterious, unpredictable. Tell us a story dear old smelly trunk.   Did it belong to the piano man?  ”Sing us a song, your the piano man”  Did it make travels across the country by train or by ship?  “Ride Captain Ride, Upon Your Mystery Ship. On Your Way To A World That Others Might Have Missed”   Military – which war and where? Maybe it was a Lady’s trunk preserving precious moments from her childhood.  It doesn’t always have to be a treasure per say, just something that feels undiscovered or forgotten that you made alive again.  Alive once again.

Luck had it one day when we stumbled upon two estate sales.  Funny, I suppose you figured out we didn’t actually “stumble” upon them. Yes, we strategically planned our attack on getting from one to another in the correct amount of time AND on the last day which usually is half off the marked prices.  You see here, this is my mode of thinking.  Swoop in on the last day, don’t pay the high dollar, and clean up what others think to be worthless.  Yes mam, or sir, I DO make money doing that.  Admittedly, we do wonder what we missed at full price.  I always tell my husband to not think about the radios and clocks that had to of sold for “big money”.   Of course we could get a number, wait in line, elbow around all those dealers.  Nah, I prefer to take my time.  Feel the goods. Pick and choose.  Look for the story.  I haven’t been wrong yet, well maybe that wood children’s potty chair from World Mission Thrift Store.  (money went to a good cause!)   I am a calm and patient person.  (seriously)  I wait for what is meant to be, come to me.  “Come to Butthead” Mike is more like Beavus.  He’s not very patient, but kind.   Our luck gave us two amazing trunks and an adorable, CLEAN suitcase.  Even better, each had a treasure inside.  No kidding! So, my story continues.

Mrs. Lester Hill, also known as “Peggy Darling”, once owned this very trunk that now resides in my sunroom.

Usually, a writer keeps you wanting more, waits till the end to give the best.  I’m starting with “Peggy Darling”  The initials on this trunk states, J M H in red paint. We know her name to be Peggy, based on a letter written to her by her husband that was found in the trunk. Hence, M for Margaret. H for Hill, obviously from the last name on the envelope and per her overseas husband’s letter.  J will remain a mystery.  Outside of this beloved trunk were several shipping labels via rail that stated destinations and declaring books as most of her content. Inside, oh you wait for it.  Recall that suspense of wondering what could be?  Let me back track.  For some strange reason, nor I, my husband, nor the estate sale employees ever opened the trunk.  They threw a price sticker on this trunk without caring what could be in it.  After all, it didn’t rattle when it was moved.  Nothing heavy of value, right?  Mike found it with other things and brought it up to me while I was already in line and said “what do you think, should we get it?”  (sometimes we do that when we think we’ve seen it all and make the commitment to be done. Then one of us looks around more, just in case) The price was right and we took it home.  Right on our front lawn as I decide to take pictures before cleaning them up, we investigate.  Curiosity takes the lead.  The story unfolds of Lester Hill and his wife, Margaret.  In 1945, Lester was stationed in Biarritz, France with the United States Army.  Mr. Hill worked at the Biarritz American University, Science Section, Mathematics Branch.  As stated in his letter to his wife he supposedly was “very, very lonesome”, he impressed the “beaucoup French women” with his “fluency in their language”.  He then goes on telling her that she needed to send the tobacco and chocolate bars that he had already asked for and that she wrote her letter S like the number 3 and that she better cut that out.  Let’s not forget about the tax bill of $8.10 that he reminded her twice to pay.  Men. Guess he better go to bed a little earlier than 3am after partying at the Officers Club with the French women.  (yes, he did tell her that).  Maybe she kept the letter for leverage later?  French Language guides, French newspaper clippings where men are frozen in time looking handsome in uniform, and military manuals filled the top tray of the trunk.  BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!  Upon lifting the tray, my husband discovered the rest of the story.  Mrs. Lester Hill’s wedding dress. All “wows” aside, there was the treasure.  Not just the dress, but the story.  Here were her beloveds.  We can tell the story not from the details, but from what was most cherished. Whether it was hardship or elation, here lies the beginning of her story.  From wedding (early part of the 1940′s), Lester’s job in New York as a professor, being shipped to France as a civilian to teach, and her letters that kept a relationship while apart.  The treasure.

The other two trunks are a bit of a let down compared to the first one, but none the less interesting.   It’s a good mystery here.  Just when I think I have it figured out, I find another clue.  My story really is a story based on SOME facts.  All I know is that once you get past the first trunk everything gets confusing and my story gets boring.  Honestly, somewhere between J. M. H, we go to J. H. M.  monogrammed on that lovely mustard suitcase.  Then there’s the military trunk  issued to Lieutenant Richard Marcus and then restamped upon promotion to Captain. The two trunks were at the same sale.  This apparently doesn’t HAVE to link them together as far as family relations.  There were return address labels that said Mrs. Richard Marcus. I guess saying that Peggy was a nickname based off her middle name could work.  J will remain a mystery.  Let’s call her Josephine.  For arguments sake, lets say that Peggy was called that by her father, Lester.  She then married Captain Richard. Fine, that works, but why in pray tell would a father talk to his daughter about French women and staying up till 3am with them, and “OH HOW I MISS YOU”.  Pay the darn tax bill daughter!  Hmm… We can create our own mystery story here.  Maybe “Peggy Darling” went and found herself a Captain instead of a civilian? The lovely mustard yellow suitcase in fantastic condition resides in my loft, suggesting travels yet taken. A simple note stuffed in the pocket written in pencil, “426 anniversary”.  Let’s let the stories create and travel to faraway lands.  Need a trunk?  I’ve got plenty