Time Machines

Why is it the Goodwill is so busy? And Etsy has become so popular? Why do cars line the road for a few folding tables of old, unwanted items at a yard sale? And why are my spirits lifted just by poking around these places?

The last question is mostly because I am a little weird, but overall, I think the reason is nostalgia. Finding those things that instantly transport us back to a moment in our childhood. Touchstones of more innocent an carefree times.

I had just such a moment yesterday when I came across this old metal dispenser for "Foil, Wax and Paper" towels, having spent much of my childhood using one exactly like it that was mounted to my parent's kitchen wall.

I didn't have any particular fond remembrance of this handy contraption, but when I came face to face with it at a thrift store, it was as if a time machine had sucked me instantly back to the 1970's.

For just a moment I could hear Patsy Cline playing on the radio, smell the coffee from the percolator on the stove, and feel the scratched Formica countertop that sat underneath this useful dispenser of household goods as my mother told me to wash my hands for dinner. I was a child in my parent's kitchen once again. Nostalgic bliss.

I have a "shop" on Etsy.com and I believe this phenomenon is a large part of what fuels many of the buyers on that site, too. An object sparking that memory or special feeling you would all have but forgotten until you saw it again.

For example, I once got a lovely thank you note from a woman who purchased a squirrel-shaped cookie jar from me - which I'd originally found at a thrift store. She said it was exactly like the one she had grown up with, which had been broken when they moved her mother out of her house into a nursing home.

This woman was thrilled to find one to replace it and put on her own kitchen counter.

A little squirrely time-machine. As a side note, my husband thought I was crazy when I brought this cookie jar home and told me he doubted anyone would buy it. I took some pleasure in showing him the order only a few days later.

Another buyer bought these vegetable wall plaques from me I'd found at a yard sale for a similar reason. She sent me a message that one's just like them had hung in her grandparent's house when she was growing up, and just looking at them took her back there and made her happy.

We all have a little treasure or two around our homes we keep because they remind us of some sweet memory or much-loved person or place. And if they've been lost, its fun to discover them again on the shelf at the thrift store or in an Etsy shop.

Of course, there are plenty of things at the thrift store that don't inspire any nostalgia or feelings of warmth. There's plenty of chipped glass-bowls, underappreciated gifts, outgrown toys, and ill-advised souvenirs that seemed like a good idea after your third Pirates Punch at the island tiki bar...see example below of a coconut minister marrying two coconut people.

But every once in a while...wham... a time machine gets ya and, before you know it, you're buying plastic wall vegetables or squirrely cookie jars.

The house where the metal dispenser once so stylishly distributed foil, wax paper and paper towels is now gone...and I miss it. So, while I didn't buy it, I will cherish that fleeting moment it gave me when, for just a second, I was standing on my tip toes in a little stone house in New Jersey reaching for a paper towel.