Egyptian Pharaohs were the master immigrants. They spent their entire life planning for their move into the next life. And importantly, what they would bring. After all, this was no small trip. The “here after” takes alot of planning. You have build a suitable site… and then you have to stock it with all sorts of things. After life is a big deal… much bigger say, than moving from Bialystock to Brooklyn.
Let’s not dwell on this part for too long. Pharaohs, Kings and Princes have the luxury of taking a fair amount with them when they move from one place to the next.
The rest of us are not so lucky. When we pick up and move our tents we have to carefully reduce what we have to the essentials . Essential for what they mean, and not necessarily for their economic value.
Look at the pictures of the new arrivals at Ellis Island or Castle Gardens… their lives contained in a few bundles and suitcases… each item carefully selected… each item a link to something that gives definition to their lives.
It doesn’t have to be as dramatic a move from Warshava Gubernia to America… it can be more mundane… 25 Alston Avenue to 71 Woodbury Hill with a half dozen stops in between.
Still, each move choices are made… what to discard, what to keep. And each year, things that we keep increase in sentiment, adding to their personal value.
From my present inventory…
The Blue Chair. The best part of moving across the hall in 1957 from Mommie Soph’s room to Paul’s room was the comfortable “club chair” that was in his tiny study. Thickly upholstered in a black & white houndstooth pattern, you felt obligated to lounge in the chair… to sit with your legs tossed over the side and flopped about. Eventually the chair made its way out of the study and into the bedroom itself… which was good news for Baa Baa and Rocky, our Bedlingtons, who treated the chair as their private fire hydrant.
As a kid I didn’t understand this marking of territory thing that rules the animal world. If I did, I would have peed on that chair, too. I loved the chair, even if it promoted poor posture and it had a earthy fragrance.
Ellen and I had it re-covered in a beautiful deep blue fabric. Gary and I talked about this recently, he remembers the original tweed pattern; but he forgets the yellow tinge at the lifting-of-the-leg height that couldn’t be removed… the blue is better. And it is still the most comfortable chair in the universe… great for reading; but even better for listening to music, or for feeling the sun coming thru a cold window, or for watching the snow fall, or grabbing a snooze.
The Shell Lamp. I think Mom was looking for another excuse to enjoy the sun. If you didn’t know, the “sun worshipping gene” runs deep in our family… very deep. I think Mom just got tired of lying out in the sun… and one day she strolled the beach in back of the Bagshot House in Barbados and began picking up shells that caught her eye. This was merely the beginning. Each year she collected more and more. Fly fishermen look for perfect streams… Mom looked for better places to harvest shells. Someone said that Cayman had great shells. She went.
Then it was Sanibel and Captiva in Florida. She went. This would turn into her “Alaskan oil fields” for shells. And she would spend the part of each winter picking shells until her passing.
In her later years, she was no longer able to take the sun. But there she would be, bent over… patrolling the shore line by the Mucky Duck, a big picture hat, long sleeves and loose fitting slacks, selecting only the best shells.
If she had an idea what to do with these shells when she began this enterprise I can’t say. But the picking of the shells was only stage one. Each night she would take her haul back to her cottage and carefully wash the shells in boiling water. Dried, they would then be ready for a coating of clear nail polish.
When she returned to Connecticut the shells would be displayed in clear jars… each jar containing shells of a similar nature.
I am not sure who came up with idea of adding “crafts” to this activity… but soon Mom was cranking out mirrors framed with shells and glass lamps filled with shells.
Of this I am sure. I can imagine that Mom labored fiercely over the correct selection of each shell… making sure that there were favorite shells in each mirror and lamp.
The barrel bar. When Dad acquired the building on 44th Street, Seymour Landman, one of our suppliers sent over a gift to commemorate the purchase. It was half a barrel on sturdy legs with casters that opened to serve as a bar. Dad never put it into play as a bar… it sat outside the elevator on the Fifth floor acting as a catch-all for crap.
But I had my eye on it for use as it was intended, and at first opportunity I asked Dad for the barrel bar. It had plenty of space for bottles of hootch in the base, then above bottle level there was a railed ledge to hold old fashioned & high ball glasses… the flat top of the bar was hinged so that it opened to create a perfect surface to hold an ice bucket and the other bar accoutrements.
When we built the very fancy shmancy wet bar in the finished basement of 35 Regency, the barrel bar didn’t lose its appeal to me. I treated it like a “fly bridge.” It was still stationed upstairs with the necessary martini making ingredients closer at hand.
I love the stout nature of the barrel… and that the wood holds the aroma of a spilled drop of gin or bourbon. It speaks of shared times and well made drinks.
Brutus. On Dad’s travels to Europe he was sure to pick up various and sundry items that would be good props for our display windows at Chipp. Over the years it became an impressive collection… brass nautical pieces: port and starboard lamps, a ship’s telegraph, block and tackle… and a host of other things… tally desks, campaign tables, regimental drums and several ceramic pieces.
Of the latter, he returned from a trip to Italy with two rather large ceramic busts… Bacchus and Brutus. Paul claimed Bacchus (although it might seem a bit odd since his beverage of choice is a pale ginger ale) and I took Brutus.
Brutus is the larger of the two busts… his head is angled downward toward his right shoulder… you can see his toga draped on his left shoulder… there is a serene expression to his face. No wonder Caesar was caught off guard.
In times past I would dress him in a bowtie. And that’s how you transform a world renown assassin into looking like a waiter.
I have always enjoyed his thick curls. It reminds me of my Dad’s wavy hair.
Pod Chainick. This was a gift for Mommie Soph that I brought back from one of my two visits to the Soviet Union . It is a custom in Eastern Europe to drink tea from a glass. A simple cylindrical glass would fit into a decrative holder with handle… a pod chainick.
The one I brought back was made of brass. Not expensive, nor particularly fancy.
Long before my time, Mommie Soph had made her adjustment to modernity and converted from glass to a China cup. Although she still retained the custom of sipping her tea (or coffee) thru a sugar cube. And it was still referred to a “glass of tea”… or more specifically in her accent and inflection: a glessela tea.
Every time I look at the pod chainick I think of the Winter Palace, St. Basil’s, forests of pine and birch… and Mommie Soph.
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Well, there you go… Hardly the stuff a Pharoah would take into a Pyramid for his trip into the next world.
But it suits me just fine.