It began a very long time ago. My first memories are of using the feather duster. At four years old it was a ceremony for me – the dusting of the books. I loved the feather duster and always examined it thoroughly. There was no blood – no bird head – there were hollow wing tubes – it was a curiosity. I would ask Dad over and over again, what kind of feathers are they; are they real? It was always the same answer – from turkeys and peacocks. I wondered if it was true. There were drab gray and white streaked feathers; and some were elaborate in design, fancy, colorful and bright.
A feather duster could not operate by itself. It had to be moved around some and swished in correct fashion as per my father’s standards. There was always a proper way to do things. I couldn’t climb on the chairs at first and I couldn’t get into the books and I couldn’t dust the papers around the books unless there was a paperweight on them (another of my early fascinations). I had to be slow and careful when dusting all of the objects in the room. Some were "special." I had to be quiet and I had to be efficient – nothing else would please the marine sergeant at work at the desk.
We had a large house in Villa Park, Ca., with an indoor-outdoor patio that had glass sliding doors. Each must have been at least 12 feet high and 20 feet wide; at least to my way of young thinking. When the doors were opened, it made a great big room where my older sisters danced with pillows to Elvis and made dreamy eyes. Sometimes, they danced with me swooning about so gracefully until one of them would flip the record over and "Ain’t nothing But a Hound Dog"; would blare out! I’d go mad-crazy and start crooning like a hound-dog or wolf – baying at the moon; pretending to be Rin-Tin-Tin. All of the family would rush in to watch this spectacle! One day, I went out on this patio and there was a turkey in a large cage and a peacock walking about. I examined their feathers and sure enough they matched the feather duster that I used.
My feather dusting was limited to out back of the house where the horse stables were converted into a library. There were many shelves of books; antiques, artwork on the walls, marble sculptures on pedestals, bronzes, and old weaponry – and a myriad of oddities. It was classically furnished with floor and desk lamps, cabinetry, and leather chairs and couches. The furnishings in the library created a subdued cultured and artistic, somewhat eerie ambiance that reminds me today – when I think about it - of a Vincent Price movie setting.
I was allowed to dust the library. And I spent many wonderful hours there watching my dad pour over the books and sitting near him. I watched and listened and poked through the stuff on his desk. I bugged him, and dusted, and looked at the feather duster and looked at the paperweight and all of the stuff in the rooms. I was proud of myself then; too proud - and it lingers with me. Who else has dusted with such care and accuracy? I have often wondered.
Chapter Two - Amish Country
When I was five we took the long winding road from California to Ohio and ended up out in the country freezing and hungry in an old tenant farmhouse. The book business is tough and sometimes almost ruthless - not as bad as Dunning tends to make one believe -but, there just wan't much for us at this time in the early 1960's.
I went with Dad to all the houses and farms looking for stuff whenever he could get the old car running. The idea was to clean-up the sheds; stables, attics, barns, what ever the need and get paid something. Hardly ever did we get a job. When we did you could bet that even though I was little I would at least do an excellent clean broom-sweep of the place. I knew Dad would make some money from the stuff that we were getting paid to take away - so I wanted to be sure to be as fair as possible to the farmer and do what I could to make it right - straighten and sweep it up good before we left - even if Dad was in a hurry. Whatever we would find (and sometimes great things) would be sold for bread-money to the nearest general store or antique shop if they had the cash.
One of our scouting trips led us to a farmers' market in Millersburg where an Amish businessman owned a hardware-vegetable and fruit market just outside of town. It was dead during the week but weekends were another story. We had not done that well in Amish country up to that point for when the Amish would see us they would run for cover at their farms and send the older menfolk out to shoo us away.
On Sundays, black canvas buggies with full covered roofs and sides lined the road tethered to teams of horses and single horses - the motive power. Some had fancy harness-works of silver and brass. Some were large from very successful farmers - some buggies were smaller and destitute worn old in appearance. The interesting ones for me were ones with fold-down window-flaps on the sides.
All had to be quiet around the horses, The cars going by would slow down or else it would spook all of the horses. The white faces would peer out the car windows at the incongruity of such a sight in modern America. At first, the Amish were there to trade among themselves and with the store owner. That began to change - and I am afraid that we were the impetus for some of it.
We purchased a few things that first Sunday from the Amish in their buggies - much to their surprise and mine as well. Dad seemed to take it all in stride. I remember how Amish sales-girls in the black buggies would hide their faces under large white bonnets and open the little windows to hand-out the goods like butter, or honey or vegetables for some change or dollars or trade and then quickly close them up again in modesty and shyness and because of stern looks from their fathers. However, to my delight, a couple of young sisters I got butter from several times on purpose; would giggle madly upon seeing me and their Dad would look kindly at me. Yet, overall most of the Amish looked at us in the beat-up car and wished we were not there. It was an invasion of their privacy.
Somehow with $5.00 and a story Dad managed to make a deal with the owner of the store and there we were the next weekend with a blanket spread neatly on the bottom of the opened-up car trunk with our "goods" laid out on top - right at the very end of the row of the Amish trade buggies and wagons on the market side of the road!
We started to make some money out of the trunk. Cars were stopping at the store and the people came out to see us at the end of the row and ask us what we were doing. Surprised, they would buy a little something and ask was it OK to approach the Amish in their wagons. Cameras came out - cars began to stop - people began to buy directly from the buggies - sales began to soar for the market owner - we were selling more - and then the Amish began to complain about us. In a few weeks the store owner came out to tell us to leave; that we were not wanted there anymore. We were spiritually lacking and aggravating the community with our presence.
Again, Dad managed the situation to his advantage. He gave the store owner another $5.00 and asked if it would be all right to park in the grass-mown field next to the store just "out-of-the-way" of the Amish buggy commerce - but, still easily visible from the road. He allowed it.
For a month or so we managed to profit anywhere from $8.00 to around just less than $20.00 each Sunday - the store owner made it a habit to approach us every week for another $5.00. We got a regular customer and to our surprise this regular guy showed up one Sunday - parked right beside us and opened up his car trunk. The Amish market owner came out and got $5.00 from him. I felt more put upon than Dad. He just took it - but it made me angry inside. Our customer became a seller just like us. Now there were two non-Amish sellers at the Sunday market. We were no longer a popular exclusive.
Over the course of the next couple of months the field we were in began to fill with competition. About 20 cars - wow! Dad rose to the challenge of the new competition and purchased a shiny 6ft. aluminum table and card tables and placed our goods on tables outside of the trunk - I was amazed. The others soon copied us and before you know it -it was huge like a modern-day swapmeet.
In a change of pace the sales slumped. There just wasn't enough money to go around. The weather changed. People got stuck in the mud - horses got spooked - arguments and tempers flared amongst the Amish and between the Amish and non-Amish. One Sunday - a planned out seemingly impromptu Amish spiritual Bible revival meeting occured right on the spot in defiance of what was happening to the Amish community. A crowd gathered around the Amish spiritual Elder spewing venom from the bible with righteous consternation - just as if a scene from Elmer Gantry - everything went to Hell-in-a-hand-basket. We fled the scene. If I had a tail it would have been between my legs.
The next summer it became an advertised very succesful event in Millersburg and I don't think things have ever been the same since in that neck of the woods - for the Amish or anyone else.
Chapter Three - From Malabar Farm
I was in the third grade in Lucas, Ohio when my teacher, Mrs. Lumbadau informed me that it was alright if I looked at and spoke to the other children around me and that I didn't always just have to do schoolwork. I enjoyed the duck-and-cover exercises that went along with the government films on the communists. Kennedy was assassinated and I found myself crying with the others at this insult to human dignity.
The Ceely Rose House on Louis Bromfield's Malabar Farm had become our temporary home and we had been doing rather well as Dad worked as public relations man-curator-glorified tour guide for the farm. Of course, I knew the story of Ceely and how she had rat poisoned her parents to death for denying her the love of a neighboring young man. Instead of the bogey-man getting us it became a tease to say, "you don't want Ceely-Rose to get ya." It was said at the time not to go in the Bailey House barn and never into the loft over there because the ghost of Ceely was roaming the barn looking for her lover. My older brothers told me she might even try to kiss me if I went in there - so you can bet I stayed away!
In 1964 having lost all - we moved to the small city of Crestline and had to get rid of our dog. Things didn't go well. Dad couldn't pay the rent. The Sheriff and his deputies kicked us all outside and threw our things to the curb. My little sister got up an impromptu game of "King-of-the-Hill" with the neighborhood children. The kids would repeatedly pile our clothes, chairs, pillows, cookware, anything laying there into a little hill and then try to throw each other off as one after another was allowed to the top of the pile to be the temporary king. At first I was horrified while things of ours were trampled and broken into worse condition - but then I joined the game. Mom got back in the house and cut the linoleum from the floor so the landlords couldn't have it.
Doogie, a rough-neck 15 year old kid came walking by and saw our destitution and got us a place to live a few blocks away at a railroad boarding house. For several hours we drug our stuff up the streets and became quite a spectacle for the neighbors who began to make derogatory taunts and disgusted glares as they discoverd we were evicted; broke and easily embarrased. I felt like trash. I wanted to fight.
The woman who owned the boardinghouse was wheel-chair ridden and we lived upstairs in two rooms all sleeping on the floor with a curtain pinned-up across the doorway of the little room for some hope of division and privacy. Room numbers were laid out in brass numeral figures tacked to the doors. We lived in number One and Two. Number 3 and Number 4 were occupied by the two gentleman drunks. Room 5 was abandoned and room six downstairs was also empty of boarders. I will never forget the promises of the one nice drunk to bring me popcorn when he returned home. I would wait for hours watching the coal-dust leak from the many holes in the walls of the house - but he never brought me any.
My Mom began to take care of Betty in her wheelchair and we slowly began to get back on our feet. Betty kicked out the drunks and we expanded our living into the other rooms. I became a rack boy at the pool hall; got a paper route, and peeled potatoes and cleaned up at a local restaraunt adding what money I could to the family fortune. Money for work was a familiar concept to me having dug potatoes, picked beans and strawberries and sold used items and books at the Millersberg Amish Market.
You know that books never break as bad as glassware - so an investment in books is somewhat safer than investing in glass. That basic concept of non-breakable books stayed with me as I learned to buy and sell on my own. I Knew how important education was because people would trade money for books. I learned what was inside them so that I could sell them more easily.
The back of Railroad Avenue faced the boarding house where we lived and the train depot was a block up the street. Passenger trains never stopped there anymore. Dad had grown up in Crestline and told stories of meeting Humhrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as they made there way to visit Malabar Farm and when he was young used to hustle pool and sell papers on Railroad Avenue. He told of his father falling drunkenly to his death on the tracks at the front of Railroad Avenue.
The avenue was not really an avenue in the sense of today's image. Railroad Avenue formed part of the passenger boarding area and consisted of two-story storefronts and eateries that catered to the once active depot and was for Crestline, a main enterprising area in its beginning days as a town. You never could drive on it - but it was wide enough for deliveries and occassional parking in the front. The stores were all abandoned. When I lived with my family at the boarding house the last restaurant "Georgia's Kitchen" on Railroad Avenue closed down. And this gave my Dad an idea.
With all of the storefronts empty and most with broken glass windows; debris laying everywhere, and a general run-down shabby appearance rent would be cheap. Dad decided to use the very corner empty building to set up shop. The corner storefront was one block from Main Street and easily visible. It was not far from the original and only grocery store. It was a busy place for a sleepy little town. Dad got the key and at once began painting a neat; bright, large well-drafted sign that would hang above the large doors and windows spelling out "The House of Rummage." I was soon asking what is rummage?
Chapter Four - "The House of Rummage"
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