Simple Pleasures

I love the toy store in summer. The kids come in with a few dollars to spend and no adult to help them stretch it or suggest they save it for something better. Grownups just don't get it. It's the little stuff that's magic, and having it right now, with your own money that makes the summer sweeter. I have many suggestions for the kids with a few coins burning a hole through their cut offs. Take a few parachute guys on a trip to the second floor balcony of Hotel Oregon. You can let them float down onto pedestrians and drop into the pints of beer on the sidewalk tables. A handful of mini pigs to hide around your grandmothers house? Under her coffee cup, in the medicine chest. Marbles, by the each. Dime a piece. Need I say more? Old fashioned candy sticks, bazooka bubble gum, medium size jawbreakers, Taffy's, all for a quarter each. Balsa wood flyers, yo-yo's, and hacky sacks are also pretty special, but at $3 to $6 the kids really have to know what they want to blow their whole wad on one item. In the new fad category there are the Japanese Eraser's and those shaped rubber bands. Schleich animals. The kids pay with their own money to collect these great toys.
My favorite has always been bubbles. Magic, wand and all. I could spend (and have) entire afternoons blowing bubbles. The kids and I used to make bubble wands out of any piece of baling wire, slotted spoon or finger crocheted yarn loop. We experimented with home made recipes to support our by the bucket consumption. We took a road trip to Austin, my friend Sarah, our seven young children, and me. Sarah took us to a great toy store (Toy Joy) and introduced me to Pustefix. I was immediately convinced they lasted longer, and were more iridescent than other bubbles I had tried. These were the Best Bubbles Ever! With the zeal of the newly converted I went into the world to preach my truth. I'm still convinced that I see more shimmery rainbows in every Pustefix sphere, but you won't catch me in the store waxing poetic about it. It creeps the customers out.
Though I love the wand, rainbows, and watching them float out of sight, my favorite thing about bubbles is how they bring people together. At an outdoor concert, a picnic, or festival, break out the bubbles and people begin to smile. My children's great grandmother didn't have much energy by the time they came around, but she could sit in a chair and blow bubbles. Soon a dozen of her offspring would be dancing at her feet. That is magic.

Restoration, Mending, and Maintaining

I've been planning on putting Candy into the toy store since before we moved into this space. I know I know, it's evil, but they do love it so, and watching them light up just makes my world go 'round, so the parents are going to have to be the ones riding reign. I'm getting candy, and it's going to be beautiful! It's all about the sex appeal for me where candy is concerned. I think I'm more into what it will look like than what it will taste like! Which brings me to the point of my blog this evening. Well, actually morning, 1:00 in the morning. I just finished refurbishing that beautiful oak case pictured above for candy to go into. I don't know how old it is, but it is amazing. Sylla McClellan the owner of Third Street Books asked me if I might be interested in a case that she bought from the hobby shop when it went out of business, so I went down and took a look at it. The glass was falling out, and the joints were all loose, and it had been a little abused, but it was beautiful... And monstrous! Twelve feet long to be exact. Don and my brother Cullen wheeled it down Third Street, and then down Baker once I had stripped the glass out of it. Tonight was the night that I put it all back together. I cleaned the dust out of the joints, and put wood glue on them, sanded and stained all the wood, replaced the end glass with oak panels to make it more solid, cleaned all of the glass and put it back together. The process only took five hours, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is something deeply satisfying about returning a ruined thing to service. I feel the same about mending, patching, painting, all forms of repair. My father was a cobbler by trade, and I worked with him repairing shoes all through high school and for a few years afterward, so that may be why it gives me so much pleasure. New is nice, but the history and richness apparent in something that has been used, appreciated and maintained is truly beautiful to me. This case is made exclusively of materials that age beautifully. It is all glass, oak, and mirrors. The wood is worn smooth and has a few stains in it. The glass is rippled with age, and the mirrors are all crackled in appearance. There is a metal yard stick attached to the back side of the case with the name of a company inscribed on it. Every piece tells a story. I'll have to ask Sylla if she knows anything more about it, for now, I am falling asleep content in the work I have done.