Growing Obsession: Old Stuff

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saltwaterlungs's avatar
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Or vintage wear, or antiques, or dusty rusty shit, whatever you want to call it. I LOVE IT SO MUCH! I love antique stores and thrift shops and old houses, and just everything old. I can just spend years exploring the depths of these places. It's like looking at pieces of history, holding it in your hands, and thinking: this was used by someone a long long time ago. There's this thrill in each new item, and it's addictive.

I especially like old keys (mostly skeleton) because I have no idea what they open. I mean, they can guess about what kind of stuff it did, or where it came from. but somewhere out there, ther is a lock, and this key opens it. There could be anything inside, but we just don't know what. I also like typewriters. They're just friggin awesome. I like 1960's secreaty desks too, and lots of old furniture in general. I also really like the old manual tools like egg beaters and meat grinders. I just really like simple machines in general, and I think it's kind because of a fascination with analyzing them and figuring out how they work (i picked up a newer one in DC and i can't stop playing with it). I also really like old jewelry, especially rings. My mom got me started on that.

I think the whole antique store thing has to do with like growing up going to the shops, and in a house full of antique furniture. Me and my dad share the manual tools thing, but the whole key bit is all my own (and because they're often really cheap because no one knows what they open).

But above all else, I love vernacular photography. That's the fancy term for it anyway. That means an unproffessional photographer took it, and most of them are like family photos and stuff. You probably have a bunch in your house. Your family phto albums are full of them. And yes, I suppose it's kind of creepy collecting pictures of people you don't know, but I love it so much. My obsession with it probably spawned form one of my favorite books in the whole wide world, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, had them in it. Except these photos were gold mines in this business. They were super weird and strange, and the author of this book (Ransom Riggs) wrote an entire novel based on these weird photos. I fell in love with the book and the idea of vernacular photography. I started finding them at antique stores, drooling over the notes written on the backs, puzzling over what they meant. My mom was none too supportive of this, calling it a waste of time and money ("We have photos like these in our house!") but I prevailed. It was yesterday that a dear friend of mine (Neighko) joined me in my adventure. We dounf a booth in the ultimate store (The Leaping Lotus) full of old cameras, and a box titled Instant Relatives. I drooled ove rthe photography in that box, and Sadie ranted about the ppoor form in teh horsee photos. The photos were beautiful captures, and I found one extremely great one. It's a picture of a navy with a letter written on teh back! Each photo was 2 dollars and we bought 19 in total. It was awesome.

So, that's my strange obsession, guys. Pretty weird, huh? :)
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FearlessFlyer's avatar
TYPEWRITERS I WANT ONE