When I was eleven or twelve my parents and I stopped by a particular junk shop along highway seven. This place can’t really be considered a shop. It’s a shack. And it’s built beside the owner’s house. It’s as if the wife got sick and tired of her husband’s growing collection of dusty bottles, baseball cards, postage stamps, and random doodads and gave him an ultimatum.
You find a place for all of your things, she announced one morning while pouring his Sanka. Or I will be moving out.
And so, he built a shack next door and moved it all out. Their marriage, now officially salvaged.
I don’t know if that actually happened. It’s entirely possible.
There are no discernable “store” hours. Sometimes, when I’m driving by, I noticed there’s either a closed or open sign. Open doesn’t mean that he’s in the store. It just means that he’s home. You summon him by ringing the bell, you hear a screen door bang shut and then he appears with a key. He sits behind a counter unobtrusively, leafing through a magazine, while you browse.
If you’re accustomed to The Shopping Mall experience, or just plain shy, I can see how the ringing and waiting and idle chatter could make you uncomfortable. It’s definitely a non-traditional way of shopping. And then there’s that feeling of walking into someone’s home and nosing through their belongings.
Upon entry, your eyes will adjust. The place is packed to the rafters, you won’t know where to look first. The only thing you can do is look, try to focus, and hope that your brain will alert you to something interesting.
I don’t remember what my parents were looking for, but I found myself leafing through a box of old advertisements. Each was a separate page torn from old Life magazines, wrapped in a plastic sleeve along with a sheet of cardboard for stability. I came across an old Jello ad. It was an illustration of a giraffe. I’m not sure if I mentioned it to my parents, but I fell in love with it right then and there. And then we left. The giraffe stayed behind, but firmly lodged itself in my mind.
Fast forward about ten years. I was driving by with a boyfriend when I noticed the junk shop sign was turned to Open. We pulled over. I was leafing through a box of old magazine ads and there it was: the Jello giraffe. I realized there were actually a series of four. And I bought them all. I don’t know how much I paid, perhaps a few dollars for each, but I do remember how excited I was.
Here is the giraffe that captured my attention that day so many years ago:
And here is the rabbit, which cracks me up because the idea of putting carrots (and tomatoes — yeeeuk!) in Jello seems just so darn crazy I can hardly believe people actually did it:
And why? In the name of good health?
There’s a swordfish ad and a donkey as well. Mark had all four framed for me a few years ago. They’re hanging in the kitchen, but they’re a little out of the way and aren’t readily noticed. I might have to do something about that. I had forgotten how much I love them.
