Weekend Write-In Story Collection

The Second-Hand Store

In 500 words, imagine what happens when a character is bested by furniture. Written for the Weekend Write-In Challenge: "Furniture" — 19-21 February 2016

This is a look at flow-through interior decorating in the 1950s and early 60s.

The Antique Shop

Through the Great Depression, my grandfather owned a second-hand store, buying and selling to make things easier for others, but also to keep the wolf from his own door and allow him to raise his family in moderate comfort. Most of his stock-in-trade was mundane household goods since he had learned what people wanted through the difficult decade. Then came the war, so the difficult times continued, and so did Walsh's Second Hand.

In the early 1950s, when my father had sufficiently shaken the traumas of his wartime service with the Merchant Marine, and he had accepted that his prewar dreams had been irrevocably shattered, he started working for his father. After a few months, he convinced Grandfather to allow him to become an active buyer, travelling to expand the business by roaming the auctions and estate sales.

At that time, we were living rent-free in Great Uncle Thomas' beach cottage after an emergency move at the end of October 1952 when the one-room log cabin Dad had built after the war threatened to collapse on us. The beach cottage had a two-hole outhouse, a step up from the pot-into-the-pit system of the log cabin. It had a water pump in the kitchen sink, and there was sufficient electricity to allow limited lights without blowing the fuse — if we remembered to switch off one light before switching on the next. This was grand comfort in comparison to the finicky and smelly kerosene lamps, the outdoor hand pump and the pot.

Mum was pregnant with her fourth at the time. She had always been fascinated with antiques, anything historical, actually, so to help forget the hardships surrounding them, she and Dad began serious research. His purchases quickly moved from the mundane. Grandfather initially questioned some of the new acquisitions, but he soon fell in line with the new direction as revenue increased.

After three years living in the uninsulated, unplumbed beach cottage, in 1955 we moved to a rented house in the west end of the city. We finally had a flush toilet, hot and cold water from taps and a real bathtub replaced the galvanised tub and kettles. We also had unlimited electricity — well nearly.

Mum started accompanying Dad to sales, and they always stopped the truck at home. Mum's orders flew: "The Queen Ann chair inside to replace the Chippendale, the brass sconces to flank the fireplace, take the ship's lamps..."

Through the late fifties and into the sixties, we lived surrounded by an ever-changing decor as things flowed from purchase to home to store. I spent my teen years living in the midst of a broad cross-section of seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth-century immigrants' treasures. But better, I was surrounded by a deep appreciation for these marvellous pieces and a refined knowledge of their history.

By the late fifties, the store had become Walsh's Antiques, subtitled: We buy Junque and sell Antiques. I think back fondly on Grandfather's slow realisation that his furniture purchases paled in comparison.