The Junktiquing Road

Hamlin's Wizard Oil

Check this cool bottle out.  The detail is amazing, the slightly cloudy glass still holding mysteries within. The raised letters provide a combination of sensory intrigue as well as an air of mystery.

Whatever can it mean and where did I find it?  Well let me tell you a simple story, one I have put together by speculating on this and other fascinating items I recently had the opportunity to examine…..

…It was a hot summer day with the bright sunlight beating down on the fields, trees, and dusty streets of the small town. The muggy air, cloying and unrelenting, made cooling off even more difficult.

Inside the dwelling, the lady of the farmhouse fanned herself, hoping to catch even the slightest breeze to cut the steamy heat of the day.  Her husband, a hardworking farmer, was out tending their fields and she was alone in the house with her two children, whose exuberance perhaps seemed an outcropping of their own struggles with the heat of the day.  They ran around, darted up and down the stairs, shrieking and giggling. 

Suddenly, a loud smash echoed from the kitchen. 

The shouting and giggling stopped. 

One small voice called, “Mama! We broke a plate!”

Sighing, the lady rose from the cane chair upon which she had sat for what felt like the briefest of breaks from her seemingly never-ending chores.

She approached the younger of her two children, now pointing at the pieces of a child’s plate on the wide plank floor.  The red and white intricately painted detail now lay in disarray.  The child began to cry. 

“I am sorry, Mama! It was an accident!”  Tears flowing down cherub-like cheeks, the little boy rushed, clutching his mother’s cotton apron, burying his tiny face and wailing.

The lady crouched down, took his face in both hands, and smiled, “don’t worry, sweetie.  Accidents happen.  Help me pick these pieces up.” Together they worked and they swept the pieces into a small pile.  Gingerly retrieving them, the older child, a solemn, green-eyed girl of about eight years of age, added, “I’ll go put them outside, Mama.”

Rising from her crouched position, the lady patted the girl gently, “thank you, honey.”  She gathered her son in her arms, kissed his tear-stained cheeks, and brought him to his room for a nap. When her daughter returned from the backyard, she sent her upstairs as well.  It was too hot for fun and games.  Time to rest and calm her nerves.

She reached into her pantry and brought out the new medicine bottle her husband had brought home last week.  Maybe this would help, she thought.  The man who rolled into town had said it would cure all nervous problems.  It might work; her husband’s fig juice had helped with his problem recently. 

That night, feeling much calmer, she prepared for bed, taking time to clean her face and straighten her perfume bottle which had tipped over.  Can’t let that spill!  That was all the way from France!  She tucked her children in, kissed her work-weary husband, and settled in for the night. She had canning to do tomorrow, and had to make sure to find that breast pump for her sister….

….it was a cold morning, and the sun could barely warm the backs of the small gathered crowd, all peering into the newly-dug hole near the squirrel-planted maple tree in the far northwest corner of the yard. 

The lady of the house, pausing for a moment from her work, wandered over to take a look.  An untidy pile of broken, dirty crockery and glassware met her eye, sitting jumbled on a tarp just adjacent to the hole.  A man’s head could just barely be seen as he tossed out random bits and pieces of what seemed like archeological relics onto the tarp and grass.

As the day wore on, eventually the dig produced an amazing collection of remnants.  Now soaking in soapy water, sunlight touching their surfaces for the first time in over a hundred years, they hinted at stories long untold.

The lady of the house set to scrubbing and washing the many bottles, plates, a crock, and even a breast pump, removing decades of what the diggers had referred to as “night dirt,” in an effort to restore a sparkle once again. 

Finally she set them into her own primitive cabinet for display once again.

They had come home.

Who was it in that hole and why on earth would anyone voluntarily want to dig in century’s old poo?

Two words.  Privy Digging.

[click to continue…]

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