Yesterday I thought I'd take my annual Christmas stroll through downtown Marietta. This is not as fun as it used to be, as many of my favorite stores are gone. Willow Antiques disappeared just about the time our own Willow died, and the Christmas store apparently shut down earlier this year. I did go in the antique shop on the corner where Luke the poodle "holds court." He was there on Tuesday, a big dignified white Standard Poodle with grave eyes. I looked at the old cameras and typewriters and records with envy.
Skipped the Local Exchange because the pretzels I like now give me indigestion, and The Corner Shop (the British store) wasn't open. I did duck into the Australian Bakery Cafe, but alas, no gingerbread men. So I walked on to the old DuPre's hardware store, which is now called "Park West Antiques" (after the street). Didn't seem to be as many Christmas decorations dotted about as usual. Very few books. Saw a fancy old parrot cage that looked as if Aunt March of Little Women kept her parrot in it. The antiques just seemed to make me sad this year.
The second place I usually go is Cobb Antiques Mall, but that moved in January of last year. I had to drive all the way up to Canton Road near Piedmont Road to their new location. They are in a rather deserted strip mall behind the Cherokee Cattle Company restaurant (LOL...in the old Ryan's where I got food poisoning so long ago). It's a nicer building, but doesn't have anywhere near as many vendors as it used to, and the person who had all the books lined up behind a barrier of chairs and shelves is no longer there. I wandered about admiring the old furniture (and trying to figure out why they called an old Hoosier a "Dutch cabinet") and some electric typewriters the vintage of my original manual (1970), a lovely old Victrola, a wringer washer (glad I don't have to use that thing, and yet it was a godsend for people who had scrubbed their clothes on washboards), and other wonderful old things. Got a little thoughtful when I found a dish of old photographs for sale, the posed kind from the photographer's studio. All those faces stared out, people who lived, had their photo taken, went through their lives, and who are now gone, yet their images remain impressed upon paper. Were they happy? Did they live long? Did they marry? Have good jobs? My favorite was a little girl posing with her baby brother, with Mom carefully hidden under draperies to keep the baby quiet. You can see her skirt peeking out at the foot of the photo.
I did buy a book: Barnes' The Wonderful Year about a girl who moves to Idaho during the early part of the century. The illustrations are by Kate Seredy, but they aren't the lovely ones she did for her own books, or for Caddie Woodlawn and Winterbound. They're more sketchy. I wonder why.
Stopped by Book Exchange further up the street, but all the romance books were overwhelming and I was hungry, so I just lit out for Tin Drum, which I'd promised myself as a late birthday treat, even though I really didn't have the money. When I got there and opened the app, I found out I had enough points to get the meal for free! Yes!
Came home to watch Geraldine Page in Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, and then the original broadcast of Amahl and the Night Visitors that I'd found on YouTube, which I did not realize was the very first Hallmark Hall of Fame. (I miss the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Now all Hallmark Channel does are kitschy Christmas love stories. Yech.) The composer himself, Gian Carlo Menotti, introduces the story. It was funny because next to me was the little hardback book in which the story was retold in print form in 1952, with pen-and-ink and brightly colored illustrations, which I'd found at one of the book sales. (Even funnier was that it was adapted to print by Frances Frost, who wrote the Windy Foot books, one of which, Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, I was reading right at that moment.)
Had a happy moment during Jeopardy: they had a series of questions at the American Helicopter Museum, which we visited in 2009.
Today I baked wine biscuits and did laundry. James worked and we listened to Christmas music. He had found a bag of gingerbread cookie mix on the clearance aisle at Publix, and I made those, too. We got six gingerbread boys and four stars out of them. There was a fifth star, which I split in half. If they all taste like this, it will be delightful.
This evening we watched A Peter, Paul and Mary Holiday Concert. I can't believe this is thirty years old already!
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