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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
November 16, 2008
Previously unpublished fiction.
© 2008 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Friends, 1977
© 1977 by Bud Grossmann
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HERE’S LOOKIN’ AT ME!
Friday, July 18, 2008
Received your two or three messages, Debbie dear, thank you very much.
Grocery prices were crazy, so I didn’t buy everything on my list. Spent only $17 at Pick N Save. If I were Grocer of the World, I would conduct store sales differently.
Charlene and I nonetheless had a fine time in Cappella, and she bought lots of groceries.
Before going to Pick N Save, we went to St. Vincent’s and about six yard sales. I got a teak picture frame, several extension cords, and three mirrors (one of them a magnifying mirror, which I’ll put on my bathroom counter to cheer me when I’m feeling low).
Returning to Fjord, we stopped at one last sale, at that project that makes me melancholy, across Sixteen. Becky Nordland, the developer, has moved out of the farmhouse by the road and into one of her Ticky-Tackies, and that’s where the sale was. I bought three wine glasses engraved with the names of Realtors. Two names match, the third is odd. The bowls ping nicely when I flick them with my fingernail. Becky and I chit-chatted, I didn’t know she had moved. She said she hopes the Fjord Community Club will buy the farmhouse and make a museum out of it. I told her, “Show me, sometime!” meaning, Give me a tour, won’t you, please. I’m still waiting for her to unlock the train depot for me.
My magnifying mirror, from a Lutheran church rummage sale, is actually the reverse side of a round non-magnifying mirror; the two of them revolve on a pair of pins set into a thick, U-shaped Plexiglas stand. I suppose it would be called a make-up mirror. The base bears the words“simply basicTM” in neat black lettering. Sturdy and unlovely, this cost me a quarter.
The other mirror, purchased for a dollar at the same sale, is of similar design, a dresser-top pivoting looking glass. The reflecting part is rectangular, about six inches by twelve, mounted in heavy dark oak, on a U-shaped yoke of oak. It is handsome but not elegant; I didn’t assume it to be particularly old. It seemed a nice size for what I thought of when I saw it, which is, I’d cut the mirror free of the yoke and bolt it to my basement wall over my laundry tub so I can shave downstairs when you visit. You can have the upstairs bathroom to yourself in the morning. The hefty oak base is diamond-shaped, thirteen inches wide, with a rounded, routed perimeter.
So, as I say, I bought it for a buck. When I carried it to my car and gently set it onto the back seat, I felt a pang in my chest, a sudden shock of sentiment. I was no longer sure I could saw into the oak and tear apart what someone had put together. For I found an old man’s handwriting, shaky, bold, on the bottom of the base.
The first line says, “To Betsy From Harley.”
Then, “August 17, 1962.”
“For a special Sweet Heart,” reads the third.
Searching between the lines, in second-hand goods, I discover loss and treasure once again.
Love, Dave
♦
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