Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Sep 21, 2006
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Something Sad
There are many things that make us feel sad during our lives; bereavement or the end of a relationship just to mention a couple of them.
I would like to tell you about something that I saw a few years ago that left me feeling rather sad. It was during that time when I was running my second-hand furniture business and I used to attend auctions all around my area in order to buy stock for my shop. There was one auction house that I used to go to regularly between sales so that I could have a right good look at all the items for sale well before the auction. This way I knew exactly just how much I would be prepared to spend on each item and would make a note of it in my small book just in case I went over my intended price. Another good reason for my frequent visits was that the general public never really came to view until a day or so before the sale and the porters would have all the furniture well stacked up by then, so it was harder to have a good look at it.
It was not just furniture that I would buy at these sales, I used to buy anything that I thought I would make a profit on. This could be anything from pictures to old-style toys. I also used to buy a few boxes of ornaments at a time and then sort them out when I got them home later. Some would be individually priced for sale, while others I would leave on display showing off the items of furniture. In fact, I used to give these away free with the item of furniture they would be on - this was a good way of doing business.
Sometimes I would come across boxes full of old photographs all taken from the same house after the owner had died which no-one had come to claim. These boxes were often a full and complete record of someone and their family's life, going right back to the pre war years, when the couple would pose for their wedding photo with the wife in her old-fashioned wedding dress sitting down and the man with his stiffly starched collar and wide moustache with one hand in his waistcoat pocket and the other on his new wife's shoulder.
Then you could see the photos of the children, as they arrived, laying naked on a blanket in some photographers studio all, of course, in black and white. In fact, some of these photos would be sixty to seventy years old. Yet, if you took the time to go through them all, you could chart a complete family's history right back from the great grandparents up to a few years from what was then the present. There would be pictures of the proud son in his uniform just before he went away to war, and the daughter in her nursing uniform, or maybe the graduation photo of the young grandchild standing there clutching the precious degree they had worked so hard for. It used to leave me feeling rather sad when I saw these boxes full of such history. Just to think that, at one time, they would adorn the wall of some old couple's house as they were hung with pride - a full record of their family as it grew - only to end up in a cardboard box in a salesroom.
In fact, on a few occasions, I had to go round the back of the salesroom to speak to the porters about matters, only to find them burning some of these photos that they had taken out of the frames as it was thought that the frame would be more valuable without a picture in it at all. I would stand there beside the brazier and watch these photos disappear for ever, leaving without a trace of what they had once meant to the owners.
The porters also used to burn any old pieces of furniture that was thought to be of no value and some of this furniture had drawers that could be full of such photos, which were also burnt. So I went and asked the boss if he could lay aside such pieces of furniture for me to have a look at prior to being burnt as I could always find a use for the old hinges and wheels and other bits and pieces that I could use during repairing or restoring similar old furniture. He was only too pleased to help; in fact he said I was doing him a favour by taking all that away. So, when I came across some of these old photos I would put in a bid and usually I could pick up a couple of boxes full for only a couple of pounds.
Sometimes I would find a couple of the frames that were worth a few pounds alone, so I would soon recover my original costs. It seemed that the public could not be bothered even to look at these old photos and would rather go to the shops and buy a new frame at ten times the cost. Still that suited me just fine.
When I got back home and emptied my van I would hang up a few of these old photos in my shop just to keep them safe from being damaged out in my storage shed. It was just amazing how much interest they gained from the public when they came in for a look around my shop. They would always ask me if they were from my family as they stared at them, studying their every aspect, including the frame. I would reply that, although they were not of my family, they were of someone's family out there.
I always found it surprising that they never showed the slightest interest in all these old photos when they were stuck away in a cardboard box in a salesroom yet, if I took them out of there and hung them up in my shop, they were totally fascinated by them. I suppose that is another sad thing about it all really.
