Junk bond

Delia Ellis Bell the Partial Yankee reconsiders the past

by Sally Cragin

Delia Ellis Bell the Partial Yankee (there was a questionable great-great-grandmother) is rethinking her entire attitude toward antiques. Like many people in Tritown, she makes a living from several sources: part-time substitute teaching and occasional house cleaning and the proceeds from a booth she rents at the Ant Bar (formerly the Antiques Barn, but crucial letters have faded).

Her philosophy is simple: hit every yard sale within 20 miles (when she feels like it) and double the prices. Her relationship with her objects was untroubled and uniform (quite like her relationship with most people). It didn't matter whether she'd found Teflon muffin pans or a scarred Waterman pen that had belonged to the local bard (his opus in rhyming tercets on the spindle-factory closing is widely anthologized after it initially appeared in The Dial).

She'd inherited the booth from a college friend who moved from Tritown some years back to make a go of it, despite an unimpressive history in sales. (Fired from the local Cherry & Webb for telling the manager's sister she looked better in the dress she wore into the store. Or maybe it was the time she agreed with too many customers that the fall collection was unflattering.) The octogenarians who minded the Ant Bar coffers doted on Delia, though they burbled disapprovingly at some of the treasures that followed her in after the Sunday auctions. This happened most often when Delia beat them to a particularly long-awaited estate sale of a now-departed crony or rival.

Delia's antiquing acquired a momentum of its own. Though she rarely cleared more than her auto-insurance premiums, it was never worth the bother to clean out the stall and call it quits. And where would she put the inventory? Compared to Hollis the Mountain Man's relatively steady employment (part-time driver for the Tri'd 'n' Tru Potato Chip Company, and odd jobs), Delia has the attitude of a gypsy marooned in a small town.

Treasures become scarcer after spring cleaning, but so far this month she's found a cracked wooden butter churn needing only oil soap and a little hide-glue; a box of novelty salt-and-pepper shakers, yet no mate for Laurel, Aunt Jemima, or a pink flamingo in the regnant position; a pile of yellowed embroidered dinner napkins amenable to a treatment of lemon juice and direct sunlight; and a couple of brass oil lamps she knows she can swap with a Worcester dealer for a freestanding chrome 1920s ashtray for Jean-Pierre (formerly Whitey) Leblanc. Yet again, a solitary elderly person has passed on; and for the heirs, expedience has swallowed sentimentality whole.

"I don't know how you do it," says Hollis one afternoon at Happy's Coffee & Qwik-Stop (30 kinds of doughnuts, 20 kinds of lottery tickets, one kind of coffee). "I get depressed enough at Aunt Winnie's, looking at all her stuff from the family."

"Aunt Winnie is going to outlive you all," she sighs, taking a slug of her ice coffee. Then she quizzically adds, "What do you suppose she'll do with your effects?" The coffee is tasty, but strong. $erena the Waitress, now a Tarbox and newly pregnant, has been experimenting with flavored cold coffee again. But only for the customers. Anything beyond a whiff of the java makes her queasy.

Delia examines her nails. "All this `fixing things' has destroyed my manicure," she complains. "Between the bleach and the silver polish, I can barely keep my nails on my fingers."

Hollis snorts. "Since when have you worried about your `manicure'?" he laughs.

Delia hastily puts her hands under the table. "Since never," she retorts, feeling like she's 12 again. She's been taking a greater interest in her appearance -- ever since Whitey took a puck in the head and woke up speaking French. "Truth is, I'm just getting tired of sifting through other people's junk," says Delia. "I need a change."

"Not me," he says. "I'm happy with the summer same-old-same-old. Like, I know at five o'clock, I'll be easing into old Picture Pond. The water's gonna be nice and warm, and the `pumpkin seeds' will be after my toes. Quarter of seven, the blue heron's gonna flap over the pond. The June bugs will start making that miniature lawn-mower sound on the porch light. Complete heaven."

Hollis sits back, contented. He hasn't said a word about the summer chores that loom -- patching the roof where the shingles fell off, finding cement for the rotted porch foundation, replacing the storm windows (oh, wait, forget that -- he never put them on last year), starting on that frankly appalling home-brew vat. Sated with $erena's iced triple espresso and a bear-claw filled with fresh strawberry jam, he's feeling mighty fine.

"I gotta go," says Delia. The same triple espresso has just nudged her personal tachometer into the red zone. "I have a sink full of old linens bleaching; and I swore I'd clean all the silver from the weekend." She slides out as $erena comes by with a beaded pitcher. "Refill?" she asks. "I get a buzz just smelling it. Everything else makes me sick."

Hollis shakes his head, and then leaves two dollars under his empty cup. Hasky Tarbox is pulling double-shifts at his dad's garage (Tarbox Automotive: "Collisions? A Specialty"). Hollis sees him down at the Rod 'n' Reel fairly often and fairly late. Looks like impending fatherhood is having the same effect as impending matrimony did last year. Hasky wants to cut and run.

As Delia pulls out of the lot, she thinks about $erena -- how fortunate she is to have so much settled in her life. Living happily-ever-after with the boy (in the garage) next door, she's gliding toward motherhood with the same graceful ungainliness Hollis sees in his blue heron.

Whitey (or Jean-Pierre, as he prefers to be called these days) has been a real help to Delia in the past few months. When the LeBlanc brothers get a call for a salvage job, he sets aside stuff he thinks Delia might like. "He's like a bower bird," thinks Delia, "bringing me choice bits that need someone new to love them." Rather unhelpfully this week, though, he's rescued an old clothes mangle, a couple of rusty handmade spirit levels in wooden casings, and a fine wad of nearly new red gingham oilcloths.

Back at Happy's, $erena slowly clears their mugs and plates. Since Whitey's accident, there's been a lightness and softness in Delia that's at odds with her busy, managing personality. Yet $erena wonders how much of that brusque competence she might need as a mother. But not right now: she's nauseated by the sight of crumbs on dirty plates.

As she drives down the Old Post Road, Delia slows by a sign reading YARD SALE/NIGHTCRAWLERS/ EGGS. As weary as she is of other people's junk, the prospect of the hunt renews her spirit. And as she parks, a sweet little bookcase beckons. Something, stripped and repainted for Jean-Pierre's treasured motorcycle magazines.

Sally Cragin edits Button, New England's tiniest magazine of poetry, fiction, and gracious living.

---

The Tales From Tritown archive

---