The Next Golden Egg

I have many times described my antique hunting experiences as having a spiritual quality. Doubtless, a passion for the objects one collects is an important characteristic of the person in search of the next golden egg. And indeed it is always the next golden egg. Many years ago, I read an excerpt from a speech given by the actor Edward G. Robinson, who was at the time the president of a major association of art collectors in the United States. In his speech Robinson described the continual search for a wonderful painting, adding that as surely as one found that painting, took it home, and hung it on the wall, he would be in search again for another wonderful painting. Clearly, a passion for art and all it connotes motivates the collector.

The things I collect evoke for me a sense of history, of family and good lives lived in humble but solid surroundings—complex and unquantifiable feelings. Those stoneware milk pans that I know my great grandmother would have used in rural Harris County, Texas; the colorful and interesting but less-than-sophisticated quilts my family would have had. And I can smell the lava soap at the wash basin on the back porch of my Great Uncle Henry and Aunt Stella's house. I can also call up images of the iron beds and wardrobes arranged sparely on linoleum-clad floors and the windows raised high, allowing the curtains to flutter in the breeze on cool spring nights.

There's nothing more exhilarating than driving down a farm-to-market in beautiful East Texas anticipating what lies ahead in that little town where you found something memorable on your last trip. Depending on the kind of weather you like—Spring is nice, but a rainy day in January works as well—the tone of the adventure is underscored. Every old country churchyard, farmhouse and barn you pass enhance the experience. Sometimes it's hard to separate what you find at your destination from the collection of feelings that builds as you make your way. How many times have you started a road trip with just a feeling that something heavenly waits out there for you? Visions of a tramp art box made in one of the German communities of Texas, or that great Mexican vase that surely is just around the corner, flash through your mind. Maybe what you find is a touching old photo of a group of people gathered American-Gothic style in the general mercantile of some rural store in 1910.

Sadly for me, I don't have among my treasures much of anything to speak of from my farming family that settled around Houston, Texas in 1866—only my Great Aunt Minnie's lovely milk pitcher given to me by my mother and a picture album containing photos of people even my mother has trouble placing. What I do have is a sense of plenty of family gatherings, some at Aunt Minnie's—the big oak dining table that she and her daughter Annie spread with cheddar cheese cut from a large hoop, fresh-cured ham, homemade bread and garlic dill pickles—in her country Victorian house in Hockley, Texas. These many years later I can remember creeping up the stairs off the dining room to the unfinished attic where her bachelor son Willie had a twin iron bedstead, and not much more that I recall. And I remember another room used for storage, among its store old oil lamps and a table or so. I can almost smell the remnants of oil and the fragrance of the exposed Cypress beams of that attic. Most of these dear people are gone, but not the love and memories that rush over me when I recall them, and when I look each night at that milk pitcher standing on my bedside table.

Yes, the antique treasures I am proud to hold for just awhile have a spiritual quality for me, as do old houses—like the one I live in that once belonged to my great grandparents. I can't imagine not associating these treasures with the good folk who made them. Some treasures that are simply beautiful, and others that are simply wonderful. All of them are filled with the spirit of good lives lived.