The Minnesota Farm Woman

Once a treasure hunter, always a treasure hunter, I always say. HE will have a different opinion, often saying “What kind of junk did you bring home THIS time?”   Collectors are kindred spirits. We have been known to drive down rutted country roads in the rain to be the early birds at estate sales.  We stop at thrift shops and junk stores, and even at piles of stuff on the side of the road if they look interesting enough.  We are the original American Pickers. I have always liked ephemera, which is another word for paper collectibles, and have a collection of sheet music which includes songs from the Civil War, the Lusitania, the Titanic, and Amelia Earhart. I also collect everyday glassware from the 1940’s and 1950’s such as Fire King, but I believe in using it instead of just dusting it. If something occasionally breaks, I am sad, but it just give me something else to hunt for.  I met a kindred spirit at our church’s annual sale, when I almost snatched a small little dish out of her hand.  Not really, because I think as a member of our church council, it would have been frowned upon for me to break a commandment so blatantly.  I don’t know how I missed this sweet little dish, but she saw it first. We thought perhaps it had come from a cafeteria and would be used to hold a tea bag or something. I wanted that little dish badly. I held it. I caressed it. I handed it back, secretly hoping that she would change her mind.  *Sigh* It would have made a great spoon rest on my stove.  Today, three months later, I was wandering around the Annual Tractor Show and Flea Market and saw an identical dish. This time, I grabbed it quickly, only to  look up and find my kindred spirit from the church sale with a big grin on her face.  She was selling the little dish, as it didn’t quite fit where she had thought it would. She had done her research and found out that it was from an ice cream shop in Wisconsin, and was the perfect size for a single scoop. That was back in the day, though. These days, our scoops as well as our booties are a lot larger. I love knowing the history of an item and repurposing it for something else. Although HE may beg to differ, I am trying not to fill our little house with too much “stuff”.  One tiny little perfect dish that was meant to be mine surely won’t make a difference,  will it?   I like to think that somehow and someday, some things end up just where they are supposed to be.