His and her plates
TRUE STORY.
I have been sorting through old collected things lately and came across these calendar plates. The story behind them has always brought me up short. Not because of the age or the cheap old collectibles, but how they came to me.
TB: EARLY 1990's
Lamar and I had been to visit with friends in Minnesota and were on our way home traveling in our motorhome when somewhere in Kansas the wind was whipping us off the roadway almost. His shoulders had knots from tense driving on arrow straight North-South highway and just the boredom of that flat endless terrain of ditches filled with wild sunflowers and the wind blowing East to West hitting us broadside. In a little prairie town with the size of about three blocks long, I begged him to stop and let me plunder through a small "anitque" shop. Now all who know me know I'm not a flea market troll. I lived with hand-me downs in my early life and now love ripping off price tags with things I buy new. He agreed to let me have fifteen minutes. Done!
I walked inside to look about, knocked a petite china cup off a shelf, ask forgiveness and offered to pay the cost. The lady said, "No, but if you buy something, the debt is settled". My eyes immediately fell on the 1959 calendar plate. The W. S. NEAL CLASS of 1959 plate belonged to me. Thinking I would do something with it and my senior portrait, I climbed back in the motor home to be buffeted about until we stopped for the night at a KOA. I couldn't get the find off my mind. I decided right there and then I would start a search for a 1957 calendar plate and use Lamar's senior picture and do a kitschy wall hanging for us.
TIMEHOP!
Looked now and then for his ALLENTOWN CLASS of 1957 plate, but my heart not being in "antiquing", the effort was half hearted until one day in 2004 I was in Fairhope, Alabama with a friend, a rabid "Antiquer". Anyone ever visiting that city knows if it can be found it might be there in one of the many stuffed shops.
My friend was in the zone and I was just brain glazed over until I decided to ask a shop lady if they ever got any calendar plates in. Her answer was, "I haven't seen any in a long time, but I know what you are talking about".
Hand to God this happened. I turned to walk on back to where my friend was and as I stepped back, I bumped an old wooden plate rack. I grabbed it to steady the few crock plates when THERE sat my 1957 calendar plate. I couldn't breath. I lifted the plate to show her without either of us uttering a word.
She told me she had NEVER seen that plate before and didn't know who may have brought it in. It being on consignment, wasn't on the books, just there, no price, no sticker with the owners name, nothing.
Now Y'all may beg to differ, but that plate belonged to me. Right?
*** I'm taking these to Hobby Lobby to have them framed with our senior pictures. I'll have this story put on the back for my grandchildren to know the history of how and why.
