The Stories Behind My Furnishings...

Boring!!! But here it is, for the benefit of anyone who might care.

The fireplace.
Right out of college, I was married to a man named Tom. (Yes, folks...I was married twice!) Tom and I stayed in our college town while I taught and he finished his Master's Degree, then he took a job as a school counselor in the south suburbs of Chicago. We moved there with very few furnishings but worked on that. A couple of years later, we decided to buy our very first home--a townhouse in a place called Park Forest South. (I think the name has been changed...to Governor's Park, or something like that. I'm not even sure I could find it now!) The model townhome included a fireplace. I wanted that!!! Unfortunately, Tom didn't. He quoted the fact that the fireplace added $1,200 to the price of the home, and that if we spread that out over the course of the mortgage, it would cost much more. Ugh! I caved in.

That put me on the look for a fireplace substitute. As it turned out, J.C. Penney's had an electric fireplace that looked quite real. I think it was $170, and I loved it. When it was delivered, however, a corner of the wooden mantel was broken. We called Penney's at least twice for them come pick it up for a return, but they never did. Our account was cleared of the charges for the unit...and it became ours for free! We did some minor repairs to fix the mantel. I "bought" some fireplace tools with my mother-in-law's cigarette trading stamps. Tom and I divorced after five short years of marriage, but I got custody of the fireplace. Ever since 1971, the stupid thing has been in all of my residences. A lot of people don't see that it isn't real. Never mind that the rotating light that makes it look like a flickering fire whirs when turned on. Never mind that it puts out heat only when turned on (which is almost never). Never mind that my daughter and grandchildren have both had REAL fireplaces when Grandma's is just a fake. The fireplace has a purpose and function in my house. Among other things, it supplies a place to display an ancient clock that was my great-grandmother's. Don't get between me and my fireplace. You'll lose!

The buffet.
Still with then-husband Tom, we were touring antique shops in Rossville, IL. I don't remember the occasion...just wishing that we had the money to purchase some of the lovely old things we were seeing. In one particular shop, there was a back room. In that room was an old oak cabinet that was slightly over five feet long, with two doors hiding shelves on the right and left, a full length drawer on the bottom, and seven drawers in between. The doors had burlap in the cutouts. The top was one-and-a-half inches thick--pure oak. The whole cabinet was storing old paint and varnish cans. It was a mess...abused, but solid wood. I asked the shop owner if the cabinet was for sale. I could tell that he hadn't thought about selling it, since it was old and relatively discarded, but he said he would sell it...for $35. Sold!

I don't remember how we transported the cabinet. (We're talking 1971-72 here. I've slept since then!) I think it took a borrowed truck and a trip or two. At the time, my father was still teaching Industrial Arts in Elmwood Park, IL...so it went directly to his shop so I could refinish it. I stripped, stained, and varnished it. Put wood-grain contact paper on the inside shelves. Put new antique-looking pulls on the drawers and doors (18 of them--gets expensive!). I also installed pieces of amber-colored bottle-glass plastic where the burlap had been. All of this to house my 99-piece china set. With the divorce, I got custody of what had become "the buffet".

MANY years later, I decided that I wanted to put copper punch pieces where the bottle-glass plastic was. I was asking around for advice on where to find the right kind of copper to do the job. My friend Ryan's wife, an artist, volunteered to do the job. It took her awhile, but in time, I had four copper punch pieces for the doors--lotus blossoms, jumping frogs, oriental fish, dragon flies and butterflies. Beautiful!! What I have in my kitchen is now art. No one else in the world has a piece of furniture like this one! It's big and bulky and heavy, but it holds a lot. My $35 investment has proved to be invaluable to me through all these years...and it's pretty, to boot!

The curved-glass china cabinet.
You will find cabinets like this in most every antique store. The one I have was my grandmother's. I don't know where she got it or if it was saved from the house fire back in 1944. I only know that it was always in the house that was my grandparents' through my lifetime. I think we all thought it was a family treasure.

I never laid claim to family treasures when my parents were alive. Oh, I might have expressed interest in this thing or that, but when it came to the big things, I never said a word. I think my mother suffered from some pangs of guilt, however. LONG before she suddenly passed, she confided in me that she was giving my sister her sterling silver tableware--because I got the college education--and my brother was to get the curved-glass china cabinet. Hey...I didn't really care, although I wasn't particularly happy about her reasoning. My sister could have had a college education paid for by my parents, had she wanted it...and my brother was in the throes of getting one when his future was side-tracked by the fact that he was to become a father at the ripe old age of 19 or so. In any case, I was somewhat concerned by the fact that Doug (my brother) had no one to leave the china cabinet to after his eventual demise. His child was given up for adoption at birth. In the meantime, the china cabinet just stayed at the farm while my father was alive. Then Dad died...

After Dad passed, Doug told me that he was giving me the china cabinet on "semi-permanent loan". I didn't ask for it. He just knew that he couldn't house it.
Getting the cabinet from the farm near Streator, IL, to Plainfield, IN, was a problem. I enlisted the help of a local ham radio family with a pickup truck. Big mistake. Long story short, among paying them for their gas for the 400 miles, round trip, meals, a new magmount antenna along the route, and a new radiator for their minivan--the "follow car"--the transport cost me almost $400. When we finally arrived on Walton Drive in Plainfield, it was discovered that one of the curved glass pieces had fallen into the cabinet. It didn't break, thank God, but the piece of trim that held it in place was simply too old and brittle to hold it. I knew that the cabinet would probably not survive another non-professional trip.

A few years thereafter, Doug disowned my sister and I for our part in wanting to sell our grandparents' farm. There were mega-hard feelings on his part. When it became impossible for him to hold out anymore, he declared that he wanted his "due", and thereafter his sisters were dead to him. And so it was. The very last time I talked to him in this life was to tell him that I wasn't denying him his china cabinet but that HE was going to have to find some way to get it that wouldn't destroy it. There was no other word. Then he died, suddenly.

I'm not sure that anyone knew what bad shape the cabinet was/is in. The shelves rest on huge eye-screws that someone put in decades ago. The door doesn't close properly. The curved glass piece that fell out in transport is now held in place by a replacement bit of wood trim from a friend that another source told me would cost $80 to replicate. Still, it serves a function and has a place in my house. The question is, who does it belong to after I croak? I've met my brother's daughter. There is something that tells me she should have the cabinet. It seems right. But my sister objects to that, and I understand why. The way I see it, the china cabinet needs to be where it will be cherished as a piece of family history. Wherever that is!

Is it any wonder that it is hard for me to turn loose of stuff??