Temporary Time Travel

[PrettySquareGal]

Sometimes when I'm out antiquing (and Maine has soooo many shops to visit, right, Lizzie?) and I've been in a store for a while, surrounded by old things, I've had the luxury of feeling like it really could be another era. I may get a whiff of an old perfume lingering, or have read the copy on the back of enough game boxes from when strategy didn't involve killing people off in graphic detail for fun. While looking at old crystal I am brought back to dinner at my late grandmother's house, and think of how much she loved the kinds of things at which I was looking. So sometimes, when everything is just right, I have just a few seconds of "time travel" and usually will have a rude reminder that no, it really is 2006. But it's why I love collecting and being around old things. There's so much positive energy for me!

Anyway, I get into a tizzy sometimes. Anyone else?

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

I can relate.

Maybe there is a lingering energy that these old things posess? I get a warm fuzzy feeling from being around old things. It's why I love going to museums and antique shops.
I have a friend that swears she can feel things,...impressions I guess you would say, from the door pulls and door knobs in old houses! Things that were handled a great deal.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Maybe there is a lingering energy that these old things posess? I get a warm fuzzy feeling from being around old things. It's why I love going to museums and antique shops.
I have a friend that swears she can feel things,...impressions I guess you would say, from the door pulls and door knobs in old houses! Things that were handled a great deal.

I agree with this very much.

 

[Hannigan Reilly]

shrinks be damned, me too. sometimes I get that feeling followed by a temporary emotional "ache" (I don't know how else to describe it) that the world has (as Stephen King described it once) "moved on," and for an instant, I was almost there, in a special place and time.

 

[The Reno Kid]

I think that's one of the reasons I tend to collect old stuff. I sometimes refer to my '39 Ford as my time machine, because it sort of feels that way when I'm driving it.

 

[scotrace]

Funny You Should Bring This Up

I think about this at a flea market I hit every Sunday morning before church.

It depends on the environment for me. A nice shop (or auction), with things well displayed can't help but make you wonder at what Christmas morning that beautiful bowl must have seen, or how much entertainment the phonograph must have given a family.

But at flea markets, where it's just folding table after table with ratty-haired dolls, filthy kitchen appliances, etc., I see... death.

A lifetime of collecting things, accumulating a household, and it all ends up on Earl McNoshower's card table in a parking lot, covered with finger prints and grime, swirling with cigarette smoke. That's someone's life, for pete sake. Those things meant something to someone.

The former is pleasant, the latter, very depressing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Somebody once said "The past isn't dead -- it isn't even past," and I think I agree with that. It's not so much past as it is scattered all around us -- and it's our job to gather together as many of the pieces as we can to give it life again.

I think about this a lot. When I listen to a 70-year-old radio program where all the participants have long since passed on, or enjoy an old movie, it's kind of like they're living again, in my own little bubble of 1936, or whatever year it happens to be. Same thing when I shop for vintage or even spend time in a spot where the crassness of the present day hasn't had a lot of influence -- it's just a matter of finding those fragments of the past and bringing them back together again.

 

[Feraud]

But at flea markets, where it's just folding table after table with ratty-haired dolls, filthy kitchen appliances, etc., I see... death.

A lifetime of collecting things, accumulating a household, and it all ends up on Earl McNoshower's card table in a parking lot, covered with finger prints and grime, swirling with cigarette smoke. That's someone's life, for pete sake. Those things meant something to someone.

The former is pleasant, the latter, very depressing.

scotrace- you and I must share a similar sense of the morbid. As much as I love collecting antiques there is something depressing about it. All those photographs I see at flea markets look especially forlorn. As I think about it I know our possessions will end up the same way. With digital photography and buying used hats, jackets, etc. will we leave any semblance of ourselves in those future flea markets?

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Somebody once said "The past isn't dead -- it isn't even past," and I think I agree with that. It's not so much past as it is scattered all around us -- and it's our job to gather together as many of the pieces as we can to give it life again.

I think about this a lot. When I listen to a 70-year-old radio program where all the participants have long since passed on, or enjoy an old movie, it's kind of like they're living again, in my own little bubble of 1936, or whatever year it happens to be. Same thing when I shop for vintage or even spend time in a spot where the crassness of the present day hasn't had a lot of influence -- it's just a matter of finding those fragments of the past and bringing them back together again.

Yep. The past is still very much alive.
The Egyptians believed that to even speak the name of a deceased person, was to literally bring that person back to life. I think it's true of all things "past".

 

[Naama]

That reminds me of the art of David McDermott and Peter McGough, they have some "time experiments" and stuff, I love them! If there is someone who really is authentic, then it must be those two guys (speaking of the victorian era)!

Naama

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

This thread reminds me of an archealogical experiment I heard about.

Read about this some time ago. About how some researchers, (don't recall where :eusa_doh: ) were trying to get sounds from the past from ancient pottery! The premise being that since the pottery was sometimes incized with a stylus-like tool as it was turned on a wheel, that it could possibly have acted as a sort of primitive phonograph. Thousands of years before Edison.

 

[herringbonekid]

i can sometimes imagine i'm back in the past if i'm in an empty art deco cinema and looking at a part of decor with no modern fixtures, and no people about wearing modern clothes.

incidentally this subject has been covered in another thread and has some good stories, however i couldn't find the thread to post a link.

 

[Rosie]

Maybe there is a lingering energy that these old things posess? I get a warm fuzzy feeling from being around old things. It's why I love going to museums and antique shops.
I have a friend that swears she can feel things,...impressions I guess you would say, from the door pulls and door knobs in old houses! Things that were handled a great deal.

I was visiting the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston a few years back and there is this section that is filled with old furniture, but very personal furniture, beds, vanities, etc. At one point, I was walking alone and I felt this very strange energy that was both scary and interesting. I swore maybe it was like the energy of the people who owned these items before, not sure. It scared me enough that I walked/ran out of there.

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

...At one point, I was walking alone and I felt this very strange energy that was both scary and interesting...

The movie even has its own SIG with an annual event at the Grand Hotel in Michigan... has anyone here gone to one & can post? i.e. the general age group etc
http://www.somewhereintime.tv/


the hotel's on the "maybe someday" list

http://www.grandhotel.com/


Swing High,
- Cousin Hepcat

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

I've listened to old Fibber McGee & Molly programs on the radio (KKGO AM 1260 in Los Angeles), and I've been to James and Marian Jordan's grave in Culver City. (it's right next to Sharon Tate's grave)

There's a lot of history here in Los Angeles if you know where to look.

 

[Raegan]

I know exactly what you're saying. The other day I was listening to The 40's on the XM radio on our TV and they do this news program thing where they give old news stories. I was standing out on the deck watching the ducks in our pond and the news they were playing was about WW2 and how Britain was pulling out of France because the nazis were taking it so quickly. Without anything out there with me to distract me from the news and make me realize what year it really was, that was exactly how I felt, like I was really in the 40's. It was one of the neatest things I've ever experienced.

 

[Grimstar]

Oh, I know...

I know exactly what you mean. Here's the best of my experiences. I was at the Biltmore Inn on Biltmore estate. (The largest private residence in America, built by George Vanderbilt, currently owned by his grandson...open for tours, definitely a must-see if you're in this part of the country) It was late in the evening after our wedding and reception at the estate. (You don't want to know what it takes to pull that off... lol ) I was on the veranda at the inn, still in full white tie evening wear, just sitting there with a nice 12 year old port and a good cigar. There was no one else around to spoil things, and suddenly, over the audio system there, (the speakers on the veranda have a tinny, old radio sound ) several songs by Marlene Dietrich started playing... and for a good 15 minutes, it WAS 1939 again.

BTW, the wedding and reception were amazing...everything done in true victorian fashion, as much as humanly possible.

 

[magneto]

Read about this some time ago. About how some researchers, (don't recall where :eusa_doh: ) were trying to get sounds from the past from ancient pottery!

Hi Maj. Nick,
I read about that too...there is a scholarly article about it here which discusses the experiment:

http://members01.chello.se/christer.hamp/phono/archaeo/archaeo.html

..Anyway, yes I know the feeling...usually in the hundred year old stacks of the old library I go to, with the glass doors and wood floors like a slightly shady office building in a pre-Code movie

 

[funneman]

Here's when it hits me...

I'm driving, usually still dark out, Glen Miller is playing behind Peggy Lee in the DVD player, (the bass and treble turned off). I check the rear view for cars and I catch a glimpse of the crown of the fedora I'm wearing. I raise up just enough to see the brim pulled way down low over my right eye..and I'm in every 40's movie I've ever seen.

 

[fortworthgal]

I know this feeling well! In reenacting I actually get to experience this relatively often, and I love it. There is nothing like riding in a 1942 jeep, down a winding country road surrounded by thick trees, with nothing in sight except the rest of a caravan of military vehicles and other people in WWII uniforms to transport you back 60 years!

scotrace- you and I must share a similar sense of the morbid. As much as I love collecting antiques there is something depressing about it. All those photographs I see at flea markets look especially forlorn. As I think about it I know our possessions will end up the same way. With digital photography and buying used hats, jackets, etc. will we leave any semblance of ourselves in those future flea markets?

This is the one thing I hate about estate sales.

Don't get me wrong, I love finding original M43 jackets for $7.50. But there's also something hellishly depressing about knowing that this was someone's life. Their photographs, their old military uniforms that I'm sure made them proud, the jewelry - all with masking tape and a "low low price" slapped on. We went to one estate sale where the family was just going to "throw away" a huge stack of V-mail that the grandmother had sent home from her WAC detachment in NYC during WWII. They gave it to us, just to get rid of it.

A while back, we went into an abandoned farmhouse on a friend's property. In the country, these are pretty common. The house still contained furniture, dishes, etc., scattered around. We found an old wooden cover photo album containing tons of photos from the 1910s up through probably the very early 1950s. Servicemen, mementos obviously sent home from Europe, pictures of families and children, of Christmases long since past... and it really bothered me to know that someone had just abandoned this album. It must have meant a great deal to someone once, but now it just sat in the middle of a house with broken-out windows. We took the album home.

I guess part of me feels it is kind of my "duty" to rescue those abandoned memories.