plant & ghost: Missouri Trip, Part 2 (16 July, 17 July)

Mama's younger older brother (Bruce), his wife (Martha), and daughter-in-law (Megan) got in late last night. Uncle Bruce has always fascinated me: he wears a leather cowboy hat, is quiet when he's not being hilarious, and is a gifted artist. I'm not exaggerating about the gifted part: his photo-realism drawing ability is astounding, and his cartoons are dynamic and quirky. He plays guitar. He flies really big kites. In high school, his nickname was "Mouse" because he was so small. He's still short, for a man, and has a light frame. He seems self-contained, to me, like an island. But a really funny island. His wife Martha is a little spitfire, her hair in a braid down past her waist. It's my first time meeting their son Jeremy's wife, Megan, and I like her.

Late night cats

Early morning cat

Martha sticks around the house cooking and waiting for Mama's older older brother (Biff) and his wife (Pam) to arrive, while Gram, Mama, Bruce, and Megan and I go into Carthage to see the old buildings and poke around in antique stores. Grampa putters around his garage, I think trying to avoid antiquing and talking to Pam both.

A wall in Grampa's garage

Mama and Bruce

Carthage has a town square, a real one. It always seemed like a folksy turn-of-phrase to me, but in Carthage, it's an actual square-shaped block of buildings surrounding the court house, which sits on a square of green lawn in the center. We don't go inside, but I imagine Atticus Finch would look at home in the courtrooms.

Carthage Courthouse

I love antique stores. I have so many memories of visiting antique stores with my parents as a kid. My dad's parents had an antique store in Illinois, mostly primitives and folk Americana. I grew up sleeping in an antique rope bed, vaulting four-plus feet high each night to sleep. I just love the stuff: the age and the history and the cranky-fussiness of old hinges and wood. Seattle has crummy antique stores, which makes sense for a state that's barely old enough to be qualified as an antique itself. Missouri has 70 years of statehood and another 50 of white settlement before that on Washington. Anyway, that means that they've had time for families to get sick of their old furniture and sell it to us Yankees. And not just the furniture, of course. What fascinates me most are the old photos. Look at these people! Look at what they felt was important enough to document, in a time before the ubiquity of the camera phone.

Good advice

Antique fan quilt, made with black velvet and I believe silk from neckties

First: families; then places, then things. I sift through a pile of more than a hundred portraits, all snapped between 1900 and 1960. The oldest photos are, of course, mostly posed: professional portraits by a studio photographer. The photos from the 50's and 60's are mostly candid, the snapshots you'd find in a family photo album. Kids in front of Christmas trees, a new car, the family dog. I flip them over to read the penciled names. Irma. Judy. Robert. I buy ones that make me happy, and a few that are so artistic, have such perfect composition I can't believe they're "just" a snapshot. I buy one because the back says "Here's a photo of me for you, I'm not as fat as I am in it anymore (thank God)." I buy at least 6 of someone's fat dachshund posing in sunglasses (I make Mama and Gram go back on our last day in Missouri to buy more.) I feel obligated to the people in these photos. As a photographer, I love seeing photographs, and the feel of the old prints. As a museum professional, I want to horde as much history as possible, and first-person narratives are always the most interesting artifacts to me. And as a water-sign on the cusp of another water-sign, I cry when I think about these photos, about how the relatives of the people in these pictures didn't care enough to keep these relics. I have to rescue them.

Old scrapbook

This idiot is the best idiot

The indignities of dachshund-hood

Other items are less charming. The casual racism is in full force, with Mammy and Golliwog iconography in a variety of forms. I understand these items have a historical significance, and I don't think the world would be better off if they just disappeared from the lexicon: I think they're an important reminder of how thoroughly and seemingly easily one race subjugated another. But I feel like their place is in a museum or cultural center, with context clues and explanation. I don't like them for sale as curiosities, as something people buy for in modern times for novelty or collection. Part of my discomfort is how casually stuff like this is displayed by sellers, it's mixed in with the vintage Pyrex like there's no way it could harm. I wonder now about including a photo of some here, in case it's hurtful, or seen as shock-value.

More casual racism

Jason and I tried to get donuts from the Winchell's in Wallingford one night, but it had turned into a BBQ place. I didn't expect to see a Seattle reminder here.

I regret not buying this tiny cauldron

I did buy a new plate, though

Sidewalk

Back at the house, I greet my Uncle Biff and Aunt Pam. Martha, Gram, and Mama finish up the cooking. After dinner, there are too many people around, and I escape outside. I spend time knocking Japanese beetles off of Gram's hibiscus flowers- they've had a really bad infestation this year. Mama bought two dig-your-own-gem kits from the souvenir shop, and we each dig out a rock from our compressed bricks. I find a desiccated frog corpse, just skin and bones shriveled by the sun.

Lucky supervises dinner-making

Silver, in the window

Feral kittens waiting for dinner

Japanese beetles destroying a blossom

Digging

Desiccated

By the next morning, our company has all gone back to their homes. Mama, Gram and I check out another antique store in the morning, and then Grampa takes us for a drive. We visit a restaurant built into a cliffside that Grampa wants to buy and turn into a strip club featuring senior citizen dancers. We get lost trying to find the graveyard that has the "mother and father of Pitcher," my great+ grandparents. People have graffitied the small stone building next to the yard and dumped trash in the parking lot. More driving, and Mama and I are tense. Grampa's driving is scary: he weaves, he is apparently allergic to using his turn signal, and he tells story after story using both hands for emphasis. Every so often he drifts over the rumble-strip on the shoulder, and Gram shouts "I don't like that tune, change the radio!" He refuses to let Mama or me drive. When we get back home, we hang out on the porch with the pets until dusk and the mosquitos drive us inside.