Week 88: Volvo 760 SLE

I went to my vintage bin for this week's tiny car -- a French-made Majorette. This diecast Volvo makes me happy, and the chipped exterior makes it more special, even though this particular toy had not become worn by a tiny version of this daddy -- some unknown child had played with this one -- maybe a little French kid, who knows. I have no history on this car other than it is old and awesome, like me -- and it's aqua, my color. Plus I really appreciate doors that actually open (both in diecast cars and job opportunities).

I am always on the lookout for vintage treasures, so the other day I asked my five-year-old son if he wanted to stop in a new vintage/antique shop that had opened out here in Chesterland. While there is always a risk in taking a pre-schooler into a shop with breakables, Racer A is generally good in these settings, and his enthusiasm outweighed the potential risk for the need of a dustpan and broom at some point.

The shop was in a warehouse-like building that only a few years ago was home to a shop that sold lawn mowers, chainsaws and weed whackers. Now, it was filled to the top with a hodgepodge of vintage items --  good stuff, junk stuff, and all beautifully random stuff. A radio was playing big band music, and combined with the large volume of items and the haphazard pilings, the shop emitted a surreal wonderment -- this was not a small shop, either.

Racer A loved and embraced the adventure. Making the shop even more exciting, there were various rooms to explore, so as you rounded a corner there was a separate room of vintage clothing, for example, and a wooden staircase that went to a loft area filled, and I mean filled, with vintage chairs and tables. In one room, a stuffed deer head was mounted on a wall over a very large turkey - I did my best to explain the concept of taxidermy to A, who was fairly skeptical that these creatures were once actually living. Although he eventually believed me, he wasn't sure he saw the point of stuffing an animal. Actually, I wasn't sure I saw the point, either.

For me, the best part of that absolutely enjoyable experience was realizing I probably would not have been nearly as fascinated as A was when I was five. I am not taking credit for his enthusiasm, but for some reason I felt ... proud. Somehow, in this fast-paced, video game-/cable TV-/Internet-saturated world, my son still was able to appreciate the rambling, slow-paced weirdness of a bizzare antique shop, and I hope, hope, hope that somehow I contributed.

In collecting vintage, you  get ever-so-brief flashes into lives gone, or at least changed -- beautiful, bittersweet snapshots. While every moment of our lives are a potential future memory, this trip slipped out of time for me, and I felt the memory being actually made, right then and there, for both me and my son. I became part of the vintage around me, and I was happy, free from the burden of holding on to anything and just a dad and his kid having fun in a strange warehouse of old stuff.

That moment is gone, now, and I have returned to the world of bills, jobs, and responsibilities, but I know it was real, and I know there is a mental snapshot stored somewhere, as real as any faded celluloid buried under a pile of old magazines, hidden away to be found at a much later future date while while wandering through aisles of random memories, joys and sorrows.

I hope my son finds that moment someday, and smiles.