Dogwoods and Antiques

I have just returned from a lazy drive to and from a little town about 15 minutes or so from my house, said trip having been made to the Dogwood Antiques Show/Sale in that little hamlet (names and places changed to protect the innocent, namely me since I didn’t request permission to write this little blogette.)

Every year the garden club in that fair town puts on this happy little event to raise money, for what I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it’s for a good cause. Antiques dealers from here and there, around the South mostly, set up tables for buyers of the four-dollars-at-the-door tickets to browse and make purchases, if they so desire. I mostly just like to look, but if you’re so inclined, you can pick up some very old and some not-so-very-old furniture, dishes, books, jewelry (lots of jewelry,) kitchen utensils, dolls, pictures, figurines and whatknots, and (my favorite) depression glass. (No, I didn’t buy any.)

The dogwoods along my drive, drenched in their beautiful white, cross-shaped flowers, seemed to be saying, “See? We didn’t let you down!” As if the ladies of the club would have been dismayed if their little blossoms hadn’t appeared to help lead the way to the Civic Center. After all, it WAS the Dogwood Antiques Show/Sale. The population of the little town was 455 at the 2000 census, so for them to even have a civic center is quite astonishing. It appears to have once housed their school, maybe in more hustling, bustling times when maybe there were more hustling, bustling children.

This was my second year to visit their to-do, and once again I enjoyed every minute of it, from registering for the door prize to be given away at 2:30 p.m. (no, I did NOT win,) to the tea room which served lunch for extremely fair prices. Barbecue plates for $5.00 (you ain’t been to the South if you ain’t had pork barbecue!) and pimiento cheese or chicken salad sandwiches for $1.50. The desserts appeared to have been home made by the ladies themselves: coconut layer cake, chocolate layer cake, pies, and caramel layer cake, my choice for this trip. Delicious. At one point a hard-working gentleman helper walked into the tea room and one of the ladies behind the counter asked what time he closes. He told her he closed at 1:00. It was 10 minutes till two, so she assumed her forthcoming request would be moot. He wanted to know her request anyway. It appeared that she needed some primer (he must own a paint or hardware store) and he said he’d get it for her. She told him just to leave it on his step and she’d pick it up. I love small-town America.

I downed my pimiento-cheese-on-wheat sandwich, chips, and one bite of the dill pickle (dill’s not my favorite) and about half of my soft drink, savored every bite of the cake (I was good...I didn’t get the thickly coated caramelized end piece that I wanted) and it was back to the antiques tables where I took another stroll through to admire all the items of antiquity and the few new/newer items and decided to make my purchase and go home. Oddly enough, my purchase was something brand new, three linen bread cloths to line my baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas, my old ones having been stained and greasy from my yeast-roll bakings at that time of year.

Okay, so this turned out not to be a blogette after all but a full-blown blog. Those of you who know me knew it wouldn’t be a blogette, didn’t you?

So what makes someone like me, who doesn’t blog often, want to write about something so plain and unintellectual? The fact that God is good...all the time, whether you can see it today or not...and loves us enough to not only send His only Son to provide for our sin atonement but also allows us simple pleasures. Lazy dogwood-scattered drives, caramel cake, pretty colored glass, and reminders that, even though wars rage around us and gas prices are swallowing us alive, small-town America can still be good.