Our workshop

As I sit here with my shoulders aching after just an hour of gardening, it is good to remember that there was a time when we were young, and healthy, and resilient, and happening on all cylinders.  From the mid 80’s to the start of the nineties more or less, we moved enough “product” that we employed from one to three people daily to keep up with the demand.  Both from sales at the Harbourfront Antique market in Toronto, and through our folk art mail order business.

Edith and Jeanine at work

Antiques brought back from Quebec needed to be cleaned, and/or stripped and refinished.  Now don’t get excited, we never stripped good paint, but the reality was that there was a lot more people looking for a nicely refinished pine piece than there was looking for good paint, and good paint was hard to find so we played to our market.  The kids understandingly wanted to eat, and for quite a while there you could count on selling any refinished pine, or butternut bonnet chest you would bring to the market.  The good thing in this was that the Americans didn’t like bonnet chests so they were always cheap and available in Quebec.  But I digress.  Besides the antiques, we discovered that there was a good market for a reproduction pine armoire we found in Quebec that was deep enough to house those giant honking t.v.’s that everybody had back then, and still look reasonably good among your other antiques. Of course very few old cupboards were of the proportion to do this, and there was a demand so it filled a niche.

A refinished Trudel entertainment unit

At the peak we could expect up to a half dozen orders per week.  We bought them in the rough from Pierre and Claire Trudel, who had a small factory near the pickers barns in the Victoriaville area (future blog).  They also made the carved wooden ducks, birds, and animals that we sold at the market and on mail order.  So after picking the antiques from the region I would swing by Pierre and Claire, and fill the truck with our order of new cupboards and animals.

Once home, besides the work on the antiques we had to refinish or paint the repro cupboards as ordered, and similarly paint or varnish the wooden animals, so it very quickly became more than Jeanine and I could handle on our own.  Albert who I have mentioned before and will undoubtedly mention again came first, and then a neighbor lady named Edith joined us who felt lonely at home while her husband delivered the mail and who enjoyed the work and the extra income.  Then as was necessitated by increasing sales we would hire a local high school student or two to keep up.  The place was hoping from 8:30 until about 5:30 every weekday, and I would quite often go back in the evenings and work until late, especially if it was getting close to Sunday, and the Toronto market, or we had a large order to fill.

A load of Trudel animals

I know there are a lot of collectors who look down on selling reproductions along side antiques, but at Harbourfront in those days it was perfectly acceptable as long as they were sold as what they are, which is a reproduction.   There was a lot of people looking for entertainment units, and I’d much rather provide a new one that did the job and was well made, than cutting the middle post out of an actual antique cupboard or some other such none sense. It also really helped with the bottom line.

Edith

Similarly, the carved animals, were attractive to heaps of folks who didn’t necessarily want to spend much, or deal with a challenging piece of original folk art.  These folks were looking for a nicely carved and finished pine goose to go along with the rest of their “country pine” décor. I think back on this period as our “manufacturing” phase, and it was a lot of work,  but it was lucrative at the time, and it gave us and a few other people some relatively interesting and rewarding work. We played it until the demand died out, and when the “craze” subsided we quit reproductions, and focused entirely on original finish antiques and “real” folk art.  To everything there is a season.

Jeanine and I with ordered cupboards

I was going to write on another subject, but here it is 3 p.m. in Port Dover, Ontario on a sometimes sunny, sometimes raining Friday the 13^th of May, 2016, and there are over 100,000 bikers in town.  The air is a rich mixture of gasoline fumes, rock and roll, and Harley grunts, and well, it’s damn near impossible to think about anything else.

I don’t own a motorcycle.  Have never had any inclination even to ride one, other than dirt bike fun as a kid, but I can see that it is a great pleasure for those who are so inclined.  After living here for 13 years we have experienced a half dozen or so of these events.  The other times we would just get out of Dodge, but occasionally we have friends who want to experience it, or we just don’t feel like clearing out, so we stay put.  The experience is always much the same.  The crowd has gotten bigger each year and the management of said crowd has gotten smoother, but basically it’s the same routine.  A few hundred come in on Thursday and keep the Norfolk Hotel (our neighbor) hoppin’ until about 2 a.m.  It was a little earlier last night because a thunderstorm arrived about 1 am and drove everyone to their tents or hotel rooms.  This morning starting about 8:30 am the police direct the throngs that arrive, up St Andrew Street past our house, through town until they hit Chapman Street where they go left past the Main Street which is reserved for walking traffic, to St. George Street, where they descend back down to Harbor St.  Here, they hang a left and head out the way they came in.  During this procedure most stop and park somewhere along the way, buy a coffee and doughnut, or later a beer and pulled pork sandwich, buy the t-shirt and perhaps some dope paraphernalia or leather goods.  They walk around checking out each others bikes and outfits, and then about now 80% of them  get back on their bikes and go home.  Some will stay over and rock the night away, but by noon tomorrow there will just be a handful of bikes, things will be cleaned up, and you will have trouble finding evidence that anything out of the ordinary has occurred.

Other than a chance to see bikes and chat with those with similar interests Friday the 13^th is fundamentally a fashion parade.  It strikes me that in spite of the bad ass, counterculture persona of the bike culture, the end result is that everyone dresses in some version of the same components; black t-shirts and jeans, black leather everything, spooky jewelry that would not be out of place at a Mexican day of the dead celebration, and other death and rock imagery which when put together has the effect of making everyone look like they are members of the same tribe.  What’s with that?  I suppose there is comfort in those numbers.

Thong man prepares

And I would like to state that although I don’t “get it”, I ’m not judging or putting anyone down.  It’s good for the economy of our little town and I have no problem with people having fun. Enjoy yourselves and live the dream.  I recognize it’s the restrictions of my perspective that excludes this as really good fun. In spite of trying, I just can’t find anything to be interested in.  Admittedly some of the bikes are interesting as sculptural form, and some of the people very photogenic, but it only goes so far when balanced against the discomfort of being in a dense crowd, listening to bad cover versions of songs you were quite happy to leave in the 70’s, and waiting forever in line to overpay for a greasy pulled pork sandwich.

thong man poses

There’s a guy who has become a genuine Friday 13^th celebrity which best illustrates the cultural depth of the pond in which we are swimming.  He comes to every one of these and for some reason has chosen the boulevard beside our house in which to change wardrobe three or four times over the day.  Meet “thong man”. Pleasant enough fellow who seems delighted to show us his aged bum in a variety of thong based costumes. Today he had a Police officer based costume with police badge patch covering his genitals, and fuzzy pink handcuffs.  Then he changed into a pink bunny outfit with white pompom tail; then it was a fluorescent green number which may have had something to do with leprechauns.    As you watch, older and younger women approach to have their picture taken with this star.  Quite often, with their full acceptance and encouragement he is photographed grabbing the subjects breast and looking lecherous.   Boyfriend or husband nearby, grinning behind their cell phone as they click for posterity.  Thong man’s wife looking bored and disinterested, wondering when he will have had enough and they can just go home.  And so it goes.

Ahh, I hear that the rock and roll has started again.  Time to go and get myself a greasy pulled pork sandwich.  Happy Friday the 13^th from Port Dover.