One Man's Junk... is an Antique Dealer's Dream!

The video above shows a clip from an episode of the TV show "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet". They start to realize how much junk they have in their garage, so they decide to rent a trailer to haul it all to the dump. This is when I want to jump into the scene and say, "Whoa Nelly! Let me take a look at what you've got there before you start pitching it. You just might have some treasures there that are worth something!" 

Maybe their "junk" wouldn't have been worth anything yet back in the 50's, but I was dying to get a closer look at what they had. That antique lacrosse stick that Harriet wanted Ozzie to throw on the trailer would sell for $75 today. Actually, if we were talking about the literal lacrosse stick that Ozzie had, and he autographed it, I'm sure it would sell for a lot more than that! ;-)

As an antique dealer, I have seen and heard too many stories of  antiques that have been thrown away because the owners considered it to be "old junk". Many times I have been to estate sales where the family running the sale remarks, "You should have seen the amount of old junk we had to throw out before we could even clear the space for a sale!"

Ouch! I've been shot! 

One time we headed into a house just as it was opening it's door for the sale, and the woman at the door told me this was the home of her great aunt. I saw a very empty looking family room in front of me with nothing but new-ish furniture and new-ish knick knacks, so I headed down the hall. Each room looked like it had been stripped nearly naked, except for the new-ish furniture with some decorator pieces here and there. I got the feeling that maybe they had let an antique dealer look through the place ahead of time. But, I was wrong. It was much, much worse than that. 

I asked the woman running the sale if there were any Christmas decorations. 

"Christmas decorations? Oh there were boxes and boxes of them up in the attic. It was just all OLD stuff. Nothing but junk. We hauled all that old stuff down and hauled it to the dump."

"Was the attic full?" I asked.

"Oh YES! You should have SEEN it!" (yes, I should have) "It was packed with all the old JUNK she collected over the years. PACKED. The whole house was so cluttered with too much stuff. We got rid of all the old junk before the sale. We had to hire a truck company to come out and haul this stuff off to the dump. They had to make THREE TRIPS to the dump."

I felt like Fred Sanford on the sitcom "Sanford and Son" when he'd put his hand over his heart as if he was going to die while he'd look up to the sky and say, "You hear that Elizabeth?! I'm coming to join you!!"

I imagined an enormous hill of garbage at the dump, and at the very top, was every antique I ever dreamed of finding   - a Tiffany Studios lamp glistening in the sunlight on top of a bag of compost, a Kestner doll holding tightly to a Steiff bear for dear life, a Lalique perfume bottle wrapped up in old newspaper in the same box with a Daum Nancy cameo glass vase and a Rookwood vase, a bucket of old bakelite buttons, and those precious boxes of antique figural glass Christmas ornaments, which would now be shattered like gleaming confetti on top of a hot mess. 

I was at the wrong place. And so were all the other antique dealers who were frantically dashing around that house, looking for anything that wasn't new. We should have all been at the dump.

Back to Ozzie and Harriet. If you'd like to see more of their "old junk" and their neighbors "old junk" before it gets hauled to the dump, here are parts two and three:

Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qlTuZd1XuM&feature=related

Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjYobMuQEH8&feature=related

This is actually the first time I have ever seen this show, and it already made me laugh out loud, even though I haven't finished watching this episode yet. I'm going to watch Part Two and Part Three now. 

If you see any stuff getting thrown out that you'd like to take, feel free to let me know what you'd haul away from their pile. 

Thank you to hwy61media for posting these on YouTube so that people like me who never had a chance to see that show finally get to see it for the first time. 

I'd also like to wish the lovely and talented Harriet Nelson a very Happy Birthday. Today would have been Harriet Nelson's 101st birthday. She was born in Des Moines, Iowa as Peggy Lou Snyder on July 18, 1909. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet ran for fourteen years! Not only that, she has a long list of other roles she starred in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Nelson