Shopping by TARDIS

This is a painting by bandleader Xavier Cugat, title unknown. Based on the colors, and the fact that one of the doctors is holding a copy of Playboy, I'm guessing it dates from circa 1960. We bought it at a thrift shop several years ago for $27.50, at the height of our yard sale and eBay period.

It hangs in a room full of furniture and decor of roughly the same vintage, midcentury modern vinyl couches and strange lamps and a fake tv minibar. A vintage bowl holds somebody's collection of old matchbooks. One of our many Tiki mugs, a glass one, holds our vintage swizzle sticks. Were it not for the fact that the room has since been overloaded with junk from my mom's estate, you could almost believe it's 1960 in that room.

We bought our vintage furniture, decor and toys on the cheap, at yard sales and estate sales, in thrift shops and at auction. Many of the pieces were inexpensive because of condition: torn fabric, mostly. Even the Cugat has a tear in the canvas.

There's a better way to get this stuff, if only we had the right equipment. You see, when I wrote about vacationing by time machine a couple of weeks ago, I left out a very important part of the itinerary.

I want to go shopping in the 1960s. So does John.

What I actually want is to shop in January and July of each year from 1955 to 1969. John and I would make our purchases at Sears and J.C. Penney, Weber's Department Store in Manlius NY, Economy Books and Ed Guth Hobbies in Syracuse, and at the Art Corner at Disneyland. We'd buy comics and original cells and Micki Mouse Club Magazine issues with Annette and Zorro and Spin & Marty on the covers. We'd buy Miller clocks and Eames chairs. I'd get two of each Barbie, Midge, et al. issued from 1958 through 1969. John would complete his collection of Warriors of the World figures. I'd get a Jane West, and all the bone china animals I had until Ethel and I gradually broke most of them.

We'd get mint condition crayons with all the original, politically incorrect color names, in both the 128 crayon box and the 64 crayon box with the built-in sharpener. We'd get the original Enterprise model with the light-up nacelles, and a complete set of Tinykins, and Steiff plush. Then we'd have to get a bigger house to display it all.

The closest we've come lately to shopping in the 1960s has been when we've visited our local Ace Hardware. This particular store has been around for decades, and carries much of the same stuff I used to see at local hardware stores before there was such a thing as Home Depot. They have jadite bowls and metal signs, model cars and trains, and zillions of other items, some of them quite nifty. A couple of years ago, we bought a white Christmas tree there.

The other great retro place here in Tucson is Yikes! Toy Store, which sells repro tin toys and Hula lamps and Freud action figures and other amazing things.

But I still want to go shopping at 1957 Disneyland, and Weber's, and Sears, and buy all those things we once had or never got but wanted, all shiny and new at pre-inflation prices.

And then, I suppose, we would sell the extra Barbies at 21st century prices, to finance our next stop: shopping in the future.

Karen