I TRADED STRESS FOR THE OPEN ROAD - I FOUND ANTIQUES ALONG THE WAY

Even as a kid I was hopelessly nostalgic. I kept everything I was ever given, and I would have kept the packaging as well, if my mother Merle, hadn’t made a habit of morning forays into my room to “tidy up.” She was happy doing this, and I didn’t half mind. It wasn’t until she gave my classic toys away one day, including my table-top hockey game that I got a tad mad. Until she told me about the poor grandmother around the corner, who had taken-in her two grandchildren, and had nary a toy for them. I knew those two kids. They needed those toys more than I did. As long as I still had my ball glove, hockey net and stick, and my bike, well, I was good.

As I’ve mentioned previously, in this blog collection, working in the newspaper industry was far too stressful for a guy like me. I’ve always worked long and hard to bypass stress. It didn’t matter how long, or how much copy I’d written in advance, the aura of a newspaper office was contaminated with unnecessary stresses. I was always organized and prepared for eventualities. I anticipated poop hitting the fan, and always had plan “B” and “C” ready to roll, to make things right. It wasn’t enough. We had too many bosses, too many folks to please, beyond the readers, and it was necessary, in order to remain on the payroll, to channel job tension into newfound energy. The gathered motivation to pursue other interests. Long before I walked out that newsroom door for the last time, I was already into my third year in the antique business, building it to a level of profitability, so that when I finally quit the old day job, the turn around would be immediate.

I can’t tell you how exciting it was, for this worn-out editor, to hit the road on Saturday mornings, without a camera and notepad, to enjoy a day of antique picking around our beautiful region. What a joy to witness a spring / summer / autumn morning in one of the most alluring hinterlands on earth. No matter how many times I passed a lakeland scene, or through a cathedral of overhanging maples, I would notice something I’d never seen before. It was on those early career antique-hunts, that I developed my greatest, most insightful appreciation of Muskoka. Suzanne and I, and frequently our two boys, would take along some breakfast fixings, and enjoy the sights and sounds of Muskoka in season. We saw every kind of wildlife known to this region of Canada. We took notice of all the life around us. It was as important as hunting for treasure. It would have most certainly been much less fulfilling, if we had only been concerned about racing from yard sale, flea market and antique shop to auction. These were, to borrow a famous line, the days of our lives. With the boys grown up, and running their own collectible music shop today, here in Gravenhurst, I do miss our countryside trips in quest of neat stuff. Suzanne and I move a little slower now, and stop frequently between venues, to admire the view, have a wee picnic, maybe a stroll, and even get a little nostalgic about the way it all began......these adventures, to calm the nerves of young parents, reduce the workday stress of writer and teacher,...... and experience life and culture thriving in our midst.

Some of my contemporaries in the business, have very little use for our antique hunting philosophy. I’ve never tried to convert them. They take their enterprise more seriously, and will race from venue to venue as if their lives depended on it. I know, with our more relaxed approach, we do miss big finds and great buys, and it undoubtedly does cost us making a larger profit. And yet, no matter how many times I acknowledge our less-stressful approach, and how nice it would be to make a bit more money at our trade, I could no sooner change to their break-neck regimen.....than find reason to accelerate through a mist-laden pasture of a Muskoka farmstead. I dawdle as a rule. I’d sooner quit antiquing altogether, than impose stress upon what has long been so darn much fun.

I still believe, although my competitors argue I’m delusional, that a more patient, determined hunt, is often more productive and profitable, than hustling from sale to sale......and adhering to a rigid schedule. We will stay and chat with vendors, and family, who are hosting estate sales, often being invited into storage areas others have not been exposed. It shouldn’t surprise any one that kindly conversation makes friends, and can build a significant, immediate trust between buyer and seller. While my competitors can show a list of 20 sales visited, they’d laugh at the fact we’d only visited a third of the venues in the same amount of time. Well, we don’t brag and never hold “show and tells,” to prove our trip was just as fruitful.

Years ago we got recruited to open a storefront antique business. I joined with a fellow staff member in the news business, to open a small collectible shop, in a unfinished basement of a mainstreet building in Bracebridge. In about a year the partnership was a disaster.....because we had teamed up with rookies in the business......who believed the money would be flying through the front door from opening to closing each day. Having had an earlier business, further down the street, in the late 1970's, I’d already recognized business would be slow in the winter, more vigorous in the summer......as is Muskoka’s long tradition in the tourist industry. The departure of one partner welcomed another, and then another after that, until I’d simply had enough. Our family was still young, and the stress of business was paralleling the newspaper years. We moved the business home in the mid 1990's, and we began selling our wares online. I work as a writer when I want, and we travel for the antique trade every weekend. In the summer, with Suzanne on a break from teaching, we are on the road every day. And it’s glorious. But it’s at our speed. We stop to smell the flowers and make no apology.

The antique business was opened in the late 1980's as a future retirement business. We knew it would take us ages to master a very complex and demanding trade. We have had no choice but to remain patient. So far so good. We have blips like every business but the annual sales figures are looking better, and we’re definitely feeling contented we started retirement planning so early in life.

As we both very much like old stuff, from nostalgia to the primitive, we are always interested in the road from here to there, and the great potential that exists each day we take off for another countryside adventure. It is always interesting, at the end of each trip, to sit on the back bumper of the family truckster, looking at the day’s finds. Talk about eclectic. We wrote the book. But it is the togetherness we felt with the young lads, and the companionship we feel these days, with just the two of us, that is most fulfilling of this antique hunt. We get to experience and celebrate this magnificent lakeland region, the nice folks we meet along the way, and enjoy each other’s company in a wide variety of circumstances. To us, it’s our own “Zen and the art of Antique Hunting,” and we wouldn’t change a thing. Certainly not for profit alone.