Daniel

When I asked Daniel to tell me what he remembered collecting, he told me that his uncle owned the town grocery store and he and his brother would save up money from their paper routes to buy baseball cards by the box, hundreds at a time. They would have fun searching through the packs for favorites and big stars and trading with friends and each other.

When I asked him what happened to all those cards, he simply said, “Mom told me she threw them out”.

He went on to tell me their next-door neighbor had an antique shop behind the house. It was painted pink with a finished store in the front and an unfinished pole barn out back, all of it filled with treasures. He and his mother would mind the store for them in the summer months. He liked to watch the cars come and go and paid special attention to the license plates, noting that people often traveled in from out of state.

On special Friday nights he would go to the auction house in Rochester with his grandma and his great aunt & uncle. People would travel in from far away to buy and sell and socialize. He made his first purchase during one of these special nights – a blue and white pitcher & washbasin hand painted by a Missouri artist. He still has that set today and it appears in this painting.

Daniel collects mostly old advertising now but I asked him if there was anything special he was searching for.

“My old Holiday gas station bicycle he told me – lime green with a sissy bar, banana seat and chopper handlebars”.

Oil on cradled wood panel