I Met Him on a Sunday The Good Old Days Part 10

 They’re balloons! Really! Click the pic if you don’t believe me.

You have a great eye for tacky, Reid!

Reid Dickie

That statement came from my dear old friend Terry after we had rummaged through a couple of thrift stores in rural Manitoba yesterday. We went picking blueberries, that`s what we call it when we drive around and see the sights, just a couple of retired guys wasting gas. Linda and I did a lot of rummaging in thrift stores over the years. She had the classy eye. She could walk into a secondhand store or thrift store and immediately see the Moorcroft vase ($3 which we later sold for $800) or the stylish 1940s ladies`hat. I have the tacky eye and it was very productive yesterday. Here`s what I found at the Morris MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) store:

These are from the 1950s and they are postcard display boxes with a little oriental scene inside each one. There is a slot at the top back where you can slide in the scenic card. One is a souvenir of Perce, PQ. Cost: 25 cents each

 

Also at Morris MCC this amazingly tacky souvenir of the Athabasca Tar Sands, as if the tar sands need any further souvenirs to add to the millennia of degradation it will leave when the oil is all sucked from the sand. Cost: 50 cents. By the way, in Saudi Arabia it costs $1 to extract a barrel of oil; at the tar sands, it costs $26. Oil is about $100 a barrel these days so you figure out the greed potential here. I remind you again, we all need to know about abiotic oil.

 

At the Niverville Thrift Store I found two more very tacky items. This little ceramic bear is from Falcon Lake in eastern Manitoba and the Fahrenheit thermometer still works. Cost: 35 cents.

Besides tacky souvenirs I collect tacky religious items. This lamp was laying in wait for me in Niverville. After testing it out – it has a dull red glow in the centre of the picture which is convex – I brought it home even though it exceeded my limit of $2 for any one item. It was $3 but I felt since the shells were complete and original and the item was made in Italy, it had at least an extra dollar of tackiness.

 My total expenditure for the day: $4.85. A good day for my tacky eye. And a good day of picking blueberries, too.