First it was books. All my life I've been a voracious
reader. When I was a kid in Akron I took Irish dancing lessons down the street from
the Kenmore Library. At the stroke of noon every Saturday afternoon I yanked
those hornpipe shoes off my feet and flew out the door and down Kenmore Blvd.
like a hurricane. In those days a
library card entitled you to four books, which seemed to me grossly unfair given that the better
the pickings the less likely they’d last the weekend. It's not as though we had
a home library for back-up -- we most
definitely did not. Mine was not a reading family unless you count Reader's
Digest and Popular Science magazines. But since that's what we had, that's what
I read when the stash ran out -- and before long a magazine junkie was born!
Next came what my mother (for some odd reason) termed "the junk." Everywhere I looked something wonderful seemed to turn up on paper -- school essays with bright red A's, greeting cards, postcards from other people's trips, letters from penpals, programs from events, tax stamps (loved those!), snapshots of people I didn't know, catalogs, travel brochures for trips we'd never take, handwritten recipes, booklets and ...
Somehow I dug myself out of that mound of paper and grew
up to become a writer -- first at newspapers, then for magazines, and finally
on to bigger projects. But in 1997 my true calling came calling and I became a
bookseller. Actually it was supposed to be a hobby as I was still writing for
the first three years or so. But the day came when "I'm a writer who sells books"
morphed into "I'm a bookseller who writes." These days I’m a one occupation woman who loves her job.
In the beginning I
sold only books because it never occurred to me do otherwise. I didn't even
know that all that paper stuff I loved when I was a kid had a name. But once I
heard the word ephemera (a word so beautiful that even if you weren't crazed
for what it stood for you'd still have to work into a conversation) I became a
serious paper pusher. As soon as I had a small stash of goodies from the
Chicago Exposition I stumbled across an ephemera dealer online who became my
mentor and taught me everything I know. And now sixteen years later here I am
-- FINALLY -- with a website for books and now one for ephemera too.
When I first started selling ephemera people would ask me what it was – and
likely be sorry they had! Immediately
I’d launch into this complicated explanation of something that is really quite
simple. Ephemera is everyday life on paper. It’s about where we live, places we
go, work we do, pasttimes we enjoy, people we love, houses we live in, and
music we hum. But of course it’s about the big stuff too – history, the
political environment which serves as our backdrop, and the many milestones
that take center stage in our personal dramas -- weddings, births, jobs,
college, careers, military service,
illness, and death. Ephemera is the tangible history of a people at a given
point in time.
What attracts me to it so strongly is its human element .
Someone kept every one of these treasures for personal reasons, be they large
or small. Of course not every item I buy calls out to me, but I buy them anyway because they will matter to
someone and perhaps even to the panorama of our shared past. While book
collectors eschew the personal touch (bookplates, names of former owners, and
personal inscriptions from authors), the personal deepens ephemera rather than
detracts from it. A blank marriage certificate can certainly be beautiful, but
how much more meaningful it is to see the names, the date, the place --
and hold a scrap of history in our hands.
Ephemera is story to me
and if there’s one thing I’ve always
loved it’s a good story. So whenever
possible I try to eke one out of each piece I buy. Very often I succeed, but sometimes I can’t do it no matter how hard I
try. When all avenues are exhausted I finally stop and wait it out. Sooner or
later the right person comes along who either knows the story, or can find it
because it’s THEIR story or their family’s story. Sometimes I feel like the
Dolly Levi of paper, always looking for clues that will help buyers find and
recognize that which belongs to them. Which brings me to the why which
follows the who, the what, and the how of my life as a paper pusher. I
sell ephemera, life’s flotsam and jetsam, because I love it. But also because
it matters.
www.garrisonhouseephemera.com
www.garrisonhouseephemera.com
