Linens 'n things

When I did my rundown yesterday of my exciting weekend, I forgot the garage sale I went to.

How could I forget that?

I remembered it when my friend Marta asked me  if I had gone to garage sales and the answer is, yes, I did!

I went with my mother to this garage sale in Snyder. My mom and I are always the stragglers. We do not come in until the afternoon, sometimes while the sellers are taking the sales down. It is just the way it works out. My mom likes to have lunch first and I like to go to my killer Pilates class downtown.

We walk up this woman's driveway and there is this huge table of linens. I began picking them up and looking at them. Napkins, tablecloths, runners, everything piled high, for a dollar a napkin on up.

"Oh, Mom," I called over. "Look at these beautiful napkins and tablecloths!"

I was trying to figure out what to get. There was too big a choice. I was picking things up and admiring them. They were beautiful, the kind of old lace and embroidery you do not see anymore, and the loveliest fabrics.

Suddenly the woman holding the sale walked up to me.

"I'll give you all of it for $25," she said.

I thought at first she was not serious, or that I had misunderstood. But no!

"All right," I said.

It was kind of overwhelming!

The woman scooped up all the linens into the red tablecloth they were sitting on and then placed it all in a white laundry basket. That is how much there is of these linens!

Then she told me that the linens had belonged to her husband's mother.

She said, "I didn't want to sell them to just anyone. I wanted them to go to someone who appreciated them." Her husband's mother, she told me, was a live-in housekeeper at a mansion on Linwood Avenue. I thought she said it was the Rich family, of Rich Products fame. But now I am thinking perhaps I misunderstood and she just said "rich family."

Hahaha! At Park School there is the Rich Family Activity Center. I love that name! You think of rich families engaging in activities there.

But back to my linens. They are piled here now and they feel like a hope chest or something. My dowry! All these beautiful antique napkins and tablecloths and damask this and that. I keep looking at them. I am so grateful to this woman for selling them to me. Oh, another thing, she told me the number on Linwood but as I am unable to memorize anything that does not relate to Leonard Pennario, it went in one ear and out the other. It was a low number, 204, something like that.

Perhaps it is the house pictured above! That is 440 Linwood.

I do not think the number is that high up. Mayhap it was this one.

Or this one? It was once used as a tuberculosis treatment center. That is what my friend Becky writes on her Web log.

Zut alors, I will be up all night looking at pictures of grand houses on Linwood!

There is only one way to figure this out. I will have to drive down a few blocks and see if I get a feeling.

Meanwhile I love coming into possession of things this beautiful.

They have a way of finding me!