Objects offer historical connection

The contents of the table keep me connected.
On Sundays, after we’ve had a glass of V-8 juice, a cup of coffee (half decaf and half regular), and maybe homemade muffins, Connie and I will head into the living room with a second cup of java to make our way through the morning paper.
(We’re Journal-Gazette people, taking the Fort Wayne paper mostly, I suppose, because that’s the Sunday paper my folks subscribed to when I was growing up.)
At my left, as I make my way through the sections, is a little table sometimes called a candle stand. That’s because its primary purpose was to provide a place for a candle to sit a couple of centuries ago.
This particular candle stand was made by Connie’s great-grandfather in upper New York State, and that in itself helps keep me connected to the past and family heritage.
On the table are four pictures. Two are of my grandmothers, my grandmother Ronald and my grandmother Haynes. But they aren’t the original photographs. They are hand-colored copies meticulously and marvelously “colorized” by Betty Kenyon back in the heyday of Hunt’s Studio.
Long before Photoshop, skilled artisans could hand paint a blush into the cheek of a long-gone ancestor, working with oils and a magnifying glass. It’s a skill that has virtually disappeared.
In the small portraits, my grandmother Ronald looks a bit like a schoolteacher from the late 19th century. That’s not surprising. She taught Latin and was a graduate of Alma College in Michigan.
My grandmother Haynes looks, in her portrait, even more antique. She’s a young woman in the photograph, with a high collar around her neck and hair piled high. My guess is it was taken about 1885 or so, maybe not long after she graduated from Mount Holyoke.
The other two pictures are smaller and in black and white. One is of me as a baby, looking very 19th century myself. The other is a tiny locket, its hinge bent badly, of my mother when she was about 8 years old. She looks like my sister Louise in the picture, and it’s an image I will always treasure.
As I said, the contents of the tabletop keep me connected.
There are two pocketwatches on the table as well, neither of them valuable.
One’s a Swiss-made watch for Russian buyers in the 19th century that I bought at a place called the “Drybridge Market” in Tbilisi, Georgia. Its original crystal has been replaced by plastic. But it runs, brought back to life by a Soviet engineer down on his luck in the post-Soviet era. I wind it now and then and open the back to watch the movements run.
The other is what is often called a railroad watch and is something I bought on eBay.
Why did I buy it? Because the jeweler who sold it and whose name — Phil Stachler — is on the face was from Jay County. His shop was on North Meridian Street in Portland, close to where Randall’s Jewelry was once located.
Not only that, but the original purchaser of the watch — a farmer in Jackson Township — had his name engraved inside the case in 1904.
These days, the outer case is scuffed and rough. Any outer finish of value has been rubbed away. Maybe it was gold-plated once, but the plating is nearly gone.
It was a working man’s watch and faced a rough and tumble existence. But once you open the case, it gleams as if it were brand new.
I’ve often suspected that I place too much worth in material objects: Paintings, relics, old books, forgotten trinkets.
Not because they are valuable in terms of dollars and sense, but because they carry with them so many stories and so many connections.
To that I plead guilty. Thanks to them — thanks to the objects beside me on a candle stand made by my wife’s great-grandfather — I stay connected.
And that’s not a bad thing.