Our Mad Cup Of Tea

“Love goes toward love.” – William Shakespeare

Without looking it up, what represents the 19th year of marriage, you know, like paper for the first anniversary, silver for the 25th and gold for the 50th? I didn’t know either until I Googled it and discovered the answer is bronze.

Officially Groom and I entered the Bronze Age of our wedded bliss on, and I love this date, 8-9-10 at 11:12:13 am. Alignment!

I suppose this means we’ve matured since our Stone Age courtship when Groom (who was still Boyfriend at the time), conked me over the head with his club and dragged me back to his cave.

“A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart.” – William Shakespeare

Speaking of alignment, I find it curiouser and curiouser that Groom and I are transitioning into metalsmithing during our bronze year, don’t you?

A couple of weeks ago I posted a photo of a daisy and a rose that had fused together and I mentioned that it represented Groom and me. The tree is this week’s romantic symbol of our fusion, but upon further reflection, the vine seems awfully clingy and is it really good for the tree? Hmmm. I’ll ponder that a bit more.

In the meantime, having just returned from a week in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene and immediately preparing for our upcoming show in Sun River, we were hesitant to make any more out of town plans to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary and Groom’s birthday during our brief few days at the homestead.

The idea of sequestering ourselves for a couple of snuggling days sounded like bliss to us, so it was a bit of a surprise to answer the phone and hear King Z0L0 on the other end of the line throwing a monkey wrench into our low key weekend plans.

For you new readers, King Z0L0 is a friend of ours who mistook my handwriting of the current year, 2010, for Z0l0 and it’s what we’ve called him ever since.

He informed us that the Oregon Shakespearean Festival in Ashland was having their first costume warehouse sale in, gulp, seven years. Ooooh my. I love costumes and am thankful that our Holiday Market in Eugene is an ideal place to play dress up. Instantly, all sorts of fanciful images danced through my head like finding a Victorian bustle skirt or a stunning 1920’s style dress. Stretching things even further, what if Groom could finally find a tony top hat or a dapper jacket that fits?

In a flash, we contacted my parents who live in the area, Goat Mama and Papa (friends of ours in the Rogue Valley who are raising two kids) and the housesitter: Every one was game.

Up at 4am on Saturday, King Z0L0 arrived an hour later and we were on the road by 5:15am. Exactly three hours later, we were in Ashland waiting in line. The sale was advertised to begin at 9am so we had 45 minutes to wait. People were friendly and the time passed quickly.

Let me say that this week’s photo selections have more to do with illustrating the surreal sale than for pure artistic merit. I will narrate and you will click on each one for better detailing. To return to the blog, simply hit the back button.

While I held our place in line (and yes, by the time we got there, the line was already around the block) Groom took a few photos of the items up for sale. You’ll notice tables of hats and accessories and racks and racks of hanging costumes.

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” – William Shakespeare

Oh boy. After the fact, friends and family asked how the sale went. The word “sale” does not suffice. Event or experience or maelstrom carries a more accurate tone. Tempest, whirlwind, uproar, madness…

I’m not saying we’ll ever do it again, BUT, if we did, we’d devise a much better method. We made the mistake of being polite, of thinking we could shop the racks and if we came to an item we were interested in, we could then pull it down for a closer look.

Ha! When the gates finally opened, there was a mad dash and the tables of hats and accessories were ravished before we even got in. The crowd from behind pushed forward and in a matter of a minutes everything was claimed. Except for the button jackets, but I’ll get back to that.

It was as if locusts had descended and ate everything in their path. People simply grabbed armloads at a time, not bothering to look through anything until everyone was in separate corners, hoarding and protecting. I think I might have even heard some people growling and witnessed gnashing of teeth.

The official hours were from 9am until 3pm, but the reality was that it began at 9am and ended at 9:19. It went from chaotic and crazy, frenzied and frantic, to calm in under twenty minutes. The tenth photo, the one that deceptively looks like a crowd shot is actually the line. In case you dozed off there, the few people that fit into our camera’s frame is a partial rendering of the looooooong line we had to stand in to pay and make our escape. It snaked back and forth, zig-zagging and curving what felt like forever.

We drove three hours, missed a Saturday Market sales day, stood in the pre-line for 45 minutes and stood in the post-line (in the hot sun, without water), for one hour and forty minutes for 19 minutes of madness. We had nothing better to do than to make friends with those waiting in line near us and discovered folks came from Portland, Northern California and San Francisco just to attend this sale.

You can read a newpaper article about it and see a photo of Groom (and a little bit of my hair) if you want to by following this link. DailyTidings

Yep, that’s me trying on the red corsety thing. In the next photo, do you notice the guy buried underneath the pile? From the little girl’s angle, I wonder if she’s wondering why the clothes are moving.

If you’re looking at the photos chronologically, next up is King Zolo posing with one of the undesirables, the button jackets. If you scroll back up to the 11th picture, one of the after shots where the racks of clothes are empty, you’ll observe the button jackets hanging there in the shame of their rejection.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” – William Shakespeare

Alas, poor Yorick, it was finally time to say goodbye to newly minted friends. Parched and overheated, we ate a relaxing lunch upstairs at Alex’s Plaza Restaurant overlooking the Lithia Artisan's Market. After meandering a bit through the handmade marketplace and some downtown shops, we promenaded through Lithia Park and told King Z0L0 everyone who comes to Ashland must partake of Lithia water. He took a sip and promptly spit out the sulfur tasting liquid and although he groused about it the remainder of the weekend, he admitted he couldn’t wait to spring it on some other unsuspecting tourist.

We encountered a deer that allowed Groom to get quite close before it dashed off into the underbrush. Apparently the deer could not read that it wasn’t allowed in the park.

Leaving Ashland and heading toward the other end of the valley, we visited with my parents for a couple of hours, Dad giving King Z0L0 a tour of his extensive telephone and train collection.

After that it was a charming meal with friends at the Bella Union in Jacksonville, sitting outside beneath the vast shade of a 90-year old astounding wisteria and toasting Groom’s birthday. Oh why did we leave our cameras back at the hotel? Darn and blast!

The next morning, Sunday, we met back up again and followed sage recommendations to have a leisurely breakfast at our new favorite restaurant, the Taprock in Grants Pass overlooking the river. From there we went antiquing, always on the search for cool items to retrofit into our bricolage jewelry designs.

On the drive home to Eugene, King Z0L0 decided to stop at the Seven Feathers Casino and won some greenbacks at blackjack, a fun way to end the weekend. He dropped us off back at our cave.

Groom, I just want to publicly say thank you for the last nineteen years and

“My heart is ever at your service.” – William Shakespeare