Art of the Odd

It was a red-letter page from the Book of Luke that caught my eye, lying flat on the table where the wind had teased it from the spine of an old King James. I closed the Bible around it and picked up another small, leather-bound book to weight it down. Daily Journal, 1928 was embossed on the cover in gold.

I was hooked.

The writer’s name was Margaret, and she lived in the Bay Area from sometime in the ’20s through the ’60s, if not later. Most of the entries were quite brief, and many concerned the weather. “Fine today,” she wrote. “Clear by 10 AM.” But in between the weather reports, there were these fascinating glimpses of a doubtlessly fashionable woman who traveled a great deal and valued her family and friends. “Took ship for Vancouver yesterday. Had a two-hour stop in Victoria.” And she loved to entertain. “Had the office girls to dinner. My color scheme was yellow and green, even to the refreshments.”

Yellow and green.

I wish I knew what she’d served.

At the back of the book, where space was helpfully provided for “Cash Accounts,” she’d recorded her daily expenditures. She spent more on clothing than food. Her income was there, too, but I didn’t notice whether she’d said how she made her money.

In a box nearby, there were more diaries, all in the same handwriting. Some had come from gas stations, or been bonus gifts with other purchases. One, marked “1950″ on the cover in gold, she’d used from 1962 to 1964, carefully labeling the multiple entries under each pre-printed date with the year she’d written each one. More weather observations, more notes of trips she’d taken, and in one, the intriguing entry, “Spoke to Aunt Mary. She has decided she would rather undertake her European excursion alone.”

A bold woman, Aunt Mary. Or maybe she’d just rather not travel with someone who matches her canapes to her tablecloths.

In the end, though, I imagined that stack of diaries collecting even more dust on one of my already-overflowing shelves and I walked away. Mikl-Em bought some Mission bookends (not Mission-style, as I initially thought – miniature porcelain missions with little paths leading up to them), NovySan picked up a great yellow-velvet hat with matching veil for his daughter, and I held on to a vivid image of a yellow and green refreshments table and an Aunt who’d rather tour Europe alone.