The first time I saw him, glowing in the light of an early-November afternoon, I looked at his price tag and said, “I can’t do it.” Not for $30. Especially not when he was made in India and may not be food safe.

But, oh, he haunted me, with his calm, kind penguin face, the proud tilt of his pour-spout beak, his gently curving wings… And so today, a month minus a day from the day we met, I returned to the Council Thrift Shop, and said, “If he’s still there, I’m buying him.”

And he was.

And I did.

But he wasn’t $30. Oh, no. He had a new tag. It said “20.” Anna had suggested I offer $15, and use him sparingly – I figured I’d ask if they’d take $15 when I took him to the cash register, but I was prepared to pay $20.

As it turns out, I didn’t have to. “Ten,” the clerk said.

I didn’t argue.

Tonight then, when I make a pink gin in honor of Repeal Day, I’ll shake it in a penguin.

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To start with the machine-made – the Swimming Pool, which is, as you can see, unfortunately shaped like a bedpan. (The brown box on the far side of the pool is the fat little man’s radio. I hate to think what he’s got to swim through to get to it.)

Moving on to the religious, we have this brightly-colored, papier mache god, who looks rather startled to find himself in the Jewish Ladies’ Thrift Store. Each head is a separate unit, as I discovered when I inadvertently pulled the middle one off trying to pick it up.

And moving on to the hand-crafted, we start with a candelabrum that I’m just sure was someone’s summer craft project…

…and move on to an abstract piece that was doubtless the project of someone either rather less talented than the candelabrum artist, or someone rather more artistically advanced. (I’ll admit, it shows a nice sense of asymmetry, but why, why is it glued to the tray? And it is glued down, unlike the god’s middle head.)

Finally, though, we come to the item I almost couldn’t leave without. Two things stopped me – the price tag, and the “made in” label on the bottom. $30 wouldn’t seem so high for such a fantastic piece of pewter penguiness, if it hadn’t also been made in India. I prefer my martinis unleaded.

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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.

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