Antiquing in Toledo

Friday, April 12th. Erie, Michigan.

I’m writing this one after a long day in the Michigan suburbs west of Toledo. We started the day with only one plan -- go out for dinner at the Beirut in Toledo. But like all plans this one was subject to change.

The winds that had tossed us around on the road yesterday continued all night, peaking just before dawn. The trailer rocked and groaned as the wind gusted and we had the heat on for the first time in a few weeks. Overall though, we slept pretty well considering. I was certainly exhausted and couldn’t even read a little before bed last night — maybe the only time I’ve had the bedspins without drinking. The dogs could hear the wind and the rain that came in the early morning so they were in no hurry for us to get out of bed; We managed to hang in until 9, latest lay-in of the trip. We had a nice leisurely morning visit with Cliff and Sandy over Coffee and Toast while Lorraine and Sandy worked out a plan for the day.

Sandy with part of her hull collection.

We left for Blissfield, Michigan about 11am headed to a series of Antique Malls. Sandy shares our passion for Hull coffee mugs and Cliff is always happy to wander around looking for old stuff — he’s mostly looking for old drafting tools; these are hard to find. The antique store in Blissfield was huge and clearly the best we’ve found on our trip. Lorraine and I hadn’t been in one at all for days.  I found some cheap old early 1960’s roadmaps of Ontario and Canada — I find it useful sometime to understand where the highway systems really used to run before big highways were built in the 70’s. Lorraine and Sandy found a huge cache of Marcrest Coffee Mugs — 9 in total. These were originally intended as beer mugs in heavy brown earthenware... But we’ve used them for coffee for years; Nothing like starting your day with a full pint of strong coffee.  Marcrest was made for Marshalls department store in Chicago in the 50’s and early 60’s by both Hull out of Ohio or the Western Pottery. Our son likes to borrow the mugs when he visits, grabbing a coffee to go and the mug with it; sometimes the mugs come back, sometimes not and often we run out and have to beg him to return them. And ceramic coffee mugs, used every day, have a certain attrition rate so we’re always looking for them at a good price — $6.25 a piece in this case; Lorraine took 5 and Sandy 4. I found a copy of A.A. Milne’s “Now we are Six” for the boys (ok, for me, I’ll enjoy reading it to them).

Marcrest Mugs
By 2pm, we still hadn’t seen half the danged store and we were starving. Lena’s Italian Restaurant in Blissfield was only a 5-minute drive away but it took us forever to check out and pay at the antique store (it seemed to me anyway) so we were close to 2:30 sitting down to eat. This timng was already making the dinner plan a challenge; The food at Lena’s killed it. We started with a “Large Bruschetta” — basically a pizza crust covered in garlic and olive oil with diced tomatoes, chopped basil, and pieces of good fresh mozzarella; It was huge, and messy, but we all did our best and finished it. I had a good lasagna everyone else had spaghetti with oil and garlic ( Sandy and Lorraine had tomatoes as well). I was the only one to finish my entry so everyone agreed that dinner at 7 was not going to be possible.  Cliff headed off the washroom while I waited for the bill but Cliff, the sneak, used the opportunity to steal the check. Generous of him but this was the second time on the trip; I’ll need to up my game if I want to pickup the tab at any point here.

We headed back to the antique store to finish our search for treasures. The store went on and on and I quickly reached “overwhelmed” status and puttered around. I did find a Moleskine Notebook for $2 (not an antique — it was one of those stores that is part garage sale and flea market) and 8 Heisey glass salt dips for $12, a real bargain.  Heisey is a special type of fine glassware made in Ohio from the 1890’s until 1956.  We collect this stuff ( I wrote the initial posts on Heisey Glass and Augustus Heisey on Wikipedia!) We will need to return to this store on future visits; I became quite overwhelmed just before lunch and returned to that state almost immediately afterward.

 We made it home about 5 and I started to dig into catching up on my blogs — at this point I was so far behind that people were starting to complain ( flattering) — it is the first time I’ve managed to get 4 days behind on the whole trip. I got one post up and then Cliff’s brother Pete arrived with his amazing adventure Dog Endo. Pete was supposed to have dinner with us — maybe tomorrow night now. Sandy and Cliff’s son Alan also arrived for a quick visit to show off his new big-rig car horn (Alan manages the service department for an International dealer) honking at us like a freight-train trapped in a GM sedan... After Pete left, I managed to get two more days of the Blog posted — with a lot of pictures, Cliff’s good high speed internet connection really helped.

Dinner was toast and butter as I worked on the blog — Lorraine had some of her leftovers. One more day left in the United States and then we’ll move this show back across the border. That’s the end of Day 39 on the trip.