A Boy, His Wagon, and Dodging the Scales of Justice
By Anthony Cavo
My lifelong love of antiques began on a trip to Milford, Pa., at the age of 6 in a barn that doubled as an antique shop. It was dark and, even on that hot summer day, cool. The only available light fought its way through the dust-speckled panes of glass in the small windows. Broken or missing panes provided the only breeze whose eddies of dust-laden cobwebs undulated like tentacles on an air-born jellyfish. With the exception of the narrow, winding paths, every square foot from the rafters to the walls was filled with strange, old things. It was heaven, a junkman’s dream—I’d found paradise.
This box, originally meant to ship photographic plates, was discovered full of
19th-century photographs, including Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, ferrotypes, Cartes de
Visite and cabinet cards. An impressionable would-be collector was hooked.
Victorian furniture in torn black material leaked horsehair stuffing. Oil lamps, coffee grinders, crocks, bottles, marble-top furniture, clocks, engravings, pier mirrors, candlesticks, and all types of household goods covered the walls, posts, and wide floorboards; the horse stalls were piled with chairs. An unfortunate owl, stuffed sometime during the 19th century, stared dolefully down from the rafters, his wide eyes pleading, “Please take me home.” I took him home. Next, I encountered a small wood crate stamped “From G. Cramer Dry Plate Co. St. Louis, MO.” The box originally meant to ship photographic plates, was full of 19th-century photographs that included Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, ferrotypes, Cartes de Visite, and cabinet cards. The owl, photographs, and a gold-painted metal elephant with ivory tusks found a new home that day when they left with me on another leg of their previously unrecorded travels. I still have the elephant and the photographs; as you will learn, the owl was bartered to improve the expanding needs of my newfound business.
Some of the treasures found by our author at an early age, a Daguerreotype of
Miss Munroe, age 16, c. 1852, and a ferrotype of a man wearing a top hat from the late 1850s.
It wasn’t long after these first purchases that I began trawling the streets of my neighborhood, collecting antiques and discards of all types. A curb filled with antiques was not an unusual sight in those days. When someone moved or died many of their possessions would end up on the curb and then in our toolshed or basement. While walking to school, I would find mirrors, chairs, paintings, stools, pedestals, statues, and items promising potential profits. I had a network of safe houses along my route, houses owned by family, friends, and acquaintances. I would stash my finds in their bushes, on their porches, in their yards, or even in their garages and collect them after school. My mother routinely received phone calls from the owners of these properties. “I think your kid was here today. I just found a rocking chair in my rhododendrons.”
These items eventually found their way to my house and then to the flea market. On Saturday, my parents would load the interior and roof of the family station wagon with their antiques and my “junk,” and we’d head for the 26th Street Flea Market in Manhattan, where we would hawk our wares.
I grew up in New York City during the 1960s when street peddlers still existed. I well remember my aunt’s vegetable man with his horse and cart at the corner of Court and Nelson Streets in Brooklyn. They would load their cart under the highway on New Utrecht Avenue and ply their trade throughout Brooklyn.
Street vendors conducted all types of business in our neighborhood. There was the Fuller Brush Man, a scissor sharpener, an umbrella repairman, the ragman, a paper collector, and even an iceman for those old timers who still had an icebox. They all had pushcarts in shapes tailored to the requirements of their trade, and each of them rang a bell to let you know they were passing. My favorite was the ragman; he had the largest of all the carts in which he collected old clothing – the entire operation held a strange fascination for me. He was a WWII vet with a prosthetic leg and a pronounced limp. Despite the pain he obviously experienced, he pushed a large wooden cart with two large wheels at the back and a smaller wheel at the front. One day, as I watched him pass, it dawned on me that I needed a cart to accommodate my burgeoning business, and I knew just where to get it.
My teenage cousin had a red Radio Flyer wagon that he had long outgrown. He was an only child and a bit spoiled and not one to easily part with something he owned – money would not do the trick. He was a fan of vintage movies, the macabre and the bizarre. I knew my newly acquired stuffed owl would be just the thing to put wheels on my business—and I was right. He agreed to trade the wagon for the owl and a stuffed pheasant I adopted from a church flea market. Any qualms I had about trading my feathered friends were assuaged by the rationale that I had saved them from neglect and placed them in a loving home in suburban New Jersey (OK, so maybe I didn’t do them such a favor). The wheels stepped up my collecting considerably and, with it, my weekend profits.
Smitten at an early age, author Anthony Cavo has amassed an enormous catalog
of antique photography, including hundreds of pictures of people and their dogs.
Those images form the foundation of his exceptionally warm, informative, and delightful book,
Love Immortal: Antique Photographs and Stories of Dogs and Their People.
One day, as I trawled the neighborhood, I found what my mother later identified as a Stickley couch. It was long, but I managed to lift one end while a friend slid my wagon beneath. It took a few minutes to settle the piece across the small wagon, but I did. The couch was too wide to transport on the sidewalk, so I had to pull it home through the streets with a friend on each end to maintain balance. This simple move became a parade of beeping cars and an entourage of neighborhood kids who followed on foot and on bicycles. I’d collected quite a crowd of friends, neighbors, and angry motorists by the time I turned up my street. I can still see my mom standing on the stoop, shaking her head.
My parents had long since developed a trust in my instincts; in this case, their indulgence paid off. While examining the piece, I found a “Stickley” label. The name meant nothing to me, but my mom knew what it was. Within a day, the piece was sold to an antique dealer who had a store named “Goodies Galore.” She paid $15 or about $143 today. I watched as the new owners strapped it to the roof of their truck; my heart was broken, but my pockets were full.
On Saturday mornings, I would start out early with my red wagon on a quest for riches. I’d walk miles, often having to return home to unload my finds. One Saturday, I found my way downtown, which seldom had anything good. The trash consisted of the typical refuse from stores and usually nothing with the resale value, but that day, I struck it rich.
Our author ‘found’ and sold five grocery scales for a tidy sum, keeping mum about his good fortune.
On a side street, around the corner from the Associated Market, lined up right there on the curb, were five grocery scales that hung from the ceiling with a dial and swinging metal basket. They weren’t antique, but my entrepreneurial sense told me they were salable, so I packed them onto my little red wagon and hit the stores. I wasn’t sure what they were worth, but when the man in the fish market offered me $8 for two scales, I was in full vending mode.
Eight dollars may not sound like a great deal of money until you consider today’s equivalent to eight 1963 dollars is about $82 2024 dollars. The fish man had established the price, and I offered the remaining three scales at $4 apiece to the butcher, the man at the vegetable stand, and even one to the manager of the A&P; they each bought one. My wagon was empty, but my pockets were full. I was a rich 8-year-old; I had today’s equivalent of $200 in my pocket. I returned home and stashed my loot, intending to buy something special for my parents at the flea market the following weekend.
Early the next day, I walked to Sach’s Pharmacy with my mom. The pharmacist knew everyone in the neighborhood and knew all the latest news.
“This neighborhood is getting worse by the day,” he said.
“What happened now?” my mother asked, concerned.
“Yesterday, the Associated Market washed all their scales and put them out on the curb to dry in the sun and when they went back to get them, they were gone; stolen.”
My mother kind of gasped. “That’s terrible. Who would do something like that?” Little did she know she had only to look a bit to the right and down to find the answer. “Why would anyone take scales?”
“I don’t know, but it seems like nothing is safe anymore. The police were in here asking me if I saw anything. I hope they catch those thieves and send them to prison.”
My mom agreed.
I felt faint, literally. I wanted to sit right down on the floor in front of the counter and vomit. My eyes focused on a pack of “Choward’s Violet” candy. I kept reading the same two words and repeating them in my head: “Choward’s Violet, Choward’s Violet, Choward’s Violet.”
Jail? My stomach flipped, flopped, and dropped down so far I was sure it would fall out onto the floor if I took off my shoes. I was a criminal, and the police were looking for me. I couldn’t go to jail. I’d miss school. I’d miss the flea market on Saturday. I’d miss “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Munsters” on TV. I kept mum. Snitches in New York usually got hurt, and I wasn’t about to snitch—even if it was on myself.
I worried for weeks. My crime was so bad I couldn’t even admit it in the dark confessional on each of three consecutive Fridays at church. In fact, I never did confess, but now it’s time to come clean. “Confession,” they say, “is good for the soul,” and now apparently safe since the statute of limitations has expired.
In retrospect, I find it difficult to believe the vendors who purchased these scales did not question such a deal from an 8-year-old kid. I also wonder why, later, when they heard about the theft, as they certainly did, none of them returned the scales or turned me in—they, too, kept mum. Evidently, they had no qualms about buying off the truck, or in this case, the wagon. Today, no doubt, I would have been on CCTV or someone’s Ring, and probably YouTube. I would probably have been arrested even before I unloaded the last scale at the A&P, which was directly across the street from the Associated Market—their main competition.
I’m not sure what became of my little red wagon, but I often wish I still had it. Today I have a car that holds a ton of stuff, but that little red wagon had the heart of a Mack truck and it never let me down.
Dr. Anthony Cavo is a certified appraiser of art and antiques and a contributing editor to Kovels Antique Trader. Cavo is also the author of Love Immortal: Antique Photographs and Stories of Dogs and Their People.