OPINION: Something old and something new

I rediscovered yard sales and thrift stores a few months ago, when I was helping a friend set up housekeeping from scratch. You don’t even want to think (or at least, I didn’t want to think) about what it would cost to buy everything new: can opener, toaster, cooking spoons, dishes, glasses, pots and pans . . . . But also, how warm and cozy and user-friendly would it feel to have every single thing in your house be brand-new? I’ll never know, that’s for sure. I embarked on married life at age 22 with furniture from the Salvation Army, and it’s too bad I don’t still have all of it, because it was made from real wood, not this faux stuff they’re making now.

I was especially struck, in the flea market documentary, by a young woman who was trying on clothes at a flea market in the heart of New York. Slipping a colorful knitted vest over her head, she said, “I don’t know – I just feel better in older clothes. They’re so well made, for one thing.” She did a little model’s turn to see how the vest fit her, and I was sorry to see her take it off; I guess I wanted her to wear it home, she looked so pretty in it.

My most glamorous friend here often dresses like a movie star from the 1930s and ‘40s and just knocks people’s socks off. I don’t know how she gets that retro look, but she has it down to a fine science, and as she says, “They just don’t make clothes like this any more.”

All of this was rolling around in my head as I drove past the library the other day. Now I know it’s not all that old – the original square part of it has only been around for 45 years – but I’m so glad we’re expanding it instead of starting over. As Clarence Bryant pointed out, the location is perfect: right on the main street, but with room for parking. And I’m a big fan of the addition that was put on in the 1980s; working in and with those spaces, I found them almost endlessly flexible. Now we will get to see what new architects – a husband and wife team – can dream up for us.

And meanwhile our library services are located in the old Kooranga (for you old-timers; the newbies will know it as the Video Warehouse), and it’s just astonishing to discover how comfy and attractive this setting has been made. If you haven’t treated yourself to a visit, you must – if only to see how something old can be made new, and how something borrowed doesn’t make you blue!

Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.