So it's Friday morning and I'm taking my kids to school bright and early when I pass a traffic jam outside a house down the road a couple of miles. My first thought was, "something's occurred." But soon I realized that there was in fact an estate sale of epic proportions going on. I finished dropping the kids at school and returned to the chaos of bargain hunters.
The scene was a tiny little wood frame home, smell of sweet little old lady (peppermint and roses) hung in the air. I perused the crowded house and found a killer Remington Rand typewriter circa 1930s, score. I then found a Kodak Instamatic camera circa 1960s with an undeveloped roll of film inside, double score.
By now I'm picturing all the super hot pin-ups I can make using this typewriter and this camera and I have my arms full as I head out to the shed outside when bam, there it is. A Super RCA Victor television circa approximately 1952ish with a $10 price tag. Could this be right? I'm thinking. They just want $10 for this. I first debate whether I want to mess with it. It's really heavy. I have to get it to my van and then into my garage until my studio opens. I'm kind of puny when it comes to muscles.
But my decision was made when I saw a man eyeballing it and trying to see the back. "That's already sold," I told him. He looked at me skeptically with my arms full of typewriter and camera. "I told the lady already, and she said she'd be here shortly with the sold sign," I said.
He asked me what I'd want with an old piece of junk like this, obviously trying to dissuade my purchase. "It's for pin-up," I said. "I'll sit a scantily clad woman on top of it and she'll look so cute and cheesy that she'll want to pay me a lot of money and tell all her friends about it." Okay, maybe not in those words, but it was enough to make him shrug his shoulders and walk away.
So with much huffing and puffing (on the part of the hefty men who helped me load it that is) I finally got it into my van -- where it still sits awaiting my big strong husband to find it in his heart to put it in the garage.
But that's not where this story gets good. The part of this story that makes it so cool and so worthy of a blog post is this. Every now and then I like to pull out an old photo album and flip through it to remind myself how cute my children were when they were younger and to give myself a reason to not strangle them. So Saturday night I happened to grab the summer 2007 album, which is when we made a stop in Graceland on our family vacation. That's when I saw this photo. Do you see what I see against that far wall in Elvis' living room? That's right, it's a Super RCA Victor television circa 1952ish extremely similar to the one in the back of my van at this very moment.
I think this part calls for a few exclamation points.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So is it Elvis's television that sits in the back of my van? Probably not. I doubt this particular set ever left Morningside Drive. But it could have been. And that's what matters. I have no doubt this set saw Elvis swinging his hips in all his black and white controversial glory. I have no doubt it saw some pretty significant historical events play out on its screen. And now I intend to make it's second life pretty amazing as well. But first, it needs to come out of the van.
Lisa On Location Photography
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