Historial? Home Tour

This weekend I went on a historial home tour in a city that will remain unnamed so that my mother "the Director of Homeland Security" will not throw herself down on the floor and scream about how you are all going to read this and then immediately find her house and break into it.

We have been to the historical unnamed city home tour for about four years running. There are usually about six sites around the unnamed city, which about four thousand glitter mafia ladies and ten dating divorced couples (evidently a good date?) descend upon. This year, it seems that they ran out of historical . . . and so just went with homes.

It's very hard to be a snotty-snotty-know-it-all and it is especially hard when you are descended from a snotty-snotty-know-it-all and you both go on a tour run by middle aged ladies with nothing to do. Because the historical home tour in unnamed city did not bog itself down with facts all that much . . . and that made us argumentative. Because we were right, dammit AND we were standing in a house built in 1989.

That's right . . . built in 1989. On the historical home tour. But it was decorated in Early American Colonial (as opposed to late American Colonial?) with Norwegian accents. And the homeowner made all the quilts. Surely that overtakes the whole built in 1989 thing?

I managed to keep my mouth shut through the "haunted house" lecture at the Tavern that was a guest house. The house wasn't haunted, but people look at you funny if you say such things. I mean maybe they can come and go . . . but it wasn't haunted at the time of me standing there. Because I would know. And you are welcome to look at me funny.

At the second house we got to see the "original wall" which was the ONLY thing that was left from the 1800's in that house. Everything else was Ethan Allen. Or Amish . . . except that it was pronounced AAAA mich. Long A and a mich. I wonder where they live, those woodworking people. Oh, and they were so nice, they came all the way up to Michigan and installed the dining room table that they made by hand. At Macy's, they just call that "delivery". And yes, it was a beautiful dining room table.

At the third house, my mother tried to argue about the banquette. Poor lady was sticking to the script and my mother was contradicting her performance.

"Interesting thing they did with the banquette."
"Oh, no, this was here. They didn't do anything with this."
"But usually, in this era of house, there was a banquette. The bench would have been along that wall."

But the lady was sticking to her story. The Formica counter and bar stools had been there since 1927. Because her paper didn't say they weren't original.

So it was a lot of walking through people's houses, with people who didn't know them giving tours . . . "and this was her great-grandmother's sliver of dial soap, saved through generations . . . this is a picture of the owner's niece's uncle's great-great-aunt . . . the carving on this goes back to 1919 (never mind the plastic) . . . "

Okay, so that one was true. We toured a very nice house built . . . well, I forget, but it was before the Civil War. And it is freshly painted and full of Pottery Barn. And the ladies were amazed by the Pottery Barn.

"Oh, how clever! They made this into a T.V. stand."
"Well, actually it is a Pottery Barn T.V. stand. (I point to the other pieces of furniture) And that's Pottery Barn and that's Pottery Barn and that's Pottery Barn."
"But how do you know?"
"Ummmm. I get the catalog."

So we get to the dining room. And there is a chandelier. And I am fascinated by it because it is EXACTLY like the chandelier I have in my dining room waiting to be painted. It's strung with more glitter, but exactly like it down to the plastic candles . . . except that mine has faux drips. So it's nicer. And the tour guide says, "And this chandelier is original to the house." And my head almost exploded. But I held my tongue. Because I had seen how well the banquette conversation went and no one wants to look dumb in front of eight glitter mafia . . . and me.

So I gathered lots of ideas. And someday will straighten my house so someone that I don't know can give tours.

"And these are the owner's grandmother's end tables . . . original Formica from 1962. And here is the owner's grandmother's plastic mirror . . . given to her by her employer, Dr. Egan when she retired in 1978. And here is the wooden bureau that the owner's grandmother found and then cut the legs off of, because it was too high and bugging her, which the owner's mother refinished. And here is the owner's great aunt Hazel's buffet and the other great aunt's marble coffee table and the owner's aunt's bed." So basically, just a bunch of stuff that the owner's mother didn't want in her house anymore but the owner cannot throw away . . . because then she would have to fill her house with Pottery Barn, like everyone else.