Doors/Windows/Artifacts – Yeah, Another Blogger

A Circular Story

March 7, 2023Yeah, Another Blogger148 Comments

One day, back when humans lived in caves and suburban housing developments were unimaginable, two brothers — Moan and Groan — began dragging, with ropes, a crude, enormous wooden box. Their destination, several miles away, was the adjacent caves in which they resided with their wives and children. One cave per family. The box, I hasten to add, was occupied by a wooly mammoth, which was no longer among the living. That was because Moan and Groan had punctured the crap out of it with their spears.

“Groan, this motherf*cker is heavier than hell,” Moan moaned in his native tongue, which I, a linguistic scholar specializing in commonly-thought-to-be lost languages, have translated into English for the benefit of anyone reading this article. “There’s got to be a better way to move large objects, don’t you think?”

“Moan, there is no better way. So, shut up and keep pulling,” replied Groan, groaning from exertion.

Six hours later, totally exhausted, Moan and Groan arrived home.

“We’re back,” they announced weakly at the caves’ entrances. At this, Tip and Top, the respective mates of Moan and Groan, rushed from the caves to greet the returnees. The ladies clapped their hands enthusiastically at the sight of the gigantic animal destined to feed the two families for months.

“Thank you, boys,” Tip said. “By the way, Top and I have been putting our heads together recently. We know how strenuous it is for you to bring your prey back home. Hard work indeed! But we’ve figured out something that will make the jobs much easier.”

Moan and Groan, looking at each other quizzically, were all ears. “Tell us,” they said.

Well, suffice it to say that Tip and Top had developed the wheel. And not only the wheel, but the axle too. Wheels and axles, with large boxes atop them, would make the transport of wooly mammoths, and of a million other things, a relative breeze, explained Tip and Top. And, of course, they were right. Though it must be noted that axles, as important as they are, don’t mean shit when wheels aren’t in the picture. Yup, the wheel has proven to be one of humankind’s greatest inventions. It’s right up there with the Big Mac and Viagra. I believe we all should set aside time each day to give thanks to Tip and Top, as their genius made life easier and initiated a major awakening of human brain power.

Now, I bring all of this up because wheels have been pretty crucial for my blog. I mean, I’ve published ten editions of Art On Wheels, for crying out loud. It’s a series about my hunts for well-decorated trucks and other vehicles, and includes photographs of my captures. You better believe I had fun creating those stories. And I certainly have no plans to terminate the project (click here for the most recent entry).

However, while examining my phone’s overflowing photo library the other day, I realized that it contains a selection of wheels-related pix that have nothing to do with Art On Wheels. Some of them, I noticed, had made their way innocently into Yeah, Another Blogger stories over the years anyway, for one reason or another. Most hadn’t, though. A softie at heart, I began to melt when I heard the unpublished ones explaining to me, between sniffles, that they felt lonely and neglected. They insisted that they wanted to be lofted into cyberspace, hoping to experience the warmth that might come from more eyes than mine gazing upon them.

“I truly understand,” I said to the photos, my eyes tearing up. “But I can’t place all of you on Yeah, Another Blogger. That would be overkill. So, I want each of you guys to examine one another closely and then vote for your ten favorite pix, excluding your own. The top-five vote-getters will be displayed in my next story.”

Naturally, there was some grumbling, since none of the pictures wanted to be left out. But in the end the vote took place. And I am happy to decorate this article with the winners.

In conclusion, all I can say is that, as with many things, we take the wheel for granted. Most likely we’d still be living in frigging caves had it not been invented. Thus, before I forget, I now bow down to Tip and Top. Okay, that’s accomplished. In a few minutes, then, I’m going to head to my car, because I need to run a few errands. Wheels, here I come!

Windows Shopping

February 21, 2023Yeah, Another Blogger145 Comments

I don’t know about you, but in my neck of the woods (I live a bit outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) there aren’t too many towns that look like towns. Mine sure doesn’t, though I suspect it did up until 70 or 80 years ago. Today it’s a mess, a hodgepodge of neighborhoods interspersed with shopping centers galore. And of those towns that do look like towns, few have thick roots going back many years. Which is one reason why I’m pleased that the borough of Doylestown, Pennsylvania lies a mere 15 miles from my abode.

Doylestown, large in size and containing a high percentage of structures erected between the mid-1800s and the early-1900s, somehow combines stateliness, quaintness and chicness casually and seamlessly. I find it to be a swell place to hang out in and to stroll around, and have been doing just that pretty regularly for decades. I dig its well-kept houses, its arthouse cinema and museums, its record store (Siren Records), its bookstores, its big collection of eateries. On a recent Monday I spent two hours on the streets and alleys, and within a few shops, of this estimable hamlet. I had a specific purpose in mind, one I hoped would result in a photographic essay for Yeah, Another Blogger. Hallelujah, my hopes have been realized!

I arrived in Doylestown at 11:00 AM under skies glowing happily in blue and white. The temperature was 50°F (10°C), quite pleasant, though not warm enough for me to wander without my winter coat. You better believe that I, an old f*cker, chill easily. Anyway, with my trusty phone’s camera at the ready, I immediately began checking out the town’s windows, as windows were to be the stars of the hoped-for story. Windows? You bet. I’m into themed walks and have reported upon any number of them for this publication. Now and then, for instance, I’ve gone in search of well-decorated motor vehicles (click here to read my latest opus about the subject). That’s the way I roll, wobbly as it may be.

Now, I’m not going to tell you that I saw any Doylestown windows with design elements that completely knocked my socks off. However, a number came close. For example, there was no denying the power of the tall, narrow windows, pointing skyward, that adorn the Doylestown Presbyterian Church. Some of them depict Biblical scenes. In retrospect, I’d have loved to view them from inside the church too, but the idea didn’t occur to little ol’ me at the time.

And I was taken with the asymmetrical positioning of the windows on a lovely mustard-colored home. Unbalanced though it may seem at first glance, to my eye the arrangement makes perfect sense. It demonstrates how components big and small can work together in harmony when the will is there. The nations of Planet Earth have yet to learn this lesson fully.

The coolest thing about windows is that they usually are reflective, and many were showing off their talents in that regard. Reflections often blow my mind, as they are real and not real simultaneously — real in the sense that they do exist, and not real because they are weightless representations, often distorted, of the physical world. In any event, I couldn’t get enough of the reflections proudly displayed in the windows of the Bucks County Administration Building, a sharp red car parked on State Street, and the Doylestown Inn.

Very cool, too, was a window I photographed while inside Siren Records, where I browsed through a box of used CDs (I bought five of them). As ordinary as the window itself is — billions upon billions of its type populate the world — the scenes surrounding it and seen through it grabbed me. The window, delighted to be trimmed in yellow and to be adjacent to a wide array of colors, provided a shimmering, kaleidoscopic view of the outside world, courtesy of a sun that glared as if there were no tomorrow.

Well, the time to leave Doylestown has arrived. But I’ve still got windows on my mind, and I’m also ready to be rocked. So, I’ll end this story with one of the best windows-centric recordings I know of. The song, written by the late Tony Joe White, is titled Steamy Windows, and has been recorded by several artists, including Tony Joe. Tina Turner more than did the tune justice, releasing a bluesy, full-steam-ahead version in 1989 that is strong enough to shatter glass. Go, Tina, go!

A Doors-Filled Story (Fourth Edition)

March 3, 2022Yeah, Another Blogger134 Comments

A lovely day it was indeed. The Sun beamed and gleamed. The skies, nary a cloud within them, were an expanse of blue at its finest. Unexpectedly mild for winter (51°F/11°C), a steady breeze on hand to keep me refreshed, the afternoon of February the ninth presented to me a perfect opportunity to go out and peruse doors in Hatboro, a town in the Philadelphia burbs that’s a couple of miles from the one I call home. I grabbed the opportunity.

Doors? Yes, doors are a favored subject for a fair number of WordPress scribes, including, occasionally, yours truly. I’ve written about them three times before. And, it should be noted, the hub on WordPress for all things doors is the Thursday Doors project run by Dan Antion on his No Facilities blog. So, if you click here you will be directed to Dan’s handsome site, where links to the writings of and photographs by doors enthusiasts may be found.

As I drove to Hatboro I was confident about what I’d find, because I’ve been there a multitude of times over the years — to shop, to dine, to stretch my legs on its sidewalks. It’s a down-to-earth community with pleasant residential blocks and a commercial area that, though hanging in there, has seen better days. Sure, maybe a unique or snazzy door or two awaited me. But no more than that, I figured.

And you know what? I was right. Of the hundreds of doors that passed before my eyes that afternoon as I wandered around many of Hatboro’s streets, alleys and parking areas, nearly all were of one standard style or another and also plain as can be in the color department.

And you know what else? I was absolutely fine with that, as I’ve long believed there is value and beauty in just about everything if I look hard enough and, when needed, adjust my way of thinking. After all, who am I not to admire the seemingly ordinary? I mean, I understand what it’s like to be ignored. I ain’t exactly Bradley Cooper when it comes to looks, you dig, proof of which is the fact that I can count on two hands, probably one, the number of times in my life that a girl has given me the eye. And those occurrences were decades ago. Shit, now that I’m pretty damn deep into my senior citizen era, there ain’t a chance in the world that I’ll ever again be gazed upon with interest, unless it’s by somebody working on a doctoral thesis about old farts. Boo hoo, man! Boo f*cking hoo!

Among the “ordinary” portals that made a real impression on me in Hatboro, two of whose portraits I’ve included above, my top pick is the one identified by a nice big 3A. It more or less stopped me in my tracks because, I now realize in hindsight, its grey-green coloration struck an oceanic chord within me. I’m an ocean lover, and over the years I’ve seen the Atlantic’s waters take on a hue similar to 3A’s. Plus, how could I not fall for a door with a newspaper sticking out of its mail slot, like a tongue looking for attention?

Still, there were two doors that I preferred to 3A, both of which struck me as being a step or two above “ordinary”: a swinging door made of wood planks and metal, and the front door to a house. The latter, alive in orangey-red and decorated with a display of shadows that dazzled, easily garnered the gold medal in the doors competition that day.

In honor of Hatboro’s très cool red door, I’m going to end these proceedings by presenting an equally cool song titled — what else? — The Red Door. It was recorded in 1952 by a group led by tenor saxophonist John “Zoot” Sims and was released the next year. Zoot, who co-wrote the tune with Gerry Mulligan, takes the first sax solo. Mulligan, by the way, doesn’t appear on the recording.

Sims, a hell of a musician, was a presence in the jazz world for about 35 years (he died in 1985, having made it to only age 59). I had chance after chance to see him perform in New York City clubs during the 1970s and 80s, but, stupidly, let them pass me by. I’ve regretted those decisions ever since.

Here then is Zoot and his compadres on the lovely, swinging tune that The Red Door is. Enjoy.

A Doors-Filled Story (Third Edition)

June 10, 2021June 10, 2021Yeah, Another Blogger162 Comments

Well, here I am, dispensing thoughts about doors for the third time. Huh, doors? Damn straight! I mean, doors are cool. Or can be, anyway. And I’m hardly alone in holding this opinion. Various WordPress writers, for instance, launch doors-centric articles into cyberspace every Thursday. And they publicize the pieces by placing links to them on the No Facilities blog, of which a fine gent named Dan Antion is the heart, soul and brains. I’m part of that Thursday club today.

Okay, then. On a clear and comfortable morning in late May I visited the sprawling town of Glenside, a community in the Philadelphia suburbs about five miles from my home. Leafy, handsome residential blocks abound in Glenside. And there also are business sections that include Main Street-like corridors. Now, I wasn’t about to stroll up the front paths of homes to check out their doors closely (I wasn’t eager to hear something on the order of Yo, asshole! What are you doing on my property? directed at me), so I confined most of my investigating and picture-snapping to commercial blocks. In the end, though, I also got pix of a couple of residential doors that were not set back from their respective sidewalks.

While I didn’t cross paths with any doors that might take your breath away during the hour I spent in Glenside, I became fascinated by the varieties of doors on public display. They ran the gamut from the solid and stolid to the utilitarian to the well-worn to the neglected. I passed at least two hundred doors, possibly many more than that, and a dozen or so of them grabbed me almost instantly. I’ve chosen images of seven of them to grace this page.

Could I possibly have resisted a sky-blue door, endearingly shop-worn a bit, whose street address (number 12) beams proudly above it? No way! I tell you, if that door were a human being I’d have smiled at it generously and then given it a great big hug. Yup, the blue door is the one I felt most in tune with in Glenside. In a low-key manner it exudes warmth and wisdom. It’s my kind of door.

Unexpectedly, the four garage doors belonging to Santilli’s auto repair shop connected with me. They’re ordinary, right? We’ve seen doors such as these a million times. Yet, as I stared at them I thought to myself they are worthy of admiration. Non-complaining and tireless, they enable important work to get done. In the doors-ian realm, these four are among the salt of the earth.

And what can you say about the rust-stained shed door that probably hasn’t been opened in years? The healthy green plant a few feet away, doing all it can to brighten the scene, knows that the door has been ignored. It’s the norm to pass by a door such as this without a thought. But I’m a softie at heart, and so my old ticker went out to it. Its life has been anything but easy.

By the way, I had no intention of having my spectral double show up in five of the photos, but that’s what happened. Yeah, I saw the f*cker aiming his phone’s camera at me from a door beneath the NAPA sign as I snapped that picture. But not till I was examining all of the Glenside pix a day or two later did I realize that he also was present in other doors, the sky-blue door and the ones belonging to Elcy’s, the antique store, and Santilli’s. “It figures, Neil,” my wife Sandy just mentioned to me, shaking her head in disapproval as she looked over this article before I hit the Publish button. “It’s bad enough that you write about yourself incessantly in your stories. Now your readers are likely to overdose on your sort-of-spitting image too. Give ’em a break, for crying out loud!”

Shit, she’s right. She almost always is. On the other hand, has a ghoul ever before rocked a Cape Cod-emblazoned cap so magnificently? I think not!

The time has arrived to bring this essay to a close. On a musical note, of course, as that’s what I did with my first two doors pieces. With each of those, I included a tune by the hippie era band The Doors. This time around I’ve decided to forego one of their blasts from the past. Instead I’ve selected a blast from the present. It’s called, appropriately, Leave The Door Open, and it’s by Silk Sonic, a new band led by pop superstars Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak. The song is a throwback to the sweet soul/R&B music, lovingly orchestrated, that The Stylistics, The Delfonics and other groups filled the air with during the 1970s. I dig Leave The Door Open a lot.

I’m done! Goodbye till next time, boys and girls. Please don’t be shy about adding your comments.

A Doors-Filled Story (Second Edition)

January 7, 2021Yeah, Another Blogger135 Comments

It’s easy and normal to take doors for granted, though they are, of course, super important. I mean, where the hell would we be without them? Climbing in and out of windows, that‘s where. And who would want to do that?

But doors do have major fans. For example, a fair number of WordPress scribes write about them, maybe in recognition of their crucial value. Or maybe because certain doors are true works of art. Whatever the reasons, it is de rigeur for those scribes to launch their doors-centric essays into cyberspace on Thursdays. Why Thursdays? Because . . . well, I sure as shit don’t have a clue. It just became one of those things to do, I think.

The ringleader of Thursday doors articles was a guy named Norm (here’s the link to his blog), who began the project in 2014 but recently gave up his duties. A responsible and caring sort, he didn’t simply walk away. No, Norm nimbly passed the baton to Dan Antion, the mastermind behind the blog called No Facilities. Authors of doors-related pieces now are asked to post notices of their latest opuses on Dan’s site rather than on Norm’s. And that’s what I’ll be doing today, which is Thursday in my time zone, as this is a story about doors.

I published my first doors narrative in June 2020, taking a look at doors in Jenkintown, and decided to examine those in Ambler for my second effort. Both Jenkintown and Ambler are cute, traditional-looking villages in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and are pretty close to Willow Grove, the not-too-cute town that I call home.

A few weeks ago I spent about 70 minutes scouring many of Ambler’s streets. I was in search of doors that made a big impression on me, though I wasn’t sure which types those would be when I began the expedition. As you’d expect, the vast majority of doors that I passed were the kinds you’ve seen millions of times before. Standard wooden ones on houses, for instance, and standard glass/metal ones on commercial properties. Most of them were perfectly nice and well-maintained, for certain. But, vanilla.

So, how about doors that might be described as elegant or artistic? Surprisingly, Ambler seemed to be lacking in them, for I noticed but two. One belonged to a church, the other to a restaurant. Now, I could have placed their photos on this page and devoted a couple of hundred words to various aspects of their worthiness. However, I’ve chosen not to, as the five doors that resonated with me during my walk were way humbler. And weathered and disheveled too, to one degree or another. What’s more, the word dilapidated also applies to two of the five (the white door with a big empty space next to it, and the cardboard-stuffed black door upon which the sturdy lavender-hued door closes). I liked all of the outsiders aplenty when I spotted them and, in examining their portraits a short while ago, I like them no less now. They have tons of character. They’ve been through a lot and have stories to tell. And they probably go unnoticed by most everyone, but so what? They’ve entered my heart, which contains a warm spot for the underappreciated. Yeah, I’m a f*cking softie.

And which of the specimens do I choose as my favorite? Tough decision, but I’m going with the wooden swinging doors. Man, crude though they are, they exude down-to-earth charm and nonchalant confidence, characteristics I’d be proud to call my own. But I’ll never be as cool as those doors are, Shit, I’m well into my septuagenarian era. So, if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s not about to now. But an old guy can dream, can’t he? Damn right he can, and will.

Is any essay about doors truly complete without a nod to The Doors, the explosive, brooding and trippy rock band that burst into the big-time in 1967? The answer is no, at least when it comes to my offerings. Thus, I shall leave you with a recording by The Doors that has one big thing in common with the doors I’ve written about above. To wit, it is underappreciated. Wintertime Love, performed in a flexible waltz time, finds the band behaving all happy and tender, something they weren’t particularly known for doing. The song appears on their Waiting For The Sun album, which hit the marketplace in 1968. Here it is. Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. And please don’t be shy about adding your comments. Till next time!

A Doors-Filled Story

June 18, 2020December 31, 2020Yeah, Another Blogger132 Comments

I like to roam, to stretch my legs in a variety of locales while checking out the surroundings. And in recent years I often have turned my leg-stretching excursions into essays for this publication. These mini-adventures, thankfully, get me away from my living room sofa, upon which I spend hours upon hours each week engaged in questionable activities. Namely, staring into space, scratching my balls and twirling the five strands of hair that remain on the crown of my head.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that I’ve mentioned that sofa routine many times before on these pages. Can’t seem to stop myself from writing about it, though. What can I say? Would you prefer that I describe the nightly visitations paid to me by space aliens, and how I cured the aliens of toenail fungus? Nah, I didn’t think so.

Anyway, this article now will concern itself with doors. That’s what I was in search of when, on the penultimate day of May, I roamed the streets of Jenkintown, a nice village three miles south of Willow Grove, the town that I call home. Both communities are in the Philadelphia burbs.

Doors had been in the back of my mind as a story idea since 2017 or so, after I discovered that there are a goodly number of WordPress writers who launch door-oriented pieces into cyberspace on Thursdays. Their leader is a guy named Norm, who began a Thursday Doors theme in 2014 (click here to see Norm’s website). And so, I’m going to follow the leader by pressing the Publish button for this story during the opening minutes (in my time zone) of Thursday, June 18.

Concentrating on Jenkintown’s doors was right in my wheelhouse. After all, on walking excursions here and there during the last few years I’ve sometimes kept my eyes on alert for specific subjects: the color green for instance, shadows, store and street signs. Doing that kind of thing helps to make life interesting for me. On a low but real-enough level, it’s like a research project or detective work. It’s fun, basically.

I hit Jenkintown’s sidewalks at around 11:30 in the AM and concluded my mission at a quarter past noon. I might have stayed out longer than I did were it not for a vivid Sun that was getting a thrill from making me schvitz most admirably.

I walked along most of the blocks in Jenkintown’s business district and along a sampling of its residential streets. One thing I realized is that the vast majority of doors in Jenkintown are vanilla. That is, non-threatening standard concoctions of wood, glass or metal, or a combination thereof. Yet, I deemed some of them as absolutely photograph-worthy, because of the decorations on or near them, or because of their silent commentary upon our present times.

Take the Uptown Event Center’s door, for example. How many ordinary, metal-framed glass doors such as this are in the world? Many tens of millions, no doubt. Yet, it looks as sharp as can be, flanked as it is by a lady singer and a sax man. Cool. Very cool.

And what could be plainer than the opened door of Velvet Sky Bakery? It stands out, though, in a major way. With a table holding disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer beside it, it’s a reminder that we live in the days of coronavirus. This is a door through which you do not enter. You place your order from the sidewalk, pay when the items are brought to you, and walk away.

On the other hand, sometimes you cross paths with grandeur, such as the front doors of Immaculate Conception Church. Lovely creations of golden brown wood, they are all the more impressive thanks to the elegantly-chiseled stonework that surrounds them.

And then, in a category all its own, there’s a sprinkler room door, which is attached to the back of a building that I otherwise didn’t make note of. As of this writing it’s my favorite door in Jenkintown. That deep, deep color. That monolithic presence. Man, the door is the definition of gravitas.

We’d be in trouble without doors. I suppose that humans invented them in caveman days. Maybe way before that. Maybe later. Whatever the case, they provide protection from the elements and from members of the fauna categories, and they help to give us privacy. Right, duh! There are all kinds of philosophical interpretations that might be made regarding doors too. But I ain’t exactly Jean-Paul Sartre, so for me to go beyond the kiddie end of the pool in those matters would be a huge mistake. I will say this though: The Doors — and I’m referring to the rock and roll band — took their name from The Doors Of Perception, a book by Aldous Huxley that praises the use of psychedelics to open the mind’s doors, thus expanding one’s insights. I’m all for allowing more of life’s possibilities to present themselves. But there’s no need for psychedelics. For example, who knows what realms you’ll travel to when, non-medicated, you listen to Break On Through (To The Other Side), the opening track of The Doors’ first album, from 1967. Let’s find out:

(Please don’t be shy about adding your comments or about sharing this essay. I thank you.)

Stuff And More Stuff (Part Two)

October 16, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger2 Comments

So here I am, about to attempt a Part Two rumination on the time that my wife Sandy and I spent recently with our friends from France, Alan and Martine (click here to read the first installment). Part Two? Man, it’s hard enough for me to write about any topic, let alone something that requires follow-up thought and analysis. In the future I’m going to stick strictly to Part Ones.

As I’ve previously mentioned, the weather was ungodly hot while Alan and Martine stayed with us in the Philly burbs. We all decided to take outdoor activities off the table. On the first full day of the visit, we beat the Sun by looking at 150-year-old American artifacts inside the Mercer Museum, in Doylestown, PA. Where to on the second full day? Hey, we’d had enough history and culture at the Mercer. Why not aim lower and head to a locale whose charms are undeniable and, for some, irresistible? Namely, Willow Grove Park Mall, a gigantic and enclosed shopping mecca a mere half mile from Sandy’s and my abode. Alan and Martine, non-fussy sorts, readily agreed.

At the mall, we split up into pairs, females banding together, ditto for the lesser gender. Alan and I said goodbye to our wives within Macy’s, the establishment we all first had entered from the parking lot. “Call us when you’re done,” he and I said, and off we went. As Alan and I made our way past Macy’s cosmetics counters, heading towards an exit that would bring many of the rest of the mall’s retailers into view, I mentioned something I’ve thought about over the years. “This place,” I said, referring to Macy’s, “is like a museum.” The same could be said for the mall in toto.

Partial view of the Mercer Museum's central court. — Partial view of the Mercer Museum’s central court.

Partial view of the Willow Grove Mall's central court. — Partial view of the Willow Grove Mall’s central court.

The Mercer Museum displays 30,000 or more everyday implements and goods from America’s olden days. It’s a fascinating place. The Willow Grove Mall is no less fascinating, when you think about it. You want artifacts? The mall has 1,500,000 of them, I bet, putting the Mercer’s count to shame. Not only are the Mercer and the mall both repositories, they’re laid out kind of the same too, with large open courts (really large at the mall) ringed by several levels of rooms. At the Mercer the rooms (i.e. galleries) are small, each displaying tools and wares from a specific occupation or other category. At the mall the rooms (i.e. shops) may be bigger, but, excepting the department stores, each is narrow in its focus, just like at the Mercer. Shoe stores display only shoes. Electronics stores display only electronics. See, what’d I tell you? . . . The Mercer Museum and the Willow Grove Mall are pretty similar. Except, of course, that the stuff inside the Mercer Museum ain’t going anywhere. At the mall, a museum in constant flux, the faster the stuff makes its way out the doors, the better the store owners and managers like it.

Lids, a hat store in the Willow Grove Mall.

Department stores aside, the variety of items at the Mercer is, I think, a lot greater than at the mall. But there is definitely some overlap. No, you won’t find smart phones at the Mercer, or a whaling boat at the mall. But how about hats, for one example? Mercer has a room devoted to them and their manufacture. And Willow Grove Mall contains Lids, a sharp little shop stocked from floor to ceiling with caps, mostly of the baseball type.

While Sandy and Martine (as Alan and I later learned) happily wandered through Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Uniqlo and other wondrous spots, Alan and I strolled around the second and third level walkways overlooking the great court. We passed one emporium after another, but entered not a one. Neither of us were in need of any new duds (I mean, we’re talking here about two of the already-sharpest-dressed guys on the planet!), nor of much anything else. And thus to the food court we finally headed, where we sat and chatted about this and that, coming close to solving a couple of the world’s problems, though not quite close enough.

Eventually, Sandy and Martine rang us up. And came to join us at the food area. They’d had a grand time. So had Alan and I, in our own way. Sandy and Martine had made a few small purchases. And, before heading back to the Scheinin hacienda, Martine dropped a few dollars more, taking away some old timey candies and roasted nuts from a colorful and alluring sweets stand at the food court. These were gifts for relatives whom she and Alan would be visiting in Massachusetts in a couple of days.

Thank you, Willow Grove Mall, provider of fun, enlightenment and relief from the Sun’s punishing rays. I bow in praise.

(Photos by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin. If you click on any photo, a larger image will open)

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Stuff And More Stuff (A Visit To The Mercer Museum)

October 9, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger8 Comments

One of my closest friends, Alan, lives in Paris, France, so we don’t get to see each other too often. My wife Sandy and I are crazy about him and his wife Martine. Wonderful people. Smart, gracious and, if the conditions are right, up for pretty much anything. Alan and I have been buddies for 50 years. We met at college in Vermont lo those many years ago. He and Martine were in the USA for a couple of weeks recently for family gatherings and to tour New England a bit, and they also visited Sandy and me for a few days. We all had a terrific time together.

The weather was hot while they were with us. By 10 AM each day the sun was kicking ass. Sandy and I had hoped to show Alan and Martine some beautiful outdoor sights in Philadelphia or its environs. Maybe Morris Arboretum. Maybe Longwood Gardens. Maybe Philly’s Old City section and its nearby Penn’s Landing waterfront. But we scratched all of those ideas off our list. None of us felt like dealing with the heat. Where to, then?

Doylestown's Mercer Museum. — Doylestown’s Mercer Museum.

I’ve written a number of times about Doylestown, PA, a fine village in Bucks County about 20 miles from Philadelphia. Doylestown was the home of Henry Chapman Mercer, a talented and brilliant chap with eclectic interests who lived from 1856 to 1930. He designed and constructed three large and unusual buildings in Doylestown, one of which, the Mercer Museum, fit the bill as an indoor destination for Sandy, me and our friends. On the first full day of Alan’s and Martine’s visit, that’s where we headed.

Henry Mercer was a traveler, an archaeologist, an outside-the-box thinker and a collector of myriad objects. He also was well-heeled, a circumstance that allowed him to indulge his passions and to live pretty much as he chose. The collecting bug bit him early in life and took hold very strongly in the 1890s when he saw the effects that industrialization was having on the American way. Before they would be entirely phased out and disappear, he decided to amass examples of the handmade objects that once were, and in some cases still were used in typical homes, in everyday trades, on farms and in workshops. The tools and household and recreational goods, in other words, that defined how folks lived in the 1700s through roughly 1850.

Mercer spent much time at junk dealers, auctions and country sales, and often for little money purchased an astonishing array of items, thousand and thousands of them. But where would he keep all of this stuff? No problem. The amazing Mercer designed a sprawling idiosyncratic castle of sorts to house his Americana collection. A small team of workers built the structure in just a few years. The Mercer Museum opened in 1916, and Henry immediately donated it and the stuff to the Bucks County Historical Society, which to this day owns and runs the operation.

I was pretty certain that Alan and Martine would like the Mercer Museum. It’s not well-known, why I don’t understand. But it is fascinating and maybe one of a kind. The building alone is worthy of examination, a concrete behemoth awash with windows and topped with a dizzying display of towers and chimneys and who-knows-whats. Mercer selected concrete as his primary construction material because he desired a fireproof enclosure for his collection, and it certainly seems as though he made the correct choice. To date, no flames.

A dory, a sleigh and much else, all suspended from the ceiling and arches in the atrium.

And the collection? “Incredible” is an understatement. Thirty thousand or more things to eyeball, many of which you’re not likely to encounter elsewhere. A well sweep (it drew water from wells in pre-pump days), a stagecoach, a hay rake with 24-inch-long teeth, components of a water power saw mill . . . not to mention smaller items such as tools used in hat making, tinsmithing, coopering, the healing arts, you get the idea. Mercer suspended some of the big boys (a dory and a whaleboat, for instance) and also some of the little guys from the ceiling and arches of the museum’s large central atrium, where the effect is hallucinatory. It takes long looks to figure out just what it is you’re looking at, despite the quite good signage. And Mercer apparently had a real sense of the whimsical, as chairs, chests, baby cribs and other artifacts I couldn’t easily identify dangle from the ceiling, often upside down.

High Wheeler bicycles "floating" above a stagecoach. — High Wheeler bicycles “floating” above a stagecoach.

Most of the tools and results of America’s myriad trades, thankfully I suppose, are much more neatly displayed. They are divided up, by occupational use or other categories, in rooms, alcoves and niches that surround the atrium on six different floor levels.

Brown is the color of the day at the Mercer Museum, since so many of the objects on display, especially the hefty ones, are made of wood. Alan and Martine and Sandy and I took our time in the Mercer forest, but after two hours started to run out of gas. Alan said the museum is one of the best he has ever been in, and I concur. This trip to Mercer was my third or fourth. A fellow visitor, whom I chatted up slightly while we both gazed at eight-foot-tall High Wheeler bicycles hanging from the ceiling above a western Concord stagecoach, got it right when she said that “[Henry Mercer] makes hoarders look good.”

A few suggestions to the interested. Go, definitely go to the Mercer Museum. But make the voyage on a sunny day, as there is a paucity of artificial light there. And skip the dead of winter. The museum is unheated.

As mentioned hundreds of words above, the day following the Mercer experience featured temperatures just as disagreeable as its predecessor’s. Once again, an indoor attraction it would have to be. Where? (To be continued)

(Photos by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin. If you click on a photo, a larger image will open)

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