A Marvelous Found Object, and A Chic Raincoat From Paris

I went to the Goodwill Store over on Charlotte Pike today. It is in a neighborhood that will not be reproduced on ABC TV's new "Nashville" drama(which appears to be the concept of "Tourist Dream Nashville" meets "All About Eve".) No country music Stars in that part of town-just the failures, pawning their guitars for a bus ticket home.

I was searching for a couple new pairs of shoes. I am happy to say I found them, after making sure to check them in good light for tears and paint stains. They are serviceable shoes, flat and black and comfortable. Shoes for a free woman's feet, for how can any woman in high heels whose feet are in agony be anything other than a slave?

I also bought a label-less un-marred black lambskin shoulder bag for seven dollars. Nice, but unremarkable. Until I searched one of its pockets.

What do we expect to find in old pocketbooks? I know what I have found in the past. A dry cleaner's bill, a penny, a forgotten give away pen,unused Kleenex. But never a Mother of Pearl and brass ornament that might have been part of a pendant or an piece from another pocketbook. Who knows?

A second coat was also on my Goodwill agenda. A raincoat for a winter climate where it is 50 degrees and wet most of the time. I went to the coat section, where I found a below the knee black lined raincoat. It had a certain Aura of Chic, and when I saw its label I understood. It came from Paris, from the design house of Claudie Pierlot. Their clothes aren't sold in this country, and they are not cheap.

God Bless well traveled ladies with money, who do not send their last season's discards to consignment shops, but have their maids pack old clothes in boxes to send to Goodwill so I can buy them and wear a piece of Paris to the Bellevue library or to the DMV inspection station, pretending I am in France and not waiting in line hoping my truck will pass the auto emissions test-


And I thought I would add one more found object to this little written reverie. I found it in a box of jewelry at an estate sale. It seems to be a belt buckle divorced from its belt. But look at it closely. It appears to be carved ivory. Three ships off shore from a castle with its battlements. Perhaps the ships are from Narnia. Perhaps one is the "Dawn Treader".

But this may be too fanciful. More likely the ships are the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and they are sailing out to the unknown looking for lands where the rivers run gold-