Mystifed. The Kid Was Mystified.
(for all you young'uns: THIS is a harp.)
An Aubuchon Hardware store, one of 130 in the New York New England area, in its 100th years of service to the public. I walk in to encounter a pleasant looking youth who asks if he can help me.
“Sure can! I need a harp.”
“A hop?” he says and I think to myself This is good old New Hamshah, and I still have to pronounce those pesky R’s? “Oh I’m sorry H-A-R-P, the basis for any lamp.”
“Hmmm,” he says again, looking puzzled. “We don’t carry those I don’t think.”
“Are you sure? Because you know most hardware stores do.”
He leads me to the lamps aisle where there are little desk lamps, utility lamps etc. “See?”
“But they wouldn’t be HERE, exactly,” I say.
Still he doesn’t think they have them so I give up and say I also need some spray paint.
“THAT I can do!” he says with his nice smile and off we go to the spray paint aisle where I begin studying the labels of two brands of white enamel spray paint Good on wood, good on metal, the really big printing on the front says,
“Hmmm, but t I need this stuff to spray on ceramic,”
“Ceramic?”:
“Yeah you know, like a pitcher-and-bowl set,” I say realizing there is NO chance he will know what this is, 100 years and more removed as we are now from the time when people had chamber pots and pitcher-and-bowl sets in their bedrooms. Sure enough , he looks pleasantly fuddled so “Can I spray this stuff on, like, china?” I ask.
“I really don’t know a thing about paint,” he says.
“Do you know how to read?” I say, though I am not at all grouchy - just incapable of reading the very tiny print on the back .
“Well I’m only 16 of course. I figure I have my whole life ahead of me, “ he says with a wink. He takes the can and reads it - but alas even then we remain mystified in Aisle Twelve.
“Hey it’s OK, I’ll just take this one.” I say. “Now let’s go back to the front of the store. I forgot I need finials for two lamps.”
“Finials! Another VO-cab word!” he shouts gleefully. “What are finials?”
“Well a finial is an ornamental element found atop a thing. Like the knob on your ladder-back chair, for example, or at the foot of he stairs the little sculpted element on your newel post...".
“Newel post?”
“Or the decorative thing on the top of a cupola even.”
"Cupola?" But just then comes striding along the lady 60 who has worked here for decades.
“I need a harp and some finials,” I say.
“Of course,” she smiles and leads me straight to a corner of Aisle Two where I find it all: harps, finials, even risers and I buy them all from her and my spray paint besides after she has walked me up to the counter, where the boy takes of his apron and gives me a big happy wave as together we exit the store and cross the parking lot in the warm June sun.
...and these children, these are finials.
