Antiques and Other Oddities

          Tuesday afternoon, I received a message from my friend Anna Lauren Lauderdale asking me to go to a place called Obscura. They have a show that she watches on TV.  At the time, I was in Grand Central Terminal and had no particular plans for the afternoon, so I caught the train and headed to Alphabet City to find this store of antiques and oddities. Upon arriving and going in, I would say antiques and oddities might even be an understatement. They definitely had the oddest things for sale that I had ever seen. And what might be even more scary is that several of the things they had for sale, I actually have in my house (maybe not out in plain view, but there nonetheless.)  Even more strange is that my family sometimes teases me about my crazy relics, but they just don't realize how valuable these obscure (hoarded) items are.  Katie, I now have proof that such oddities can be quite valuable.
          I will try to describe some items that I saw here, but don't worry, I will stick with the ones I can discuss on the Internet. There was quite a large assortment of stuffed animals -- not toys, mind you, real dead animals.  They had at least two two-headed stuffed calves for sale, along with most other small animals that you can think of -- squirrels, all types of birds, weasels, fish and more -- many of them in some state of disrepair making them appear even more scary. Hey, Girls, at least the stuffed birds we have in our house are in decent repair.  And our mounted piranha is no where as near as scary as these mounted fish were.  There were scorpions, very long walking sticks (the insect), spiders, etc. either in glass boxes or preserved in resin.  And while we are on the subject of preserved in resin, they have bats preserved in resin, $65 each.  I talked to the lady there, and from what she said, it is something that they regularly keep in stock.  And to think of how many bats (ah, make that money) we have flushed down the toilet in years past, when we could have been preserving them.  Who would have ever thought there was a market for such!
          There was a whole section of old photographs including different medical photos that I won't discuss, along with very old black and white pictures of dead people in caskets -- I know this was somewhat of a common practice in years past, but it was still a little scary to look at.  I know about these type pictures because I have some that have been passed down of my own family members. They also had some of those weird type wedding photographs from Germany.  My collection of these odd photos is larger than what they had displayed -- see, Girls, there is actually a market for my weird wedding photos.
          There were human skeletons, ones that looked very real and the plastic medical kind that was in our science class back in the day.  And on the plastic medical models, you know, the old kind that doctors used to use when explaining something to us, there were quite a few depicting the late stages of  pregnancy and delivery -- the ones where one-half is gone so that you can see what is going on inside the body.  There were all types of animal skulls and bones.  I have never  kept any old bird bones, but I can tell you that they were plentiful in our house when we tore the walls out years ago.  (I just didn't realize what I had or I would have saved some.)
          Also displayed were all types of medical devices along with a tray of glass eyeballs so you could choose the color you wanted. Someone actually bought one of these while I was there.  While I don't own any glass eyes, I do have a couple of the antique glass eye cups that you put up to your eye in order to wash your eye out.  In an old medical case with glass sides, there were all types of old medicines and bottles.  One that stood out to me was an old Tincture of Iodine bottle.  I just happen to have one of these along with several other old medicine bottles and even little medicine boxes with the directions handwritten on them.  There were lots of glass syringes in the medical case.  I have a glass syringe in a box that came from my great-grandmother.  I just wish I knew the story of why she had this and saved it.
          Then there was the human hair -- not just a lock, but a box full.  The hair in this box had a handwritten note identifying it by color.  I only remember that the blonde was Lloyd's.  I also have a box of hair.  My grandmother did not cut her hair until she was well into her twenties, and I actually have a box containing her hair that was cut.  She had wavy hair and the waves are still intact.
          An item that might not seem scary, but is, is old dolls which are not in prime condition, but rather used and beat up.  They just look scary.  Obscura had quite a few.  Recently, we cleaned out our attic and found such a doll.  It's not actually that scary, because I know it was my mother's and it is just well played with, but Kelsey declared that it was looking at her and that she did not want it upstairs.
         Apparently, the store lost their previous location, it seems from what one employee was saying, unexpectedly, and had to relocate to this store on Avenue A.  I don't know how it compares to the old location, but this one is extremely small for a store.  It has all these "wares" packed into this small space not much bigger than my kitchen making it even more weird.  I was too "scared" to ask permission to take pictures, so all I have is a picture of the outside of the store. I have to say that this is the most unique store this country mouse has ever been to.

Just so you can get an idea of what they looked like

An old building across the side street from Obscura that had  beautiful windows moldings