Nice Rack!

Mar 11th, 2008 by Marilyn

First, we have Greg to thank for the classy post title – it was actually the subject line of an email he sent me a few weeks ago:

Sadly it was not a randy compliment for his hot, ageless wife; it was a link to something on eBay, a very important thing that we needed in the bathroom:

A vintage magazine rack – billed at auction as “Hollywood Regency Glam,” the popular category of mostly 1950s interiors that are deliciously white, tackily mirrored or just plain over the top.

He knew I’d like it, but I had my concerns. It was brass and mirrored, which just plain breaks my zero tolerance for two-tone metals. And there was already mirror galore in there.

Last but not least, the bathroom is also our storm shelter – and I’m starting to have nightmares in which we’re huddled on tornado day dodging flying broken mirror.

But, no shocker – it really looks great. Anything that reflects my floors and holds the New Yorkers I’ll never get to is okay with me.

And here is another magazine holder.

Meet the hillbilly cousin to the big-racked glamor girl downstairs.

Looks aside, this one has seniority, because my grandpa made it – and though it was built as a tool box, I know he’d be tickled to see it by Josie’s bed, keeping all her late-night reads close at hand.

My grandfather, Toby, was the kindest man. He was born to Rumanian immigrant parents in North Dakota – some of the first Jewish homesteaders in the territory – and they had bitterly hard farm days.

50 years later he was a retired Chicago auto-supply dealer. Far from the plains, he still lived by a self-reliant waste not credo and is still the only man in my family who’d attempt to fix anything.

A week before my wedding he told me “I’m building you guys a tool box, Mar.”

Not like we used tools, but whatever. Did he want me to buy the wood?

“I got wood,” he said, already heading out back, “wood in the garage.”

Every single Toby project was made from old crates, loose boards, stray pipes, basement bits. Eventually, Greg and I came to call any cobbled-on-the-fly creation an IGW – I Got Wood. And you know what?