Nothing New Under the Sun

I like antique shops, and I blame my father. Through my growing up years, my dad would often take my brother and me to them—musty buildings that smelled aged and made me sneeze. To a boy whose chief occupations were Batman and Star Trek, the experience was painful.

One of my dad’s favorite stores was the Fox Skylight Gallery of Antiques. Residing inside what was once the W. F. Krummbach Paint Factory, the store is as antique as the things it houses. It’s three stories high, too, a nightmare for young boys who’d rather be playing Sega Genesis. We went there often, making the floor creak as we browsed. When I asked my dad why he liked antiques, he said something like, “It’s nostalgic.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it didn’t mean fun.

Now I understand. In a culture that values things that look good but don’t last long, it’s refreshing to see things that have survived the trials of time. The Skylight Gallery of Antiques is like a museum that you can buy. It’s one thing to read about World War II or watch a scholarly documentary about it, but to touch a scarred and pock-marked helmet that was a part of the action—that’s special.

I say handle and touch because something about touch makes old things feel real. I can stare at something behind a glass case and still feel 200 years distant from it. But to touch it is to understand that someone else from another time did too. The Skylight Gallery of Antiques lets you touch the past.

Realizing the things of the past aren’t just pictures in books, but real things, is fun. This isn’t the only reason I enjoy the Fox Skylight Gallery, though. A certain aura of pathos there reminds you that now is not the only time people have lived, loved, and lost. It is a feeling of connection to the human experience.

My imagination constructs people, places, and stories for interesting things I see. A faded wedding dress represents the joy of one couple’s wedding day; a dented toy car represents hours of entertainment for some little boy (perhaps it was his prized possession); a worker’s paycheck from two centuries ago speaks of labor and a family provided for. Everything has a story.

The building, too, speaks of lives and labor. While it has undergone changes over the years, those who transitioned it from a paint factory to an antique shop were careful to leave its personality intact. Massive drums that once held paint are still suspended from the ceiling, the worn wood flooring remains, and the original window panes still give view to the leaden sky of Milwaukee. These things speak of average men doing average work in average town. But average does not mean uninteresting.

Even the ugly things, like the ugly furniture of the 60’s, are interesting simply because they were a part of someone’s life. Like souvenirs from another country are special because of where they are from, the things are not special because of what they are, but when they’re from.

Going to the Fox Skylight Gallery of Antiques keeps me from chronological snobbery. It keeps me from thinking that now is the best time, and everyone in the past must have been more two dimensional and somehow less human. It reminds me that there is no truly new thing. Times change, but people don’t. Wise Solomon of millennia ago acknowledged this truth, when he began his book of Ecclesiastes with these words: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us.”