Posting #141

Of Cash and Cards

You may have seen a recent news report that Sweden is rapidly going cashless. The article said that Sweden, which was the first European country (in 1661) to introduce bank notes, is now leading the way to their elimination.

Apparently, cards are being used for everything from rides on public buses to church donations---a pastor installed a card reader in his church when parishioners complained that they no longer carried cash.

The article reminded me of a few stories that I have been wanting to tell.

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A few years ago, Pat and I were staying with some friends in Larchmont NY, north of New York City.

Pat was going off one day 'antiquing' with her friend and I decided to play tourist in the City. At the commuter-line station I put a twenty dollar bill in a machine and out popped the $12 ticket. A few seconds later, 8 dollar coins rattled down into the 'change' tray.

I hadn't seen a US dollar coin before.

I checked over the Sacagawea dollars with the image of the native woman who acted as an interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition. After admiring the look and feel of
them, I stuck them in my pocket.

After lunch in a NYC cafe I decided to get rid of the coins, which were weighing down my pocket.

The cashier scowled when I pushed the coins toward her. And then, with a resigned look, took them and dropped them into a compartment at the back of the cash register tray. It was obvious that she wasn't going to be able to give them out in change---they would have to be handed into a bank. She wasn't pleased.

I wanted to say, 'Look, your commuter line gave them to me', but I didn't.

As I left the cafe, I thought about the American love for the one dollar bill---despite the way the bills bulk out one's wallet---and about the American dislike for the dollar coin.

Experts say that experience in Canada and other countries has shown that if a government wishes to replace a paper bill with a coin, it has to withdraw the bill at the same time as it issues the coin.

Apparently, we can't be given a choice, or we will stick with the old and familiar.

I have often wondered why the US Government ignored the experience of other countries and kept the dollar bill at the same time as it issued a dollar coin.

The answer seems to be 'politics'---what else is new!

In 2000 the US Government Accountability Office (the US's Auditor General) reported that complete elimination of the dollar bill would save $500 million a year. However, efforts to pass legislation killing the bill ran into opposition from two powerful Senators. Senator Trent Lott opposed it because his state of Mississippi produces much of the cotton that goes into the paper on which the dollar is printed. And, Ted Kennedy opposed it because the Crane Paper Co. in his state of Massachusetts produces the banknote paper for the dollar bill.

In addition, it seems that pressure came from the employees at the US plant that prints the paper dollar. They set up an organization, 'Save the Greenback', while other opponents of the elimination of the paper dollar bill set up an organization, 'Americans for George' (George Washington is, of course, on the bill).

It appears that many of the dollar coins produced today go to coin collectors, not into general circulation.

But a good number of  the dollar coins go to El Salvador, Ecuador and Panama, all of which have adopted the US dollar as their  official currency. The citizens of those emerging countries seem to prefer the coin to the dollar bill.

Go figure!

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Moving from cash to cards, a friend who spent his career in a large Canadian bank said it is estimated that the insertion of the 'chip' in credit and debit cards, along with the 4 digit PIN, has saved Canadian banks about $2 billion in fraudulent transactions!

The 'chip' has been adopted in Europe, and a good portion of Asia, Latin America and Africa but American financial institutions have been slow to adopt it. Some US travellers have found that their non-chip cards are no longer accepted abroad because the card reading machines will only handle cards with a chip.

One of the US financial institutions that has adopted the chip is the United Nations Federal Credit Union---its members, of course, do a great deal of international travelling.

Visa has said that it plans, in October this year (2012), to start offering incentives to encourage merchants to buy payment terminals that will accept cards with chips. The company hopes that this action will speed up adoption of the chip throughout the US.

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I am hoping that adoption of chip cards will eventually eliminate a growing aggravation at the gas pumps that faces us when we drive in the States.

As you probably know, more and more American gas stations require that a driver using a credit or debit card enter his/her zip code. I can understand that this additional bit of information probably reduces fraudulent transaction---for example from people using stolen cards.

But it plays hell with those of us who don't have a zip code.

A Globe and Mail article from November 25, 2011 sets out the problem well:

"The ZIP-code pump creates hassles for Canadians as it requires drivers to prepay, which makes it hard to accurately top up, and creates headaches trying to get a few dollars back if you overestimate. Canucks can prepay with cash, of course, but that means stuffing your wallet with greenbacks. Or you can leave a credit card with the attendant before filling up – but that's not ideal.

"Here are some suggestions from Hunter (editor's note: this is Dave Hunter, author of the popular Along Interstate 75) to game the system:

"If you're a twosome, send one person into the office while the other waits at the pump. Then text or radio your partner when the pump is ready to go. “Very often, just the presence of somebody in the store holding the credit card is enough to get the pump initiated,” says Hunter, who has led an uphill battle to find an easier solution.

"Get a U.S. debit card. Suitable for snowbirds or frequent cross-border travellers, gas money can be deposited in the U.S. account and if a minimum balance is maintained, transaction fees are limited. Hunter says that, in his experience, most pumps accept debit cards. (A Canadian debit card may work too, but could lead to some mighty bank fees.)

"Some suggest using the numbers from your postal code, plus 0s or 9s, in place of a ZIP code. This can be hit or miss, Hunter cautions."

During our recent trip to Florida we tried some of Dave's suggestions. They were all cumbersome and time consuming---don't get me started!

The proposal that one take out a US debit card sounds like a good idea but the phrase "most pumps accept debit cards" bothers me. Just what does 'most' mean?

I am sure that the day will come when we will insert a card with a chip in a Canadian or US gas pump, enter the PIN, and---'bob's-your-uncle'---we'll get gas.

Do I really expect to see that day in my driving-lifetime?

Not really!

(Pat, on the other hand, is sure that she will see this change during her driving-lifetime!)

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Cash became a problem in Russia in the mid-1990s because of hyperinflation. The value of the Ruble kept falling so that, for example, meals that used to cost a few Rubles were now shown in the thousands of Rubles.

After one of my first meals in Russia, I gave the server a few notes worth several thousand Rubles and received in change one or two smaller denomination bills, a few coins---and 6 cellophane-wrapped hard candies.

I said to my interpreter that giving candy after a meal was a pleasant gesture. He smiled and said that the candies were in fact part of my change, each of them was worth several Rubles, but there were no longer coins that small!

Russia tackled the Ruble devaluation problem on 1 January 1998, by moving the decimal point three places to the left. In this way, the Ruble was redenominated with one new Ruble equaling 1000 old Rubles. In other words, a meal that had cost 9,000 Rubles now cost 9.

I wonder sometimes as I look at the day's collections of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies and toonies on the top of my bureau if we shouldn't bite the bullet and reform our coins. I still pick up coins on the street---because I think it is bad luck not to---but the rational part of me says that bending over for anything less than a quarter is not worth it.

In reality, pennies, nickels and dimes are like the Russian candies.

If I had more time and energy, I would start a campaign to abolish them.

Perhaps a reader will take up that challenge!


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See you on April 8, 2012 for Posting #142 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:
In Posting # 7 of The Icewine Guru, the Guru offer his views on the birth control furor in the US and whether it was 'an epic blunder' by Obama, or a clever trap set by him for the Republicans. Click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #140

Feedback

It is always good to receive feedback about the Blog. (Although I wouldn't have been too thrilled to have had a call from the authorities about last week's Posting in which I published a 'secret' photo of Viscount Montgomery and my Uncle Archie. So far so good---I'm still in Virgil, not the Tower of London.)

Recently there was a contact from an ex-labourer teacher who had worked for Frontier College at the same time I did. There was also an email from someone whose mother had grown up in Arthur about the Posting on  Rixon Rafter, Arthur's blind editor (Posting #132

And then in the past week there was an email from a man in Berlin who had worked in Russia (1991-93) just before I was there (1995-97). He had done a Google search for an artist whose paintings he had bought during visits to Moscow's flea market, Izmailovsky Park. Google directed him to Posting 131 in which I described buying paintings by the same artist, Piganov.

The Berliner, Jules, shared photos of his three paintings with me and has agreed to let me add two of the them to Posting 131. The paintings were done in 1991 and reflect the emotions---fear, anger, love and more---the artist felt as the changes brought about by Glasnost, Perestroika and the demise of the USSR swept across Russia.

Jules, who now owns a small cafe in Berlin, and I have agreed that the third painting is just too horrific for a family blog. It is a powerful painting reminiscent of Picasso's brutal Guernica, which portrayed the death and destruction caused in the 1930s by the bombing of Spain by the axis forces.

You can see the two paintings by clicking here.

I told Jules that perhaps this will be the start of a fan club for Mr. Piganov, with other purchasers of his pictures stumbling (Googling?) onto my blog.

He liked that idea!

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The Underside of Paris

In the 1980s Pat and our daughter accompanied me to Lisbon where I had been asked to speak at a conference arranged by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), on the subject of employment programs After the speech and some sightseeing in Portugal, we travelled by train to Paris so I could meet with several OECD officials.

During my meetings, Pat and our daughter toured Paris on their own, visiting the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and other 'must' sights. I had planned a free day after the meetings so that the three of us could do something together, before returning to Canada.

It turned out that our daughter had had enough of sightseeing. She really wanted to visit some fashion shops. Pat was keen on that as well.

But my feeling was---'not so much'.

We agreed that they would go shopping in the morning and then we would meet for lunch and do something together in the afternoon.

They were concerned that I might be bored wandering around Paris without them, but paraphrasing Samuel Johnson's famous comment about London I told them that 'when a person is tired of Paris he is tired of life' (or something like that).

I didn't tell them that I would probably be visiting the sewers of Paris.

I can hear people asking, "The sewers of Paris? Why?"

Victor Hugo is probably to blame for my interest in the sewers of Paris. As you will recall one of his character, Jean Valjean from Les Misérables, scurried from place to place in Paris via the underground 'roads'. Or perhaps my interest was piqued by the Phantom of the Opera, who also frequented the sewers.

Anyway, clutching my Fodor Guide to Paris, I took the Metro to the Alma Morceau station and once on the surface tried to find the entrance to the sewers. Today, there is a very prominent sign, "VISITE DES EGOUTS DE PARIS" (doesn't 'EGOUTS', sound ever so much nicer than 'SEWERS'?) but back in the 1980s the sewers were treated as a backwater attraction (sorry about that!).

As I tried to find the entrance, a Japanese fellow came up and thrusting his Japanese-language tour book at me, said something in his language. He pointed at a map in the book that clearly showed the Alma Morceau Metro stop and a lot of Japanese characters that meant nothing to me. Then he spread his arms, and raised his shoulders in that universal language that means' Where is it?'.

Just at that moment I saw a tiny sign at the top of a flight of steps and the word 'EGOUTS'. I pointed to the sign. He thanked me (I think), bowed slightly and then waited for me to go first.

The stairs led to a museum that described the history of Paris's sewers. The first sewer was constructed in 1370 under the Rue Montmartre, and bits were added to it sporadically over the centuries. However, it wasn't until 1850 when a typhoid epidemic swept Paris---Louis Pasteur lost three of his children to typhoid---that the city was prepared to spend the money needed to create proper sewage and water supply networks.

The story of the construction and operation of the sewers is a fascinating one that I won't go into here, but you can follow on these links: Wikipedia's "Paris Sewers",  and a blog by the 'MuseumChick', Danee Gilmartin, entitled "The Perfect Date Place in Paris... For a Rat---The Sewer Museum"

After the museum, we were led to a wide walkway that ran alongside an operating sewer, a large tunnel lined with bricks and stone, with a channel, perhaps 10 feet wide, full of brown rushing water.  

The image is complements of Wikimedia Commons.

I looked for signs of toilet waste, soiled toilet paper perhaps, but nothing. There were leaves and twigs (Paris streets are regularly flushed, with the water running into the sewers through manhole covers). But nothing else, just brown water on its way to a sewage processing plant.

And, everyone wants to know, what about the smell and the rats?

There was a dank smell that one would expect from a damp, subterranean location but, at least when I visited, not the smells I had been expecting---unpleasant bathroom odours or the rotten-egg smell typical of sewer gas. It is clear that the sewers are well ventilated.

And I didn't see any rats or other vermin.

Leaving the sewers, I felt happy I had gone. The sewers can't compete with the Louvre or Notre Dame Cathedral in terms of artistic creativity, but they represent an engineering genius that is worth studying and paying homage to.

At lunch, Pat and our daughter talked about the shops they had seen and the things they had bought. When they asked me what I had done, they were outraged.

Why hadn't I told them what I was planning to do?

When I asked whether they would have gone into the sewers the response was, 'No way!'.

I told them what it was like and they shivered with disgust.

But I should have told them, and given them the chance to say 'no'.

Thirty years later, they still look at me accusingly as they tell about the time I went off by myself to see the sewers of Paris.

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An interesting sidelight on the sewers.

Before we left Paris, we had lunch with two OECD officials and Pat or our daughter (I can't remember which) told about my visit to the sewers.

One of the officials, a British fellow who had lived in Paris for many years, said that there was a tradition among Parisian high schools of holding their graduation parties in the sewers. His daughter and her classmates pried loose a grill, and with lanterns, boom boxes, and lots of food and wine had partied away the night---alongside the rushing brown water!

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See you on March 25, 2012 for Posting #141 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:
In Posting # 7 of The Icewine Guru, the Guru offer his views on the birth control furor in the US and whether it was 'an epic blunder' by Obama, or a clever trap set by him for the Republicans. Click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #139

Will I End Up in the Tower of London for this Posting?

My Uncle Archie (Archibald Burnham McFarlane), who was married to my mother's youngest sister, Zilla, was playing golf with some friends on September 10th, 1939.

Suddenly a man came running from the clubhouse with the news that Prime Minister Mackenzie King had just announced on the radio that Canada's Parliament had approved his request that the nation join Britain and France in the war against Nazi Germany. (King had allowed a week to pass after Britain and France had declared war in order to establish a degree of independence from the mother country.)

Archie told his golfing partners that he would be enlisting the next day.

He didn't have to volunteer for the army. He was 28, married and working in a war-critical industry---a chief clerk with the Canadian Pacific Railway.

But he thought it was the right thing to do.

The next morning he joined the 23 (Hamilton) Field Ambulance Unit as a private. Later he would say that he had decided not to join an infantry unit because he couldn't hit the side of a barn with a rifle, and in any event he didn't like the idea of killing people, even enemy troops.

He went to Britain later that year and was to remain overseas until 1945. While overseas his skill at organization and making things happen was noted. He was moved to the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps, the group responsible for procuring and making available all the material goods required by the Army, from clothing to weapons.

He rose through the non-commissioned ranks and then was returned to Canada to take officer training. He returned overseas as a newly-minted lieutenant and served with the Canadian troops in their battles in Sicily, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. By the end of the war he had been promoted to Major.

On the left, Uncle Archie, a captain at that time---from the three 'pips' on his shoulders---with an unnamed captain colleague. Date and location not known but somewhere in Europe, probably around 1943-44. Copyright.

When he was discharged in late 1945, my family went to see him in Hamilton. He had many things to show us including a Luger revolver that had belonged to a German officer. There were documents relating to awards he had received (on several occasions he had been 'mentioned in dispatches' (Wikipedia gives this definition for the use of this term in the Canadian military: "A Mention in Dispatches (in French, Citation à l'ordre du jour) is an award to recognize a mention in dispatches from a senior commander for brave or meritorious service, normally in the field".)

 In addition, there was a document presented when Archie was invested as a Member in the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King George VI at Buckingham Palace.

This is a digression, but when we saw the movie The King's Speech, I thought of Uncle Archie's description of receiving the MBE from the King. He said that the King's face was covered with a thick layer of makeup, partly he surmised because of the bright camera lights but also, he thought, to conceal the frailness of the King's health, which was obvious when he was seen close up. The war had taken a terrible toll on a person who was not very physically robust to start with. Still the King and Queen continued their regular visits to Londoners whose homes had been destroyed by German bombers.

All the items brought back by Uncle Archie were impressive---especially the German Luger---but the one that fascinated me most was this photograph.

 From left to right: Field Marshall Montgomery, Major-General A.B. Matthews (Canadian Army) and Major Archie McFarlane. Copyright.

I was three when the war started in 1939, and my first real memories of the war come from when I was 5 or 6, around 1941-42. Although I couldn't read the newspapers that came into our house I knew that the content was always about the war. Maps with arrows showing what was happening in different battle fields, pictures of planes, tanks, bombing damage. (Around this time I asked Mom what the newspapers would use on their front pages when the war was over. She paused, and then said that I shouldn't worry, there would be lots of other news stories. I remained sceptical, but she was, of course, right.)

Although the war news was heavily censored to try to bolster morale at home, it was clear from listening to Mom and Dad that things were not going well. The German armies seemed invincible as they invaded country after country.

Then there was Montgomery's victory in the deserts of North Africa over the German General Rommel at El Amein in October 1942, the "first large-scale, decisive Allied land victory of the war."

Montgomery became a hero to the public and his victory gave a huge lift to the morale of people in Britain and Canada.

He became one of my heroes.

Although we didn't know it at the time, Montgomery had detractors.

Military critics said he was conceited, opinionated and didn't work well with his colleagues.

His political master, Prime Minister Churchill apparently felt that Montgomery was too slow to go into battle. (Montgomery countered that he had to wait until his troops were all in place and fully trained.)

Montgomery ignored his critics. He spent a great deal of time visiting his officers and soldiers, trying to assess for himself how things were going, and trying to keep morale high.

I assume the above photo was taken during one of those visits.

When Uncle Archie saw me studying the photo of him and the Field Marshall, he said that the Canadian Army photographer had told him that the photo would be circulated to Canadian newspapers for publication. Some time later the photographer came back with a copy of the  photo for Archie, but said that unfortunately it would not be published. The Field Marshall, who was short, refused to have any photos released that showed him looking up at a more junior officer. As you can see the back of the photo is stamped, "Secret" and "Not to be published".

The notes show that the photo was taken on February 23, 1945, just a few months before the Germans surrendered (May 1945) Copyright.

So, the photo you have just looked at is being published for the first time---anywhere!

After 67 years, I am assuming there is some sort of Statute of Limitation that will protect me against prosecution.

But if there is no Posting next Sunday, it may be because I am being held in the Tower of London.

(Wonder if they have Wi-Fi there?)

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I have more stories about Uncle Archie (who died in 2001) and about Aunt Zilla (who died in 2004) that I will tell in future Postings.

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Montgomery was created 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein by King George VI in 1946 and remained with the British military until 1958, when he was almost 71.

An interesting---Canadian---sidebar.

In 1953 Montgomery formed a close connection with an elementary school in Hamilton Ontario.

In its article on Montgomery, Wikipedia tells how this came about:

" In 1953, the Hamilton Board of Education in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, wrote to Montgomery and asked permission to name a new school in the city's east end after him. Viscount Montgomery Elementary was billed as "the most modern school in North America" and the largest single-storey school in Hamilton, when the sod was turned on 14 March 1951. The school officially opened on 18 April 1953, with Montgomery in attendance among almost 10,000 well-wishers. At the opening, he gave the motto "Gardez Bien" from his own family's coat of arms.

Montgomery referred to the school as his "beloved school" and visited on five separate occasions, the last being in 1960. On his last visit, he said to "his" students:

'Let's make Viscount Montgomery School the best in Hamilton, the best in Ontario, the best in Canada. I don't associate myself with anything that is not good. It is up to you to see that everything about this school is good. It is up to the students to not only be their best in school but in their behaviour outside of Viscount. Education is not just something that will help you pass your exams and get you a job, it is to develop your brain to teach you to marshal facts and do things'."

Viscount Montgomery died in 1976 at the age of 88.

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See you on March 18, 2012 for Posting #140 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Posting # 7 of The Icewine Guru blog is now up. The Guru offer his views on the birth control furor in the US and whether it was 'an epic blunder' by Obama, or a clever trap set by him for the Republicans. Click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #138

Looking for a Welsh Dresser 

It was a Saturday morning in 1962.

 I was working at the  time in the Canadian Immigration office in Leeds, Yorkshire, and Pat and I were living in a small but delicious Georgian cottage on the Stray in Harrogate.

Pat was pregnant and I was just in the process of bringing her breakfast in bed (a real English breakfast with rashers of bacon, eggs, grilled tomato and fried bread---thick slices of bread fried in the fat from the bacon, cholesterol hadn't been discovered yet!) and marmalade, when the phone rang.

A man said, "We have your dresser, when can we deliver it."

"Who are you, and what dresser?"

"We're removers (British for 'moving company'), and the dresser is the one you saw in Ripon. Mr. Bell wants you to have it. We're in Harrogate and we can be at your house in half an hour."

We were confused, and since you are also likely to be confused, I'd better go back a bit.

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Our rented Harrogate house was furnished but we thought it might be good to start acquiring a few, small antiques for the home we eventually wanted to have in Ottawa.

Pat had been going to antique auctions in Harrogate and thought that perhaps an18th century Welsh dresser might be something to look for. Here is a Welsh dresser currently available in England (for about 3000 British pounds) that is the type of piece we were looking for---a small dresser, with a rack above for displaying plates.

 We placed an advertisement in a chain of Yorkshire weekly newspapers, asking for an antique Welsh dresser. The initial response was disappointing, mainly crude, heavy dining room furniture from the 1930s.

Then a letter came from a Mr. Bell in Ripon. He said that he was moving to London and had a dresser to sell. It wasn't really a Welsh dresser, he said, but it did have some carved dragons, and he reminded us the dragon had been a symbol of Wales for centuries. He invited us to view it.

Intrigued, we drove across the moors to Ripon---to be precise we drove on a road that cuts through the moors.

Mr. Bell's house turned out to be a huge, stone country house with a circular drive and a portico under which we parked our tiny, navy Anglia.

Mr. Bell was an affable Yorkshire country gentleman, tweeds and all, somewhere in his 60s. It was obvious that he was in the process of moving, there was little furniture in the large foyer. He guided us to a door off the hall and told us to look into the room. The room was empty except  for an elaborate piece of furniture against the far wall. That was the dresser he had mentioned.

Our mouths dropped open, and we stared at it. It wasn't the simple, restrained Georgian dresser we were looking for. It was a large, boisterous, confident Victorian piece that proclaimed that 'Britain Rules the Waves' and you better not forget it.

We went in and studied the dresser. Every surface had a design. The top of the dresser was made of pollarded oak with an amazing grain that shone through carefully applied layers of French polish. Everywhere else, there were elaborate hand carved images, including lots of dragons. 

We stepped back and looked at each other. It certainly wasn't a small, restrained, elegant Welsh dresser. It was huge (6' 9" high and  6' 6" wide) and enthusiastic.

We had never seen anything like it. The design and workmanship were unbelievably good.

Here is the sideboard in our house in Virgil, as seen from just inside the front door. The sideboard is the first thing guests see. 

But it was so very Victorian, and our hearts at that time were more in tune with Georgian furniture, silver and china.

Mr. Bell said that the dresser was worth a lot of money but because he was moving he would be prepared to let it go for a reasonable price. He quoted a figure of several hundred pounds.

We thanked him for showing us his dresser and promised to get back to him.

Our first inclination was to say 'no'. It was just too large, too Victorian.

But it was an amazing piece of furniture.

We finally decided to make what we would call today a 'low ball offer', far less that he had asked. We were sure he would reject the offer out of hand, but if we could get it for that price we were offering, well then...

We wrote with our offer, but didn't hear from him.

Weeks went by and we decided that he had torn up our letter in disgust.

And then came the Saturday morning phone call!

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We got dressed quickly and went downstairs, just as the moving van was pulling up.

I went out to the truck to talk to the boss and his two helpers. They showed me the two parts of the dresser (we hadn't known that the top came off!), carefully covered with heavy blankets. The boss asked us where we would like them to put the dresser. Pat and I had a hurried caucus. The living and dining rooms were too small and already too crowded with furniture to take the dresser. We finally decided that it should be 'stored' in the hallway until we returned to Canada.

The boss nodded but said the bottom would be a problem. It was too wide to go through the narrow front door. (You can just see the door to the right of the bow window in the photo below.)

Our bedroom was on the second floor, the room with the upper bow windows. It was the lower bow windows that had to be removed to get the sideboard in. Note the plumbing 'waste' pipes placed on the outside of the house, "So it is easier to get at them when they freeze."

The only answer, he said, was to remove the bow windows.

We were horrified. These windows with their old glass had been in place since the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, and since the American War of Independence in 1775!

And what would the landlord, an elderly maiden lady who lived up the street, say if she should come by when the windows were out?

The boss said that windows like ours were removed all the time. It was the only way to get large items into (or out of) old houses.

I reluctantly agreed.

We held our breath as the windows came out, the dresser went in, and the windows were replaced.

And the landlord didn't come by.

The movers had obviously done this before.

We gave them a cheque for Mr. Bell, and the movers took off.

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In 1963 we moved to London, with the dresser, which we were now calling 'the sideboard'.

Friends in London---who loved antiques from the Georgian period---sometimes made fun of our ebullient sideboard.

One asked, "If you plug it in, will it play pretty music?"

Another joked, "How will you get it back to Canada? Sail it?"

When it came time to return to Canada, the moving company built a special plywood crate for it, and it arrived safely in Ottawa.

Over the years we have moved it 10 or so times. One of the first questions whenever we have been house-hunting was: 'Where will the sideboard go?'

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As the children left home and life slowed down a bit, Pat started to do some research into the sideboard. In this she was helped by the details stamped into the top of the drawer

Lamb, Manchester, and the number 22631

 In correspondence with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Pat found that James Lamb (born 1816, died 1903) had taken over his family's small furniture business and by the 1860s (when our sideboard was built) had turned it into a major firm renowned for its elaborate furniture. Lamb exhibited and won prizes at several World Expositions.

The Victoria and Albert had two of Lamb's sideboards, and now has photos and a description of ours, provided by Pat. The Museum said that we should consider ourselves fortunate to have a fine example of Lamb's work. "You are in good company."

Here are some images that show close-ups of some of the carved panels and other decoration.

Mr. Bell called these figures 'dragons'.  Let's just say they are figures from mythology---which ones we are not sure.

Note how deeply carved this is, out of one piece of English oak !

Another figure from mythology. Some kind of animal with wings? 

An interesting feature of the sideboard is the zinc-lined champagne cooler shown below.

In the 19th century, wealthy English (the 1% of the time!) imported ice from North America that was cut from the winter ice in the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers and from rivers in Massachusetts and shipped to the UK in sawdust. The ice was kept in 'ice houses' and used to chill champagne and to make desserts.

To the right of the drawer is a hollow box, along which the drawer slides as it is withdrawn. It has been suggested that the hollow box may have been used to store family documents and treasures. So far we have resisted the impulse to open it and see what, if any, secrets it contains---more honestly, because we can't figure out how to open it. 

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When Pat started her research on the sideboard, the information was sketchy. In the last few years there has been an explosion of scholarly research on both the Lamb company and on the different styles it used for its furniture.

It is now clear that James Lamb was in the top rank of 19th century British furniture makers, recognized both in Britain and on the continent. He followed prevailing styles but because he was in Manchester, not London, it seems as though it took him a few years to adopt the latest fashions.

We know that Lamb contracted with French artists to design panels for his cabinets and then found superb carvers to execute them.

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Some people have asked what the sideboard would be worth if we were to sell it.

The first point to make is that we are NOT going to sell it.

But with that out of the way, it is hard to know what its market value would be today.

It is clearly worth a great deal more than we paid for it, but it is hard to say whether it is worth more than that purchase price plus the amounts we have paid to cart it around from place to place!

Large pieces of ornate antique furniture are not in great demand. Interior decorators and homeowners seem to want furniture that is minimalist---something that the sideboard is definitely not!

Perhaps the best answer is to paraphrase the commercials used by MasterCard, in which people are seen buying items with their credit card. Then the scene shifts to some joyful experience and the announcer intones, "There are some things money can't buy."

To us, the sideboard is one of those things---it is priceless.

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See you on March 11, 2012 for Posting #139 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Posting # 7 of The Icewine Guru blog is now up. The Guru offer his views on the birth control furor in the US and whether it was 'an epic blunder' by Obama, or a clever trap set by him for the Republicans. Click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/