The other day I posted the above photo and got several inquiries about what looks like a gun pointed directly at the fireplace.
So, that's not a gun. It's a brass telescope, readers. Yes, we lived in what was known as the boonies of Atlanta, Georgia in the mid-1970s. Perhaps there were others in that part of Georgia who would proudly display a gun in their family room, but those people weren't us. We'd moved to what was then the hinterlands of the city proper and lived in a large subdivision whose borders were still being drawn even as I sat there at our faux aged fireplace, dark paneling around me, enveloped by the lustrous sateen browns and rusts of the decade. Just behind me were two sliding glass doors that led to a deck that overlooked a small backyard and the deep, dark woods. The Toll's lived on one side of us in a dark, gloomy Tudor, and the Deal's lived on the other side in a colonial. Why a brass telescope was set up and what, exactly, there was to peer at, is beyond me, but perhaps it just looked good, in the same vein as that fabric on the couch, my red and white checked jumper with the white turtleneck and my curling-ironed hair.
Anywho.
Yes. I am sure it was a decorative piece. When I was growing up, people had spinning wheels in their living rooms. Why? Who the hell knows. And coffee tables made of wagon wheels. Oh, Lord.
ReplyDeleteIt never occurred to me that that was anything other than a telescope. Were kiss curls ever the rage in your curling-ironed neck of the woods?
ReplyDeleteI didn't even notice it, I was too enthralled by your kindred spirit.
ReplyDeletea gun? pointing at a fireplace? like, as a super complex fire starter?!?
ReplyDeletewell, i must be too european for this, and - sadly in this case - not a bit american, because i'd love to have a spinning wheel in my living room, as Ms Moon writes.
drrrrrrr.
ReplyDeleteThat looks like Sophie!
ReplyDeleteI totally thought it was a gun and you seemed so nonplussed by the whole thing that I was surprised. I don't know why I presumed it would be a gun. We never had any guns at all and I never will. On the other hand, I never had a telescope either.
ReplyDelete