The Thrill Of Thrifting In The West

My obsession with thrift and pawn and garage sales dates back to my early childhood. You might say it was a value instilled in me by my grandmother. It wasn’t unusual for me as a child to be loaded into the back seat of her powder-blue Volkswagen Bug on early Saturday mornings for a day of sublime scavenging.

We would make a game of our treasure hunts, scouting for balloons and boldly marked neon signs advertising the location of a sale of used stuff. It would take hours to mark off all of the addresses listed in the Billings Gazette.

After a long day of weaving in and out of traffic and somehow hitting every stop, our spoils would then make the short journey home. There they were thoroughly sorted, cleaned, and promptly put away or on display, as if they had always belonged there. They were new to us and old at the same time — symbols of untold stories of their former lives and a future yet to be written in ours.

Thrifting was just our way of life. It enabled my grandmother to have nice things on a fixed income — and to keep her way with haggling in fine form. Like so many people who grew up during the Great Depression, she forever remained frugal. I was always astonished by her ability to negotiate. It didn’t matter if an item was marked 50 cents; she would offer a dime.

Having bargained down even a little bit, she savored the score as that much sweeter. She was, in her own right, a master of that craft.

My grandmother made the bargain hunting fun, an ad- venture just the two of us shared. We were a dynamic duo finding value and promise in the discarded! Never mind the Avengers — we were the Scavengers.

Now as an adult with years of thrifting under my belt, I can honestly say there’s not a small Montana town that I’ve passed through where I haven’t strategically mapped out my junking stops. A combination of my love of the Western way of life, a desire to preserve history, and the thrill of a good deal leads me to be constantly on the lookout.

When winters wind down and warmer weather is in the air, I start longing for the days when people will be cleaning out their garages. Those signs nailed to telephone poles pull me in like a moth to a flame. Chasing down those sales, I have made more illegal U-turns than I would care to admit to.

There is a little method to it — everyone addicted to junking comes to discover their own. Whatever the strategy, with time and persistence, you can find the most beautiful treasures.

It’s so much more than a quest for material items on the cheap. I love the concept of reinventing modern spaces with previously loved items. These things tell a story and create conversation pieces. The antique cameras, photographs, books, ledgers, and old handwritten items I seek out have often been the inspiration for my articles and photographs.

I not only collect old photographs, I use them to embellish gifts for different occasions. One year I repurposed antique cabinet cards and leather baby shoes from the late 1800s/ early 1900s to decorate my Christmas tree.

The thrill of thrifting lies in more than finding resources for my creative projects. Rummaging around through contemporary castoffs and old survivors from another era invariably puts me in a frame of mind of memories of my grandmother.

Handling, seeing, being among all the memorabilia transports me. A crazed teacup in an old-timey pattern, an antique wash- basin set, faded vintage flour sacks, a quaint needlepoint, a threadbare embroidered linen tablecloth — these are things she might have used or purchased on one of our outings.

And then there are truly historic finds that could have come west in covered wagons tucked among the absolute necessities in the hope that the extra weight might not pose a problem and force them to be abandoned along the treacherous trail. In the West, it’s not unusual to visit a ranch house and find bleached animal skulls, traditional Western art, wagon wheels, and old tin milk cans as décor. Some of this decoration has been purchased, but most has been passed down through several generations, maybe even dating back to emigrants on the Bozeman Trail. Eventually, when prospective inheritors don’t value or relate to their family history through old things — or don’t have room to absorb them all — these would-be heirlooms, however modest, make their way to the curb or donation box and, eventually, to people like me.

These adopted things immerse me in an even deeper American history, be- yond my own family and straight to the Montana frontier where I still live. But it always comes back to my grandmother and to those Saturday mornings combing dusty aisles, crammed booths, and sagging card tables together. Sometimes there will be a moment when I think I almost hear her say in her thick German accent, “Das kind, komm her! Child, come look at this!”

Sometimes the voice is even more distant — a settler’s presence and expired life vaguely felt or vividly imagined in a fragile leather-bound book, its pages dry and browned with age, or a beat-up old steamer trunk, the secrets of its journeys still inside under a rusted, disused lock.

Every now and then, I really hit paydirt and happen upon Indigenous arti- facts — maybe a beaded medicine bag, arrowheads, a tobacco pipe, a tool I can’t quite identify — and am moved to reverie about what hands created and held these precious Native American things. And I’ll be filled with the desire to visit my adopted Crow family halfway across the state.

It never ceases to amaze me how much magical power resides in these treasures just waiting to be (re)discovered.

Whatever it is you are seeking, happy hunting!

Happy Hunting Grounds

There are terms used to describe folks like me: junkers, collectors, bargain hunters, or even hoarders (I would say I border on all of them, except maybe hoarder). Some of my favorite stomping grounds in Montana for feeding my thrift addiction are Jane’s Weathered

Antiques in Broadus, R&R Trading in Huntley, Ed’s Antiques in Glendive, and Marketplace 3301, Peddlers Station, and Western Pawn all in Billings.

At Western Pawn in historic down- town Billings, a bronze statue of a Native American extends his arm as if to offer a welcoming token of bulky turquoise on a silver strand. Even before you pass him and enter through the doors, you can smell smoked buckskin leather. Then your eyes spy rich colors, shapes, and textures inside, and you are drawn into the store full of thrifting adventure adrenaline.

A good mix of vintage and antique, this store is filled to the brim with unique one-of-a- kind items. Here I’ve found Pendleton blankets, Kevin Red Star paintings, original L.A. Huffman photographic prints, authentic Native American beaded items, and Western tapestries. I’ve gazed into a glass curio cabinet containing ephemera folded neatly in cigar boxes — material intended for short-term use but well-preserved by someone who loved it. A wooden Levi Strauss sign downstairs once caught my attention, reminding me of the story where a single pair of 1873

Levis fetched a handsome $100,000 at auction.

The glorious hunt is definitely part of the addiction.

Dust To Dust

Just off Montana Highway 212 going through Broadus on my way to Crow Fair last year, I spotted Jane’s Weathered Antiques. It happened to be closed at the time, but the storefront was so enthralling I knew I would have to return. Piled two to three items deep, the front porch alone was every collector’s dream — peeling windowpanes, tractor gears, mismatched wooden chairs, and on and on.

The drive back proved to be worth the miles on the truck. Inside the shop, there’s an organized maze of color-coordinated cubicles filled with so much stuff that you need plenty of time to work your way through the aisles. I made the rounds at least twice and saw new things that I hadn’t seen the first go-round. Many of the items brought on a nostalgic feeling of home. I remembered my grandmother using several of the things on display — a peeler, a pot, a potholder. It was almost if I had walked back into her kitchen and into all those good memories.

Jane says she gets most of her inventory at auctions. “And people bring their stuff to me to sell,” she told me. “I used to keep most of this at my house, but I moved it here to sell it and to not have to dust so much anymore!”

Antique shops like these are getting more difficult to find. The internet has eliminated the need to travel — people buy online and save on time and fuel.

But that takes the joy out of it for me. Sifting through piles in person is half the fun. When I leave the house in the morning, I have no idea what the day will bring or what I might find. But I always find something, and the day is always better for it.

View all of Erika Haight's photography at erikahaightphotography.com 

PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy of Erika Haight.