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Baby, Look at You Now – Art by Donna Rhodes
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2018/07 - July
Helen is my junk buddy. If we don’t show up for three or four days at local thrift shops, they print our photos on milk cartons.
We play Deal-of-the-Week. Helen won last week. She got a gorgeous brass French baker’s rack for $200. And she bargained the price down at that. Helen’s my chutzpah hero. eBay had the exact same rack for $2,200. Score.
Meanwhile, I found a battered, autographed Harlem GlobeTrotters basketball for two bucks. My ball saw Helen’s baker’s rack and deflated, puffing out its last,dying fffweeet.
I’m no match for Helen, the Golden Goddess of Junk. When she departs they are going to autopsy her and find a magnetic homing device for super finds in her nose. On her tombstone: She sniffed out the Gold in the Garbage Dump of Life.
The only way I can compete is to repurpose my finds into something glorious. I was in Goody Will (Helen’s granddaughter renamed Goodwill) last week looking for a picture frame, which I found. It came with a 9”x12” baby photo inside, whole thing a buck. At checkout the lady ahead of me looked at the baby, disdain oozing from her pores, and said, “How could anyone throw away their baby’s picture?” She made it sound like the parents had orphaned their child and should do time in the Big House (where the babies turn into teenagers…now that’s doing time).
“One man’s loss…” I replied. “I’m going to make art out of it.”
“Art! You’re going to cut up this poor little girl’s photograph?” the line-lady snorted.
“Only a little bit,” I said defensively, wondering why the register girl was taking so long. I didn’t feel like engaging in the age-old argument, “What’s Art Anyway?” Especially with Claudia Clueless.
Who knows how that photo got to Goody Will? The parents could be deceased. The baby could now be the mayor of Milwaukee. And I could be spreading her fame with my Steampunk treatment of her toddler image.
Well, I suppose there are limits. You be the judge.
