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LEAVITT
& PEIRCE TOBACCO SHOP
 After
I finished my visit to Harvard I headed over to the
Harvard Square area for dinner and more looking
around....and walked into a major bonus!...As I strolled
around I saw a tobacco shop called Leavitt & Peirce.
The store
front and interior appeared 19th century...I may have vaguely recalled
hearing about it....or maybe it was intuition...but out of idle curiosity I stepped in for a quick
peek and BLAM!!!....I hit the jackpot!!....phew!...It was
pretty much like a Harvard trophy room...As I gazed thru
the store in amazement there was tons of ancient Harvard
sports relics...oars, photos, trophy footballs
galore.
They
had the coolest little balcony loft area for playing chess you climbed stairs
to that protruded over the counter area and  looked
out over the  store. It was probably about 4 foot
wide....and about 20 foot long....It was great, like
something that wouldn't pass code today!...It had small
tables for playing chess and the wall was packed with 12
foot long trophy sweep oars and team photos....Very
clubby....It looked like something out of Sherlock
Holmes...Here was the Harvard I wanted to see
....ancient....nearly crusty....
I feigned
like a
tourist and asked the clerk Paul J. McDonald if he was the
owner and had he collected all the stuff himself...Yes he
was the owner, but no ...the memorabilia had been
there since the turn of the century or earlier he
said....kind of like, are you kidding...I kept up the dumb
tourist act and just smiled and said "Oh that's
nice"...I figured I'd go into who and what I was
doing there latter....I didn't want to disturb my focus
past that right yet.....I just wanted to bask in it all
for a while...Finally after I got the overload out of my
system I came clean...I gave Paul the owner my card and
asked him if it was OK to take photos for a story...Sure
he said...and I cut loose with the camera. Below is a link
to all the photos.
The
following day was Saturday and I had two very important
things to do....sleep in...and pack my Brimfield finds. Getting antiques home across the country is something
you play by ear; the more fragile the more hassle. The most
ideal way
is
to bring an item directly on the plane,
which depends on the size, what it is, and the airline. In this case I had
a bunch of large flat pieces. I didn't want to trust them to
a packing store so I decided to cube them.
By cube I mean sandwich between layers of 1" thick foam
board, which is very time consuming.
So there I was on my vacation....in a Home Depot
parking lot cutting up foam board...not what I
wanted to be doing on one of the few days I had free....then
run to Staples, buy tape gun, tape, butcher paper,
etc....then back to my hotel room and turn it into a
packing room with the $60.00 worth of packing material. Just how
I wanted to spend my day...But what else could I do, it had
to get done.....What good is it to buy antiques if they get
damaged...I knew once I got them packed up the right way
they would be safe from pretty much anything....Then I could
either mail them home or pay $35.00 to the airline for an
extra bag and get them home with me. I ended up mailing it
figuring the airline would tear it apart inspecting it and
all my careful packing would be for naught.
So
after all that...by the time I got to the Museum of Fine
Arts Boston it was about 3:00PM. Which gave me about 2 hours
to tour the museum. How did I do it? By slowing down....the
complete opposite I had just finished the previous four
days!!...For
one thing there's nothing to buy, you're not leaving with
anything...you're not at a show....there's no competition,
nobody to edge you out...you're just look'n...Somehow right
as I started my tour I realized all that and I just took my
time and took it all in and had an excellent visit. It felt a
little strange but peaceful. Of course
it helped I only wanted to see the American art which is but
a small part of the MFA...But what a part...I
just cruised and looked and read with no reason to
rush...reasoning I'd much prefer closely observing a few works
and getting to know them than seeing all of it in a
meaningless blur...It was a good decision...it was the most meaningful visit I ever had to
a museum. I so wish I could show you the 32 photos I took
but the MFA wouldn't allow it...The ones of George Washington
especially!
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