fine whine

Last night* and today Jessica and I were in Ohio's Holmes county.

We haven't gone on all that many trips together, which probably makes it all the more difficult to figure out what to do. Holmes County is smack dab in the middle of Ohio's so-called Amish country, home to a great concentration of the technologically-averse-but-tourist-friendly folk.

There's not all that much to actually do there, though, if you're not interested in shopping for bespoke stuff or antiques. I was reminded of another weekend trip we'd taken to somewhere in southern Ohio, again largely existing because of the old stuff trade.

The line from the title, though, was something I'd said after Jessica pointed out that a particular non-antiques store smelled pleasant. We'd been in an antiques barn not long before, and it didn't take much imagination to see the newly-created knicknacks (well, all except for the 'hand-made' PVC marshmallow guns) in a few decades being hawked again as antiques. After all, an antique's just something that's lasted a long time.

But as for shopping for them, it's not really my thing. I find some moments of amusement in how things looked so long ago, with the toys and keepsakes that are dangerous, offensive or just dull, and just the things that people have found fit to preserve over the ages. But only for a little while, and then soon the novelty wears off, and I'm just looking at other people's clutter. Really, that's what a lot of antiques are: clutter plus time.

I have a messy room just waiting for the day that everything becomes a priceless relic. It could well take me that long to get it cleaned up, anyway.

* Though we were in the heart of Ohio's Amish country, our hotel had an internet-connected computer in the lobby (and free wireless connectivity that I had no laptop to access). That said, I didn't feel like updating the site from there. Of course, it would be something to say that I drove a hundred miles just to write a post...