People In Lubbock All Die Surrounded By Piles Of This Particular Thing

I, like many people in Lubbock, love a good estate sale. It's a great way to get unique vintage and antique items. Most people who go to estate sales have a few things they prioritize, as for me, I'm generally looking for books and weird art. The Patrick Nagel print I found in Lubbock is my current reigning treasure.

I also really enjoy taking an anonymous peak into a life long-lived. The vast majority of estate sales are from older, more established folks, so you can get a good idea of who they were by what they collected, what books they read, and in what way they styled their home. I fell in love with the ghost of whoever had dozens of vintage science fiction books, and a piece of them lives with me now.

But every single estate sale has piles and piles of the same thing: dishes. It seems that any one of us could be buried upright in china, glass, ceramic, and crystal and you wouldn't even be able to see a hair on our heads.

Walk into any Lubbock estate sale and the kitchen is piled up to the brim with multiple services for a small army. How and why does this happen?

I believe it's because dishes, particularly china and crystal, are traditional wedding gifts. The gift giver(s) probably wanted to be generous and classy, so they gave sizable sets. Perhaps they envisioned the couple having a large Thanksgiving gathering that would require 18 salad plates. In addition to this new set, the couple could have inherited others from their family members as time passed on. Dishes tend to be more durable than we think: it's incredibly common in Italy to find a potsherd from ancient Rome.

But we never tend to eat off of fine china or crystal, do we? We are perpetually saving it for that uber-fancy occasion as if some aristocracy might show up unannounced. And we find ourselves eating everyday meals on dishes we bought from Wal-Mart, and Thanksgiving on paper plates because who wants to clean all that up?

Meanwhile, older folks are holding on to it for their children who clearly don't want it, which is why it's at an estate sale.

I love crystal. As a musically obsessed person, I find it beyond delightful that it makes a sweet note when you tap it. I have one crystal highball glass that I drink out of daily- I'm not saving it for a guest, a special occasion, and certainly not for my death. When it breaks, it breaks, and I'll simply wait until a Sunday afternoon to get another one for half price at yet another estate sale.