by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

For the past 13 years wife Lisa and I have been escaping every few months to a modest little beachfront hotel in Ventura. It began as an overnighter. Then became a weekend. This past week we made it a three-night trip.

We have “our” third floor corner room, number 308. We bring snacks and drinks, blankets, towels, chairs. Lisa even brings battery-powered twinkle lights. She makes the little oceanfront room our own.

In years past we’d cavort about our sweet little adopted beach town, dreaming about moving there someday and staying out late and misbehaving. But like so much over the past 13 years, that has changed. This time we were back in room 308 by 8 p.m. two of the three nights, “because I like to party,” as we say ironically, with a nod to Ricky Bobby, Cal Naughton, Jr., and “Talladega Nights.”

Now our Ventura escapes are mostly about leaving the crazy behind for a couple days and the sliding glass door open as to let the sound of the Pacific Ocean color our dreams.

The sleep part has become the primary objective. Between the kids, dogs, cats, chickens, and the neighbors’ Harleys, it’s noisy at home. Unplugging from the racket and the crazy flashing across our screens 24/7 is a challenge.

Not so up in Ventura. We’re free agents, footloose and fancy free. We usually arrive back home with the anxiety drawn down considerably and a car full of thrift store treasures.

Our recent trip delivered more of the same in both respects. We chilled. We snoozed. We shopped. We filled the ol’ electric shoebox with miscellaneous clothes, art, shoes, jewelry, books, records, and crafty stuff.

Lisa and I are certainly different in many ways, but we are 100% aligned in our enthusiasm for old weird stuff. (One could argue I’m living proof of her enthusiasm for old weird stuff.) There’s just something cool about holding, wearing, reading, or admiring something someone else has owned and hopefully loved.

But not all old weird stuff is innocent. Now, I know I’m veering into hippie-dippy mysticism, but hear me out: as I’ve written about in the past, Lisa is finely attuned to the spirit world. She can sense vibrations — good and bad — in places and things. Witnessing her experiences for so many years in so many places has won this skeptic over. I have come to learn that inanimate objects sometimes have stories to tell, and in some cases make themselves heard, for good or ill.

Pioneertown, up in the high desert, is another frequent getaway spot for us is. We always day trip around Highway 62 when we’re there, thrifting in Yucca Valley, 29 Palms  and Joshua Tree. About a decade ago Lisa picked up a beautiful old antique tiger’s eye ring at a funky little gift shop, and off we went through another lovely weekend under the stars. After we got home and she began wearing the ring she started to feel a heavy darkness coming from it. A physical evil is how she described it. Eventually she got spooked enough to just gave it away, with full disclosure to the new owner, of course.

On the flipside, I once went to see an old dude in the South Bay who had a warehouse full of antique radios. It was a trip back through the history of radio, with examples from the 1920s on up through the ‘70s. I was there for the vacuum tubes all his pre-1960s radios used, which were useful to me in vintage guitar amplifiers (another obsession with old weird stuff). He had some rare and desirable tubes, and we made a deal for a nice stash. On the way out I asked if he had any music stuff for sale. “What, you mean like band instruments?” “No,” I said, “like guitars or old tube amplifiers.” He then uttered the words all guitar geeks love to hear: “I do have an old guitar.” That guitar was a 1951 Martin OO 17, not a super valuable model at the time but still a great and rare little mahogany-bodied gem. We made a deal for that too, and off I went.

Back home I got to playing the thing, and within minutes a song appeared. It just leapt out of that old guitar. Before the day was through the song was finished. That was more than 20 years ago and I still play that song.

So yes, objects have stories, good ones sometimes, other times, less so.

This past weekend’s haul has yet to declare itself one way or the other. I suspect like most things we collect, it’s free of unfinished business. But if something speaks up, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, the search continues for that perfect old weird thing. We still hit our fave thrift store in Glendora every Friday, and have several more thrift and vintage stores we frequent as well.

I’ve been on this hunt since I was 17 years old. Back then it was out of necessity: punk rockers didn’t wear off-the-shelf clothes from Miller’s Outpost; we had to be unique, and in 1980 thrift stores were full of cool and outrageous 1940s-1960s fashion. But just like with most of the old and weird stuff people start coveting, a market arose, entrepreneurs got wind, and nowadays it gets snatched up by folks more clever and determined that us.

The needle gets smaller and the haystack larger with every passing year, with only makes the rare score that much more thrilling. Lisa and I are still enthusiastic about pawing through folks’ castoffs, hoping for that increasingly rare dopamine hit only the oldest, weirdest stuff can bring. It’s a cheap thrill, but it’s still exceptionally satisfying. It smells like … victory.