Just a Little... Fish in a Tube?

by Beverly Tjerngren

I'm a collector. Usually people are more specific when using that word, telling you that they're coin collectors or doll collectors--or, heaven forbid, bill collectors!--but I can't narrow my kind of collecting down so easily. I'll collect just about anything. Often I'll find a particular item I like and I'll build an entire collection around it, even if I've never been especially interested in similar items before. All it takes is one little thing catching my eye and before you can say "Jack Robinson," I'm a dedicated collector.

The first collection I ever had was a shelf full of horse books in my childhood bedroom. I had all the Black Stallion books by Walter Farley and the Marguerite Henry classics, as well as dozens upon dozens of books that many of you have probably never heard of, like Blue Ribbons for Meg and Doodlebug. I spent hours organizing my horse books--sometimes they were arranged alphabetically by author or title, other times they'd be separated into fiction and non-fiction. Occasionally I would stack them according to how much I liked each book, but my favorites changed so often that arranging them so proved a difficult task that I seldom undertook. I cut my collecting teeth on accumulating and maintaining those books.

When I started outgrowing the horse books at around age eleven or twelve, I took up collecting stamps. I was given a jump start on this hobby by a family friend, a Swede who gave me a Swedish stamp-collecting book and at least a hundred Swedish stamps. For a number of years I diligently collected stamps from far and wide, and to this day I'll save any appealing stamp I come across. I've got stamps from all around the world--some moderately valuable, most not valuable at all--and it puts a little smile on my face whenever I see that little Swedish book tucked neatly into the bookshelf of my Swedish home. Funny how it's come full circle.

Over the years I've started and abandoned any number of collections, but I've never abandoned collecting itself. Currently I'm collecting teapots, cream pitchers and sugar bowls, pens and paper of all kinds (okay, I'm always collecting those), coffee cups and saucers--both individual pieces and entire services, geraniums/pelargoniums, carved wooden boxes, clocks, and probably a few more things that I've forgotten. Every time I come back from a flea market or a thrift store it seems I've started a new collection, so it's easy for me to lose track.

All of my collections hold special places in my heart, but of all the things I've collected over the years, one group of things remains my favorite: miniatures. I love little things. I don't particularly care what an item is as long as it's a miniature version of some big thing. Dollhouses, of course, are an obvious favorite, but I'm just as pleased by a tiny shampoo bottle from a hotel bathroom as by a scale-model kitchen. Travel-sized soaps and toothpastes and hair sprays can send me into paroxysms of delighted squeals and tiny flashlights or monkey wrenches on keychains make me want to empty the display racks and take every last itty-bitty thing home. It should come as no surprise, then, that single-serving packages of convenience foods appeal enormously to me. I mean, what could be cuter than a tiny box of cereal or a little carton of milk? I had to concede, however, that my love of all things small might have crossed the line into obsession when I recently found myself--a vegetarian and avowed hater of fish--seriously contemplating the purchase of a miniature tube of caviar. After a few long moments of indecision, I had no choice but to give myself a stern talking-to and step away from the fishy stuff.

It sure was cute, though....