Chapter 9: GILDED GOODIES (1964 to 1967)

Chapter 9:  GILDED GOODIES (1964 to 1967)

My interest in interior decorating had developed by age four.  That’s why I wanting the doll house for Christmas, I wanted to arrange the furniture—it had nothing to do with dolls (that came later).  Once old enough to draw I was seldom without my pencils and rulers, creating floor plans for whatever my career interest was at the time. 

When I wanted to be a vet, I designed the floor plan for a veterinary clinic with adjacent pet shop.  One of my greatest creations was a house shaped like my initials … L-S-E … with the horizontal line of the “L” intersecting the center horizontal of the “E” and the “S” an elongated S-shaped swimming pool that ran under a glass floored section of the living room, at the bottom of the “L” so that one could swim underneath and greet people at the front door without getting out of the pool.

When my bedroom at 184 Pawtuxet Avenue was redecorated by my mother, I was consulted on the choices, and I did what I could in my bedroom at the beach house … a 6’ by 6½’ former storage room.  When we moved to Connecticut I did decorate my bedroom there to my own taste, which included the ubiquitous cement block bookcases on one wall, although my blocks were painted gold. 

In my dorm room at Cheshire Academy I replaced whatever the coverings were on the two windows with bamboo rollup shades, upon which I mounted two Winslow Homer prints … my favorite artist until I discovered Andrew Wyeth not long thereafter.  My college dorm in Boston left no room for individuality at all, and even at Vern’s on Ivy Street I couldn’t do much more than buy a new carpet for the living room.

That was a trip.  For a while I was quite friendly with this fellow named Giff, although I don’t remember where he came from or anything about him, except that he was short with curly hair.  He was very good to me and someone that I trusted, and I turned to a couple of times when things were a little rough, emotionally.  I never knew whether or not he was ‘gay’ and in retrospect I think he may have been waiting for me to make a move, which I never did, but I cannot remember why.

Giff had a small two seater convertible sports car (perhaps an MG) and was always at my beck and call.  One day I asked him to take me to this store way out in South Boston, not a very good area at the time (probably still not), responding to an ad I had seen for a 9 x 12 carpet at a very low price.  Once we found the place, which took a lot of searching, I liked the carpet well enough and wanted to buy it.  After some pleading Giff agreed to lug it in his car, and we managed to tie it on … sort of draped over the windshield, almost bumper to bumper.

It was in Boston that my interest in antiques and unique interior decorating began, thanks initially to George and Bob, an extremely artistic and creative couple who befriended me ... okay, I was their boy toy for a while.  Their one bedroom Back Bay apartment was one of the most spectacular places I had ever seen, and the greater majority of their furnishing and accessories came from “alleyway picking” as they called it.  On Sunday mornings they would forage the back alleys of brownstones in the wealthy districts, and salvage what had been thrown out.  Then, after repairing and refinishing as needed, they would find some unique use for it in their home. 

A few times I joined them on these expeditions, and they were not the only ones picking in the alleys.  There were many characters; including a gal we called Crazy Mary.  She apparently had no hair, but wore a scarf over her head, and then painted bangs on her forehead with what looked like black shoe polish.  In the alleys she was mostly looking for food, some clothes, and when she’d find something like a piece of half eaten chicken, she would go on and on about how nice these people were to put that out especially for her.  Our alley way picking was limited to furniture and other decorative accoutrements … no clothes or food!

With Nelson my appreciation for antiques and interior decorating was brought to a whole new level, and he was fond of appropriating decorative accessories from buildings that were scheduled for demolition, and would take items like green oxidized copper spires and convert them to lamps.  He made a beautiful pair of lamps for me, from two cast iron balusters that had been part a brownstone’s fence.  Once back in Connecticut hanging around with the ever creepy Leslie and his cohorts, Auntie Maudie AKA Bradley turned me on to Charter Oak Terrace, once Hartford‘s premier address. 

This was the hub of a redevelopment project that included the demolition of a few gorgeous old mansions.  I went there a few times with Bradley, not actually breaking in because the boards were already pulled off of the windows, but at the very least trespassing.  We would remove things like marble fireplace medallions, Victorian rickrack, etc.  Once we came across a homeless person (called “bum” or “hobo” in those days) sleeping there.  Not long after that, when Bradley and I returned there was a terrible smell in the place, and Bradley forbade me go near the room where we had last seen the hobo sleeping.  Once I put two-and-two together, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and never went back.  Later after relating this story to Leslie, he made an anonymous call to the police.

It wasn’t long before this “procurement” of goodies from soon to be demolished buildings got off track.  Items including an oak umbrella stand, a big painting of poppies, a Tiffany era lamp with reverse painted glass shade, two cement garden gnomes, and a pair of lead peacocks (which would end up haunting me), started disappearing from various front porches and lobbies.  Then Leslie, along with Bradley, Joe, and John, went completely out of control.

Leslie had long been a kleptomaniac, as well as insane.  The Fox Company, the biggest department store in Hartford, had what they called the “Connecticut House” which was an entire house on one floor of the store, decorated to the max.  From the dining room table Leslie appropriated one pewter porringer from one of the place settings, went back the following week (when it had been replaced) and took another.  This continued until he had a full set of porringers, at which time he moved on to other items in the place settings.  Once at Christmastime he was walking down the street, and saw a six foot fully decorated artificial tree in an apartment lobby.  He walked in, unplugged the lights, walked out with the fully decorated tree, carried it the four blocks back to his apartment, and up the fire escape. 

The payoff, however, was the antique brass candlesticks.  He was so proud of them when he “bought” them that he showed them off to everyone, and then I happened to find a piece in the newspaper about two priceless antique candlesticks that had been stolen from the altar of a church, that had been bequeathed to the church by one of its founders.  The church was begging for their return, no questions asked.  Leslie denied that there was any connection between his candlesticks and those missing from the church, yet his mysteriously disappeared, and a couple of weeks later I spotted a follow-up article on the candlesticks, and how the dastardly thief had left them inside the storm door of the rectory.  Again, Leslie denied any connection at all.

Certainly there was enough to send a few of them up-the-river for a while, but it didn’t end there.  The larcenous foursome—Leslie, John, Bradley, Joe—were ripping off so-called “abandoned” houses on a regular basis, and then they discovered the mother lode, a “deserted” old colonial in the middle of the woods somewhere, which was fully furnished … until they started on it.  To expedite the looting process, they had even rented a truck.  Needless to say, the house was not deserted at all, just closed for the winter while the owners were in Florida.  When they returned they discovered that the house had been cleaned out, completely stripped of everything, most of which were registered antiques.

The plot thickens.  Meanwhile, the summer of 1966, Bobby and I were spending our weekends at our antique shop, Gilded Goodies, next to the restaurant in East Matunuck.  Bradley and Joe came from Hartford for a visit one day, and while there bought the aforementioned pair of appropriated lead peacocks.  That fall, after we had moved Gilded Goodies to the shop in Peacedale, Bradley and Joe had a booth at an antiques show in New Haven, where they put the peacocks up for sale.  In walked the owner, who immediately called the police.  Bradley and Joe were, of course, more than willing to tell where they had bought them, and the next thing I know I got a call from Marion (when school started she went back to Hartford with the kids, but Norman stayed in Rhode Island running the restaurant). 

Marion had been contacted by the Wethersfield police, from whence the peacocks had been taken, regarding them having been purchased from the shop at her Rhode Island restaurant.  As it happened, the lieutenant was a fellow that she had gone to school with, which didn’t hurt our position.  We claimed that we had bought them from someone who had stopped by one day, as it was not uncommon for some dealers to drive around selling to shop owners.  The peacocks were so unusual that Marion clearly remembered the day that we had bought them, and could even add to the details that it was a middle-aged man and woman driving a dark blue station wagon.  I don’t know what Marion was smoking, but we were off the hook; for the peacocks anyhow.

In the meantime, as I was told, state police in Connecticut were investigating the grand larceny of the registered antiques, and before they were apprehended the larcenous foursome had to ditch the goodies that they still had in possession.  In comes a big black Cadillac and the Mafia, seems as though they had their own stolen antiques ring, and were kind of pissed off that the foursome had been cutting into their racket.  Nonetheless, they relieved the foursome of the goods, without fitting them with cement overshoes and take them for a one way trip to the river.  Nonetheless, shortly thereafter the foursome was arrested.

Once the Gilded Goodies heard about what was going on in Connecticut, they changed the name of the shop to The Loom and Shuttle Shoppe and then took the two hot items that they had, and stashed them in the small utility room under the beach house.  It was too late.  Thanks to the confessions of the foursome, Connecticut was already working with South Kingstown police in Rhode Island, because the foursome had alleged that a couple of the items had found their way to Gilded Goodies.  When South Kingston police contacted Norman, to inquire of our location, he and Marion thought that it was also about the peacocks, so they never had any idea that there was another larceny being investigated. 

Just as Ray and Mal were leaving our apartment on Sweet Fern Lane one day, two detectives from South Kingstown were arriving.  Being that they were in suits and an unmarked car, Ray and Mal might never have known that anything was going on, were it not for the fact that Mal had gone to school with one of the detectives.  This friggin’ small world!  We were interviewed, and at first were not willing to say much, but when we were told that they had been following us for a couple of weeks (which later I realized was probably a lie), we told them that we had the two items and where they were.

Short of that, however, we were still reticent, despite the fact that were it not for the big mouthed foursome, we wouldn’t have been having that experience at all.  Yet when we were informed that our part in the crime included not only possession of stolen goods, but transporting stolen goods across the state line, a federal offence carrying a minimum of ten years, which probably would not be pursued if we cooperated and testified if requested … we sang like canaries!  Not that we could add anything to what the police already knew.

They brought us to the Wakefield police station for finger prints and mug shots, but we were not arrested.  Later, when I told this to a lawyer friend, he said that I should have protested, as it wasn’t legal to print and mug me if I wasn’t charged with a crime and arrested.  Yeah, right, as if I was going to say, “Hey, cop, you can’t print and mug me unless you arrest me.”  We then went down to Brecka Drive and retrieved the two items.  Not long thereafter John’s parents arrived, having just returned from bailing him out in Hartford. 

They were quite upset at the prospect of us testifying, but we explained that (a) if the foursome had kept us out of it we wouldn’t be involved, and (b) we were facing mandatory ten year charges at the federal level if we did not cooperate.  In the end we were not asked to testify.  In the end, as I recall, John got two months, and two years’ probation.  Leslie, Bradley, and Joe each got six months with five years’ probation.  I never knew why John got a lighter sentence, and he never ever talked about the entire incident … except to say that while he was in jail, he had his parents bring him his big heavy work boots, so that he could tie them together and use them as a weapon to try and fight off the rapists.  I never needed to hear more.

Not long after we were spared from testifying and/or incarceration, Bobby and I moved to my grandmother’s house in Norwood, which I had bought after her passing.  We did a few flea markets to unload the remaining merchandise (all legitimately acquired) from our unprofitable antique shop ventures, and my involvement with antiques since then has only been as an admirer and an infrequent buyer. 

Thus ends the grand larceny exposé in the chronicle of this “gilded goodie!”