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In today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper, right there on the front page of the first section is a wondrous story on living long, with a low stress marriage. And to illustrate the stress free life, we have a picture of a stress-less couple, married 65 years. He sits playing an accordion on an easy chair covered with an afghan of green, red and gold. In the background a spindle arm rocker is covered with a striped yellow blanket. Sitting between the two chairs is a drum table with a lamp in front of the room's window. She sits adoringly at his side. Now you may ask, what's the kitsch? It has to do with the couples home furnishings, my childhood,not the accordion, and some things I never would do. We can all agree that a happy marriage increases ones life span. But I could not stand the stress of having furniture covered by anything. I haven't see this phenomena for many years, except for an occasional cover for a dog or cat to lay on. Yet here in this couples fifteen minutes of fame, they left the blankets over the furniture. Were the blankets prettier then the fabric or wood? I do remember in my youth, the doilies everyone had on the arms and backs of chairs and we see these doilies in antique stores today. Then came the trend with covering everything in clear plastic, chairs, lamp shapes, even whole couches. And of course the afghan. Handy as a cover so as not soil your new chair or couch but not practical to cover a lamp shade. By the looks of some of the couches we see sitting on the curb on Garbage Eve, they needed to be covered with something to hide the owners' poor taste. (Garbage Eve is the of night jubilation, before trash pickup on Garbage Day, similar to Fat Tuesday in a different religion.) I always assumed that when one was going to have company coming, the covers would come off the furnishings to reveal the beauty, wondrous style and good taste of the householders. And since I was but a youth, I felt my status in life had not reached the point where I was considered company. I can remember the ultimate in cover-ups. One of my friend's parents had the whole living room covered in form-fitting plastic. And to be sure no one entered the room, they had a theatre-style rope strung across the entryway. His mother would sit in the kitchen reading or sewing, his father in a bedroom with dimmed lights listening to a police radio or baseball game. We cover nothing. My aversion to these throws, and even pillows comes from not being considered company. Oh I have lots of quirks, generated not only in my youth and space on the web is limited so I can't go into all of them, for the download time would be too great. Today these afghans and probably the blankets produce a nice price in an antique store. And I wonder if the younger buyer even knows how many sweaty butts sat on that prized afghan. But as hard as I have searched, I have yet to find a plastic couch cover, nor one for a lamp shade. While produced in greater quantity, the lamp shade often suffered cracking from the heat of the lamp, and had to be thrown out. Oh please don't tell me they are still available, I am trying to follow the advice of the couple in the newspaper and avoid stress. And if you think I'm the weird one in the family, my wife freaks out when ever she sees a lamp as the focal point in the center of a living room window.
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