In this issue, you’ll meet someone new – but you may soon feel, as I do, that you’ve known him forever. Writer Anthony Lovelace prefers back roads to interstates, old radio shows to streaming movies, and vintage postcards to email. He is, like many of us, an old soul.
Anthony will join us every other month, sharing his unique perspective in “View from the Back Roads.” It is there that he comes the closest to connecting with a way of life largely gone, but one for which he feels a strong affection.
You may be wondering what, exactly, is involved in defining yourself as “an old soul.” If you’ve felt a great appreciation for things of little interest to others your age, that’s one indication. If you sometimes feel a bit out of step with the times, that’s another. If you connect to the past more comfortably than the present, you might call yourself an old soul.
Many in this hobby connect with the past through the relics they collect. Often, a piece of cast iron or a watch fob, or a windmill transports us back to times we remember fondly. For some, it’s all about memory and nostalgia; others have felt a nearly gravitational pull to the past since earliest childhood.
Old souls are sometimes recognized as having unique wisdom, a wisdom beyond their age. Sometimes it’s just a matter of preference or perspective. Old souls see things differently; they are little impressed by a flash in the pan.
That said, it’s hard to imagine the old soul who wouldn’t warm to Clell G. Ballard’s topic in this issue of Farm Collector. Focusing on the earliest heaters for automobiles, Clell reflects on a time when the car offered little more than shelter from winter’s wind.
Today, he accurately observes, we take it all – heat, defrosters, even heated seats, and steering wheels – for granted. Only rarely do we let the weather keep us from our appointed rounds.
With the arrival of winter, our thoughts invariably turn to friends and family. Here at Farm Collector, we count all of you in that group. We send our very best wishes for a holiday as bright and warm as the one envisioned more than 200 years ago by poet Sir Walter Scott:
“Heap on more wood! The wind is chill.
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still!”
Season’s greetings to you all! FC
