Bit players in their very own antiques road show

The city of Orange is a sweet little town southeast of L.A. where just about everyone in Southern California goes to buy old things. I’m talking about stuff you threw away years ago that’s now being sold as a valued relic of the past for 50 times its original cost. Toy cars, comic books, dolls, tops, tin drums, lunch boxes, and even that old hat your mama wore when she went to the five-and-dime.

I know this because Cinelli and I are antique junkies and have spent time in Orange, which, with its 275 dealers, has more old things than an Egyptian museum. That may be the only reason to visit Orange, except for a restaurant called P.J.’s Abbey, which is in an old church. I don’t know why it isn’t used as a church anymore. Someone figured there was more profit in selling meatloaf and martinis than in hustling God.

Cinelli’s eyes glaze over when she’s in the presence of antique stores, and they surrounded her in Orange. I don’t usually go to towns named after fruit, but we were in the vicinity and there’s no way I was going to keep her from antique heaven.

The stores are in an area called Plaza Square, which dates to the late 1880s and gives the town center a sort of other-times appearance. One store blends into the other, from the Antique Mall to Country Roads, and we went to every one. By the time we were finished I felt like I had just emerged from a near-death experience.

Too much shopping disorients a man. We can take the rigors of war OK, but our brains liquefy and our legs buckle in a shopping attack. Women rev up as we fade out, swimming up and down the aisles with the relative ease of tetras in a fish tank.

I cautioned Cinelli as we began ‘tiquing, as they say, that we were only going to stay three hours and weren’t going to spend more than $25 each. She looked at me as though I had just denied fatherhood of our children and said, “In your dreams.” And off she went, seeking treasures amid the flotsam and jetsam of the past.

The antique malls are particularly intriguing, because they feature hundreds of individual booths loaded with, well, old things. Some are even broken old things or chipped old things that have absolutely no use or value whatsoever. I bought three. Cinelli, on the other hand, is more discerning in her purchases. “You don’t see many of these anymore,” she said, holding up a dish with a metal stem in the middle and a lid that covered half of the opening.

“That’s probably because no one ever understood what they were for, so they stopped making them,” I said.

“It’s a candy dish with a handle, dodo. Or a nut dish. Or something. The trouble with you is you don’t appreciate possibilities. Antiques should be valued, not discarded. I’ll never forgive you for dumping your mother’s lamp.”

Not that again. The Mother’s Lamp Episode has haunted our marriage. It is right up there with The Time You Slammed the Door on the Cat’s Head Episode. Whenever we visit an antique store she mentions the wrought-iron lamp that once belonged to my mother, which I gave to the Goodwill. Not my mother, the lamp.

I said, “It was old, it was broken and it was junk.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t hauled me off to Goodwill.”

“You’re not old, you’re not broken and you’re not junk. You’re just Italian.”

“You accuse me of buying junk, but what’s that thing in your shopping bag?”

“It’s a snow globe. You know, you shake them and snow falls on Santa or a little log cabin or whatever. I’ve started collecting them.”

“I know what a snow globe is, but there’s a hole in the glass ball, Elmer, and it has no snow to fall on Santa, the Tooth Fairy or the Queen of England or whatever.”

“That’s just it,” I said.

“That’s just what?”

“That’s what gives it value. It’s a snowless snow globe. You don’t see many of them anymore.”

By the time we had finished, the trunk of our car was loaded with the treasures she found and the, you know, things I managed to gather. If my new possessions seem more junk than loot, I can only point out that one must look ahead to their future worth. I will pass my knickknacks on to our children and they to their children and their children to their children, and so on, ad infinitum.

Sometime in the year 3002, one of our heirs will study the snowless snow globe and say, “You don’t see a lot of these anymore,” and sell it for $7,835.81.

And somewhere amid the cosmic dust of things past, I’ll smile.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.