Sept. 9: Things you can buy at a second hand store

 In retrospect, it probably wasn't a smart idea to buy a straight razor at a second hand store.

I had wanted one for several years but when I priced them out at barber shops, they wound up being more than I could rightly afford. So when an old one appeared in the second hand store window, I bought it quickly for $25.

But I never used it. The blade was too dull and I never figured out how to sharpen it. "Use a leather belt," the barber told me, but I never did it. Too long. I didn't have the patience. I wanted a machine. I wanted to press a button, see a bunch of sparks fly, and then take my sharpened straight razor home.

At least the straight razor had some use. It was adopted as a prop for a play sometime in the late 90s, after which is relegated to a plastic bucket in my room and (I think) ultimately discarded.

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There is nothing wrong with buying clothes from Value Village. As I type this, I am wearing a sweater that I bought there. While wearing it, no one has ever screamed at me for being low class. My kid, likewise, has benefited from the clothes sold at second hand stores and, in fact, is wearing a hand me down sweater at school even as I write this.

But sometimes I see used underwear for sale at Value Village. No to that, I say. There are some things which simply should not be done.

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The internet, of course, has given us the largest second hand store known to man. We have shopped at this store twice this past weekend - once for a second hand bed and once for a second hand shelf. As I look around my room, I see a used PA system that I bought from a music store, a Stanley Cup trinket I picked up at a store somewhere, and a DVD player (remember those) that was also procured from Value Village.

The DVD player is plugged into a television set that was built in 1979. The TV still works. It is a Toshiba. I have owned it nearly half my life.

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Literature's most famous store might be The Old Curiosity Shop, written by Charles Dickens in the 1840s. It was published in serial form and was extremely popular. Legend has it that hungry readers stormed the wharf when a ship holding copies of the final chapter came into dock. As the author of the Rotating Pineapple, I can relate to this.

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Being a Prince fan, I am obligated to mention the famous raspberry beret, the kind you find in a second hand store. I have never seen such a beret in a second hand store, but I will let it go at that.

Messrs. Strunk and White tell us to challenge every adjective and adverb. Ray Bradbury had no lot in that. But may I say that while the adjective should be challenged, they should not always be rejected. Sometimes the modifications they provide are necessary.

Exhibit A: a verse from Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah:

I heard there was a secret chord

that David played and it pleased the Lord

but you don't really care for music, do you?

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,

the minor fall, the major lift

the baffled king composing Hallelujah

Let's take out the adjectives and the adverbs and see what we have.

I heard there was a chord

that David played and it pleased the Lord

but you don't  care for music, do you?

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,

the  fall, the  lift

the  king composing Hallelujah

Well, that just ain't boss, ya know? It particularly loses something in the end with the elimination of baffled. By using it, Cohen displays the beauty of creative art.  When the artist creates something beautiful, he is as blindsided as his audience. He has no idea how it happened. It just did.

On a much lesser scale - Raspberry beret has more magic than just beret. And Prince circa 1985 seems to have that same narrative magic that Mr. Cohen employed all those years ago. Through a couple verses, we sense his brief yet passionate relationship with a girl who walked in through the out door, was promiscuous, not too bright, knew how to get her kicks, eager to accompany our protagonist down to Old Man Johnson's Farm. It's a fine snapshot of young reckless love.

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As luck would have it, the world is filled with used bookstores where you can buy Elements of Style or anything Ray Bradbury has ever written. Our used music stores are drying up (thanks to iTunes and the like) but there are still places where you can buy Cohen's Various Positions or Prince and the Revolution's Around the World in a Day. Both Hallelujah and Raspberry Beret are about sex, though the former is a melancholy reflection on the sense of near-religious transport that the act can bring about whereas the latter is celebration of foolish hedonism.

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I look again around my room and see an electric angel - an angel-shaped nightlight - that might have been bought at a second hand store. All I can say now is "how appropriate."