The Good Witches of Petticoat Lane
Dec. 23rd, 2006 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cleolindaSo my mother apparently started feeling hugely guilty that my sister is getting this big expensive Global kitchen knife (remember: culinary student) and some hair-straightener-iron thing (Sister Girl has a slight waviness to her hair that she is determined to conquer), and all I'd said I wanted was books. So we're Christmas shopping on Friday and she turns to me and declares, "I want to get you a doll." O... kay. Granted, I do collect a few kinds of dolls--Genes, once upon a time, and the occasional movie character, like the Barbie Sleeping Beauty with the fantastic likeness, or the Toy Biz LOTR dolls or whatever. But the last doll I'd even thought about getting was the Galadriel last Christmas (see icon), I didn't really have anything in mind, and... it was just such an abrupt statement, you know? I appreciated the thought, but I was sort of at a loss as to how to help her out with that.
So we went looking for this awesome little store called the Enchanted Cottage we'd seen a few years back, and... it doesn't exist anymore. We went to Smith's Variety in Mountain Brook, which we generally drop by at least once a month (the owner used to be the music teacher at Pilgrim Day School and remembers me by name to this day), and... they don't sell dolls anymore. Nothing more than a perfunctory case or two of Madame Alexanders, and I used to stare at the shelves of collectible dolls with laser intensity when I was younger, so this was an unpleasant shock. Does no one in Birmingham sell dolls? No one?
"Well, there's Mary Charles' Doll House on Petticoat Lane," one of the girls working there said.
Petticoat Lane. I mean, seriously. It's so perfect I can't stand it.
Where is Petticoat Lane?
"Turn at the Sneaky Pete's there, across the street, and it's across from nothing but woods."
This pretty much describes most of Mountain Brook, which is a slightly uppity, yuppie-genteel suburb liberally marked with small pockets of woodland. Like, just big enough, here and there, to be ornamental, and a little like saying "Turn left at the Starbucks. No, the other Starbucks" in a bigger city. We were halfway to the zoo before we turned around and went looking on the other side of the neighborhood, and finally we found Petticoat Lane, a little one-way street (which we nearly entered from the wrong end) within walking distance of Smith's, with four or five shops counterproductively hidden from the world. The first three weren't the Doll House. And then I saw a cotton-candy pink house with a turret room.
Turns out it's been there for thirty years, and the shop was buzzing when we got there. I don't know how people find the Doll House, but they do. A middle-aged couple was already there when we got there, and I think two or three other women came and went while we were browsing (one of whom did, in fact, walk over from Smith's with one of the Doll House ladies feeding her directions over a cell phone). There are, as far as customers are concerned, three rooms: the front, with circular racks of vintage doll clothes and glass cases of dolls; the back, with more dolls and cases of tiny, tiny doll furniture; and a smaller room hooking off that one to the left, with even more tiny furniture. That's a simple description of the layout; what you have to imagine now is that there's a narrow shelf running around the ceiling of each room, and each shelf is packed with mint-in-box Barbies, shelved side-first like books. Probably not exclusively Barbies; I know I saw a Buffy the Vampire Slayer doll at one point and a few Disney dolls as well, but you get the general idea. There are piles of dolls and tables of dolls and cases of dolls and God only knows what. I mean, you can tell they've been here for thirty years, and that they're packed to the gills. And by "they" I mean three middle-aged ladies--seriously, I want to call them "little old doll ladies," although they were not necessarily little or old. It's just--they reminded me somehow of good Christmas witches, like La Befana: happy and helpful and full of esoteric knowledge. And toys.
So I looked through what they had, but I didn't really see anything I wanted, so I'm wandering around kind of aimlessly (which is hard, in a tiny doll-cramped shop. You start turning in circles after a while) knowing that my mother wants to find something really special, which is so sweet, but I just... can't think of anything. And then she turns to the youngest of the three Good Witches and says, "Do you have any of the Madame Alexander Little Women dolls that came out a few years ago? She loved those."
Madame Alexander has put out a number of Little Women dolls, but these were unusually tall, and were more the Cissy/Cissette sculpt than the usual eight-inch numbers they put out. "Oh, those were really nice--I have all four at home," the Good Witch says, beaming. "They didn't offer them for very long, just a year or so."
"She really wanted Jo," my mother is saying. I'm standing right next to her, by the way. Every time my mother says something, the Good Witch looks at me for confirmation, and I just nod with cheerful stupidness.
"Oh, everyone wanted Jo," says the Good Witch. "She was the most popular. She's really hard to find now. It's too bad they didn't produce that line longer than a year or so. We do have Meg, Beth and Amy, though," and my jaw drops.
Two of the Witches run upstairs and root around in their secret doll stashes and produce a small brochure, three dolls, Beth's and Amy's winter cloaks and bonnets, Amy's bed, and a red Christmas dress belonging to someone, they don't know who. "THAT'S JO'S!" can be heard ringing out from my general direction. By the time we leave, Meg (and Jo's Christmas dress) go home with us, and the Amy and Beth dolls go on layaway for some happy, distant day--if nothing else, so that no one else will snatch them up. Next Christmas, maybe. My mother is glee-struck at the success of the enterprise.
Later that afternoon, the Good Witches call her. They've looked through "their warehouse" (they have a warehouse?) and found the other three Christmas dresses, the ones I wanted more than any of the others. "And they said they could tell how much you loved those dolls," my mother reports back (if my fascination with Meg's hair didn't tip them off, I imagine the aforementioned shrieking did), "so they're going to try to find you a Jo."
I told you they were Christmas witches.
Bono awarded honorary knighthood: "The embassy pointed out that titles such as 'Sir' or 'Dame' do not come with such honorary awards, 'conferred on citizens of countries [in this case, Ireland] of which The Queen is not Head of State.' "
Kids get to sleep over at NYC museum.
Serial killings informant breaks silence.
Mexican pop diva rebuilds career: "Trevi rose to stardom in the 1990s when her songs about sexual independence won over thousands of teenage fans, making her one of Latin America's biggest stars. Then the bottom fell out: In 2000, Trevi, along with her manager Sergio Andrade, and backup singer Maria Raquenel Portillo, were arrested and accused of luring young girls into their entourage with promises of stardom and then sexually abusing them. The three were detained in Brazil, where all had fled to avoid prosecution. They were extradited to Mexico, where a second backup singer was already being held. After almost five years in Brazilian and Mexican prisons, Trevi was acquitted of charges of kidnapping, rape and corruption of minors."
An in-depth review of the Thierry Mugler Perfume: The Story of a Murderer collection.
Giant squid filmed for first time: "The research team, led by Tsunemi Kubodera, videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo earlier this month. The squid, which measured about 24-feet long, died while it was being caught. [...] The squid, a female, was not fully grown and was relatively small by giant squid standards. The longest one on record is 60 feet, he said."
Speaking of teh krakens: Keith Richards in Sparrow gear on the set of POTC3.
So we went looking for this awesome little store called the Enchanted Cottage we'd seen a few years back, and... it doesn't exist anymore. We went to Smith's Variety in Mountain Brook, which we generally drop by at least once a month (the owner used to be the music teacher at Pilgrim Day School and remembers me by name to this day), and... they don't sell dolls anymore. Nothing more than a perfunctory case or two of Madame Alexanders, and I used to stare at the shelves of collectible dolls with laser intensity when I was younger, so this was an unpleasant shock. Does no one in Birmingham sell dolls? No one?
"Well, there's Mary Charles' Doll House on Petticoat Lane," one of the girls working there said.
Petticoat Lane. I mean, seriously. It's so perfect I can't stand it.
Where is Petticoat Lane?
"Turn at the Sneaky Pete's there, across the street, and it's across from nothing but woods."
This pretty much describes most of Mountain Brook, which is a slightly uppity, yuppie-genteel suburb liberally marked with small pockets of woodland. Like, just big enough, here and there, to be ornamental, and a little like saying "Turn left at the Starbucks. No, the other Starbucks" in a bigger city. We were halfway to the zoo before we turned around and went looking on the other side of the neighborhood, and finally we found Petticoat Lane, a little one-way street (which we nearly entered from the wrong end) within walking distance of Smith's, with four or five shops counterproductively hidden from the world. The first three weren't the Doll House. And then I saw a cotton-candy pink house with a turret room.
Turns out it's been there for thirty years, and the shop was buzzing when we got there. I don't know how people find the Doll House, but they do. A middle-aged couple was already there when we got there, and I think two or three other women came and went while we were browsing (one of whom did, in fact, walk over from Smith's with one of the Doll House ladies feeding her directions over a cell phone). There are, as far as customers are concerned, three rooms: the front, with circular racks of vintage doll clothes and glass cases of dolls; the back, with more dolls and cases of tiny, tiny doll furniture; and a smaller room hooking off that one to the left, with even more tiny furniture. That's a simple description of the layout; what you have to imagine now is that there's a narrow shelf running around the ceiling of each room, and each shelf is packed with mint-in-box Barbies, shelved side-first like books. Probably not exclusively Barbies; I know I saw a Buffy the Vampire Slayer doll at one point and a few Disney dolls as well, but you get the general idea. There are piles of dolls and tables of dolls and cases of dolls and God only knows what. I mean, you can tell they've been here for thirty years, and that they're packed to the gills. And by "they" I mean three middle-aged ladies--seriously, I want to call them "little old doll ladies," although they were not necessarily little or old. It's just--they reminded me somehow of good Christmas witches, like La Befana: happy and helpful and full of esoteric knowledge. And toys.
So I looked through what they had, but I didn't really see anything I wanted, so I'm wandering around kind of aimlessly (which is hard, in a tiny doll-cramped shop. You start turning in circles after a while) knowing that my mother wants to find something really special, which is so sweet, but I just... can't think of anything. And then she turns to the youngest of the three Good Witches and says, "Do you have any of the Madame Alexander Little Women dolls that came out a few years ago? She loved those."
Madame Alexander has put out a number of Little Women dolls, but these were unusually tall, and were more the Cissy/Cissette sculpt than the usual eight-inch numbers they put out. "Oh, those were really nice--I have all four at home," the Good Witch says, beaming. "They didn't offer them for very long, just a year or so."
"She really wanted Jo," my mother is saying. I'm standing right next to her, by the way. Every time my mother says something, the Good Witch looks at me for confirmation, and I just nod with cheerful stupidness.
"Oh, everyone wanted Jo," says the Good Witch. "She was the most popular. She's really hard to find now. It's too bad they didn't produce that line longer than a year or so. We do have Meg, Beth and Amy, though," and my jaw drops.
Two of the Witches run upstairs and root around in their secret doll stashes and produce a small brochure, three dolls, Beth's and Amy's winter cloaks and bonnets, Amy's bed, and a red Christmas dress belonging to someone, they don't know who. "THAT'S JO'S!" can be heard ringing out from my general direction. By the time we leave, Meg (and Jo's Christmas dress) go home with us, and the Amy and Beth dolls go on layaway for some happy, distant day--if nothing else, so that no one else will snatch them up. Next Christmas, maybe. My mother is glee-struck at the success of the enterprise.
Later that afternoon, the Good Witches call her. They've looked through "their warehouse" (they have a warehouse?) and found the other three Christmas dresses, the ones I wanted more than any of the others. "And they said they could tell how much you loved those dolls," my mother reports back (if my fascination with Meg's hair didn't tip them off, I imagine the aforementioned shrieking did), "so they're going to try to find you a Jo."
I told you they were Christmas witches.
Bono awarded honorary knighthood: "The embassy pointed out that titles such as 'Sir' or 'Dame' do not come with such honorary awards, 'conferred on citizens of countries [in this case, Ireland] of which The Queen is not Head of State.' "
Kids get to sleep over at NYC museum.
Serial killings informant breaks silence.
Mexican pop diva rebuilds career: "Trevi rose to stardom in the 1990s when her songs about sexual independence won over thousands of teenage fans, making her one of Latin America's biggest stars. Then the bottom fell out: In 2000, Trevi, along with her manager Sergio Andrade, and backup singer Maria Raquenel Portillo, were arrested and accused of luring young girls into their entourage with promises of stardom and then sexually abusing them. The three were detained in Brazil, where all had fled to avoid prosecution. They were extradited to Mexico, where a second backup singer was already being held. After almost five years in Brazilian and Mexican prisons, Trevi was acquitted of charges of kidnapping, rape and corruption of minors."
An in-depth review of the Thierry Mugler Perfume: The Story of a Murderer collection.
Giant squid filmed for first time: "The research team, led by Tsunemi Kubodera, videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo earlier this month. The squid, which measured about 24-feet long, died while it was being caught. [...] The squid, a female, was not fully grown and was relatively small by giant squid standards. The longest one on record is 60 feet, he said."
Speaking of teh krakens: Keith Richards in Sparrow gear on the set of POTC3.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:31 pm (UTC)My family + MA dolls = OTP
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 06:04 am (UTC)P.S. Dear Cleo: What a lovely Christmas story. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:42 pm (UTC)& good luck in your/their Jo search.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 11:11 pm (UTC)People probably will end up calling him Sir Bono anyway, even if it's not particularly correct to do so. After all, Bob Geldof is Irish as well, but is still referred to as Sir Bob, in the media particularly.
I'm actually surprised Bono accepted the knighthood, the notion of it had been discussed before in the U2 fandom, and many (myself included) thought that he might not want the honour. But I imagine he'll use it to his advantage, ie. drawing more attention to Africa.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 11:40 pm (UTC)Great, now she'll be moping all night. Lord knows what'll happen when she actually sees the movie.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 11:40 pm (UTC)I told you they were Christmas witches.
Merry Christmas indeed! How fantastic!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 12:15 am (UTC)Merry Christmas to you and yours! <3
no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 03:16 am (UTC)http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v118/cleoicons/dolls/jo.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v118/cleoicons/dolls/beth.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v118/cleoicons/dolls/amy.jpg
The Meg they found me is the second from the left, in the flowered picnic dress with her hair done up. The Jo Christmas dress is the one on the far right of the Jo picture, with the white apron.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 12:31 am (UTC)That squid link made me half-remember a line from a poem about the kraken, which I Googled and fond out was Tennyson (all the English majors already knew this, natch) and this line at the end seems to fit the poor squid:
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
(Whole poem can be found here (http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/896.html).)
I kind of wonder if maybe that poem wasn't read by H.P. Lovecraft at some point in his youth and became the basis for the whole Cthulhu thing. Or at least a major thread in that particular tapestry. I suppose a good biography might yield some info. Hmm.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 12:53 am (UTC)Totally thought you were talking about Harry Potter there.