The Final (God Help Me) Frontier (or, Still Seeking Salvation via Facebook Marketplace)

“For weeks, now, I’ve been merrily scrolling through Facebook Marketplace for things my business partners then have to go fetch for our booth at The Rock House Antiques. The latest ‘thing,’ a snowy white credenza-cum-breakfront, about 7’ tall and 5’ wide, is made of solid wood, and required professional movers to retrieve and install. In the wake of its placing this morning, Jeanne van den Hurk’s now sitting over at Rock House in near diabetic coma, forced to contend with my merrily texting her gifs of Captain Ahab and the white whale. Fortunately for me, though, the van den Hurks are indefatigable, unflagging in their desire to fill every espace minuscule in our shared booth with an object some Southern belle simply cannot live without.”—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

Hapax Legomenon

By Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

“You’re a collector when you stop decorating—when you buy something, don’t have a blank spot on the wall for it and have to take something down to put it up.”—Steve Oliver & “It’s when you need storage space.”—Nancy Oliver (Steve’s wife)

“[Collecting] . . . is an illness that ought to be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.”—Richard Matteucci 

“It was a Victorian parlor maid’s nightmare, marked by the kind of decor involving the word ‘throw.’ Throw pillows, throw covers, throw cloths . . . . .  Next to throw, the operative word was ‘occasional.’ Occasional tables, occasional chairs, occasional lamps; footstools, hassocks, stacked trays, wheeled teacarts, and enough card tables to start a gambling den.”―Florence King

Author’s Note: The two columns that precede this one are “Chester Drawers & The Piedmont Hoochie-Coochie: Facebook Marketplace” and “Amoir & The Snail Folk (or, Continuing Adventures on Facebook Marketplace).” As always, I would not dare edit, for spelling, syntax, grammar, or common sense, nor fact-check any of my sources’ copy.

PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—April 2025—Do not imagine that a minor event such as total hip replacement surgery has slowed me down this past month. Au contraire de ce que tu prétends, cela n’est pas le cas! Rather, I have found something else that a woman can enjoy while lying flat on her back in a bed of pain (though would that it burned up calories as well as money).

For weeks, now, I’ve been merrily scrolling through Facebook Marketplace for things my business partners then have to go fetch for our booth at The Rock House Antiques. The latest “thing,” a snowy white credenza-cum-breakfront, about 7’ tall and 5’ wide, is made of solid wood, and required professional movers to retrieve and install. In the wake of its placing this morning, Jeanne van den Hurk’s now sitting over at Rock House in near diabetic coma, forced to contend with my merrily texting her gifs of Captain Ahab and the white whale. Fortunately for me, though, the van den Hurks are both indefatigable, unflagging in their desire to fill every espace minuscule in our shared booth with an object some Southern belle simply cannot live without.

This does not mean that trolling Marketplace is all fun and games (as my last two Hubris columns in this space amply attest). No, this work requires a strong stomach and cool head. This month, once again, I must subdivide the chattels with which I am confronted daily under several headings (on the working principle of divide and conquer). The first grouping I title:

Listings to Make Great Aunt Alice Spin in Her Schoolmarm’s Grave

I lead off with “Pompous Grass,” sold in its “tin vases,” as some indication of how far the South has fallen in terms of literacy and general knowledge, not to speak of botanical accuracy, since Aunt Alice’s days (which ended in the early 1960s). The folks in Clark Hill SC should know better, but apparently do not, though every mobile home, converted mill house, Plez-U, and Dollar Store throughout the state still sports a stand or two of Cortaderia selloana. My Master Gardener neighbor, Dr. Kathy Edwards, turns up her nose at the plant as an ugly and invasive Argentinian interloper, and I take her point: we have enough to deal with down here in our red state, considering kudzu, NC barbecue, and Lindsey Graham. So, no, we will not be running off to Clark Hill for a pair of tin vases of grass, however pompous.

Ordimental, My Dear Aunt Alice, these faux wood birds are . . . ordimental! And multipurpose, apparently, but only to folks in Rosman. How the South has fallen, which once was an ornament to the nation!

Yes, Alice, Southerners now set down their “whine” on “around” golden bar carts. We may yet be Faulkner’s people but, apparently, no longer fit to call ourselves Sartorises or Compsons, we are all Snopes now, residents of some vast Yoknapatawpha County that stretches from the bayou to the tidewater. As Faulkner’s Gavin Stevens says, “[T]hey none of them seemed to bear any specific kinship to one another; they were just Snopeses, like colonies of rats or termites are just rats and termites.” A Faulkner narrator adds, “It’s a funny thing about them Snopes, they all looks alike, yet there ain’t ere a two of them that claims brothers. They’re always just cousins.” And cousins once or twice removed from any editorial constraint.

Be that as it may, Gentle Reader, when recovering from major surgery, there are worse things to do than perusing prose churned out and chopped up by my Snopes cousins.

Before I proceed further, however, I realize that, in my past columns about Marketplace, I have failed, twice, to include a Glossary, and regret the omission. It takes some time to familiarize yourself with the vocabulary used by Southern vendors and, just as things on offer may not be at all what they seem, so, too, the descriptors used to give buyers a better picture of what they’re buying are, well, more than a bit “creative.” Note well, and caveat emptor, y’all.

Antique, adj. and noun: When using this term, folks hereabouts mean, simply, “old,” as in “not bought off Amazon or from Target in the past year or so.” I have, just for example, seen listings for “antique” Kleenex boxes. Kleenex tissues were invented in c. 1924, but the boxes with which we’re all now familiar, with tissues dispensed easily through a slit in a cardboard box, came along much later, as did the (questionably) decorative boxes used to disguise them. So, few “antiques” on Facebook Marketplace qualify as antique. Just sayin’.

Authentic, adj.: Questionable at best. On Marketplace, very few use the term “provenance,” and with good reason.

Collectible, noun: An object that is collected by fanciers; especially such traditionally collectible items as art, stamps, coins, and antiques. But, wait a moment, there! Remember, if you will, Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Hummel and Belleek figurines, Happy Meal toys? Our woods are chock full of them hereabouts, but who on God’s green earth would call them “collectible?”

Décor, collective noun: Southerners know a Late 19th Century Hand Painted Bluebill Rochester Duck Decoy on 1^st Dibs (620 euros) from a papier mâché quacker on etsy ($28.). They will label that second type of bird “décor.” Makes it sound classier than mass-market, landfill-bound junk.

Handmade and Hand-Crafted, adj.: These terms distinguish articles for sale from machine-made, or actually-designed-by-designers pieces. Usually, they are “terms of Marketplace art” used to convey that what you’re looking at was made by little Beau Snopes in art class, or weird Uncle Alvis Snopes in his toolshed. On Facebook Marketplace, Southern Edition, we’re not talking House of Fabergé or Louis Comfort Tiffany. 

Mid Century Modern, MCM, or Hollywood Regency, adj.: Pay no attention to sellers when they use these terms. Categorically, we do not know what they mean, and we’re not selling anything to which these terms may be safely imagined to apply. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Nothing to see here but some 1940s dreck that turned up in our in-laws’ garages.

One-of-a-Kind, adj.: Nobody else made or wanted or has one; we do, however; want to buy it?

Rare, adj.: (See above, One-of-a-Kind.)

Statement Piece; noun: An object that, without a word, raises its voice, often to unbearable decibel levels.

Unique, adj.: When a Southerner is lost for words to describe an item, “unique” almost always springs to mind. “One-of-A-Kind” is next in the Southern arsenal for je ne c’est quoi objets, though often we wish these things were one-of-a-kind minus one. (See One-of-a-Kind and Rare, above.)

Vintage, adj: An adjective covering the ground (and there’s a lot of it) between “antique” and “made last week in China from bird droppings and tears.”

Moving not briskly enough along, we now come to a much larger category:

Ars Longa, Vita & Talent Brevis

Southerners, not unlike Northerners, but with an added fillip of weirdness, are prone to making things they like to think of (and try to pass off as) art.

I give you, for example, The Cat with Tentacles Sculpture/Clock, and the Vintage Vomit Clock, complete with apologia penned by their respective creators. Who, I ask you, could resist keeping track of appointments (and/or one’s daily schedule of Thorazine) by these two unique timepieces? (I especially love the fact that the former has a dimmer switch, while the latter “is not been made with vomit.”)

So, Asheville, is it a plastered old man, or an old man’s face rendered in plaster you’re hawking? PS Note well, Asheville’s clever utilization, in a single caption, of “hand-crafted,” “unique,” and “décor,” the Marketplace trifecta!

Not to be outdone, someone in Inman SC thinks he’s both a prose stylist and a savvy upcycler of materials, and he, too, calls on “handmade” and “one of a kind” to sing the praises of his creations.

Not to be outdone in the realm of repurposed, upcycled masterpieces, a fellow in Lavonia GA has another, you guessed it, unique, one of a kind . . . sculpture. He was asking $950 for it but will settle for $650. There might be a couple of parts missing, but how would one tell?

Not to be outdone, artists in Greenville SC and Hendersonville NC have taken to their woodshops on your behalf. One is turning out what seem to be coffins-cum-bookshelves; the other, lamps made of tree trunks. Well, at least ONE lamp made out of a log, and I use the term “lamp” very loosely. Still and all, Hendersonville manages to get “statement,” “unique,” “rare,” and “collectible” all in one caption. 

People crocheting for cash are also well represented on Marketplace, though their offerings in the deep South differ a bit from those available in the North.

 

To close out (mercifully) this section on The Lesser Southern Arts (though I’m quite taken with the Chanterelle Bard Crochet Doll), there is this: for $5,069., or best offer. Up to y’all!

“Highly Collectible,” “Very Rare” & Other Superlatives, Illustrated

This short section I include in the event that some of you have not yet cottoned on to how Southerners use the Marketplace descriptors and then, still dissatisfied with their effect, unwatered, tack on a superlative, or two, or four.

 

Just Big (& No Bones About It)

Another brief chapter because, oh well, you’ll see.

Better (Not) Homes & Gardens

 

In closing, there are a few listings I deem unclassifiable, so . . .

Words Fail Us aka Bless, Just Bless!

 

And I will close this third column (and the last) in my limited series on Facebook Marketplace: Southern Iteration, with, yes, our old friend Cortaderia selloana, this time, spelled correctly by an artiste in Greenville SC who goes by the name Gypsy Bunny and whose prose is a thing of beauty.

And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s all well and good to make such fun of all the poor, ignorant (if not entirely innocent) crackers, hillbillies, yokels, and rednecks who live beside me here in the Briar Patch that is red-South-America. But here’s the thing: if I did not speak their language, if I were not, myself, just two brief generations away from tilling the thin red soil of Upcountry South Carolina, none of what I record above would be hilarious to me.

The argot of Facebook Marketplace is a language I speak fluently, and I am not above driving over to Clarks Hill, on occasion, for a tin vase of pompous grass.