When I was about 6 years old, my father explained to me that your mother was a Proctor, of Proctor and Gamble. Her whole family had the middle name Proctor. We never got any money from them, but they gave us this broken and damaged hand made mahogany furniture and I am going to teach you how to make the pieces and repairs in the evenings. No comic books for you. At the same time, on weekends we were going to boatyards to use or refinish our boat. My mother taught me how to refinish our Chris Craft. So I learned these skills from my parents along with hundreds of others. Sadly, my mother died when I was 16. So my high school friend Chris Washburn’s mother would share their meals with me. She showed me how her boys had loosened all the dining chairs by rocking back during meals, and I said, – I can repair your chairs for you. – You can? she said, that’s wonderful. You can take one at a time. I scraped all the joints and used chalk to letter each joint so they would go back together just as they came apart. She was delighted with the results and paid me $25.00 each, for all eight chairs.
Later she told the neighbor what I had done, she said, Hey, I volunteer at Historic Annapolis and they have homes with furniture that needs repair – Would he be willing to work on our furniture? I said yes, and she took me down to see the Hammond Harwood House and The Chase Lloyd House, both fabulous mansions with just a few rooms in use. One by one I took dirty, creaky furniture home, reglued the joints, washed it, rubbed the original finish with steel wool, then thinned stain to even out the color, and then applied Antique Oil finish, for a rich new look. My mother had taught me all this, how to renew the beauty of old things, and I did this hundreds of times to earn spending money, from this time on, all my life, and named myself The Antique Doctor, so never had to get a job.
People would call me, saying that I was recommended by Historic Annapolis. What a wonderful blessing! Especially because I didn’t try to make this happen, instead it had happened TO ME!
Gradually the Antique Doctor Repair, evolved into a collection and museum we now call Old Time World, and Oldtimeworld.com, a sensational website of everything we have here. We love showing off the two huge buildings of treasures and the 70 fabulous boats on display. Thankfully, my family left me some money, so I was able to build 2 huge buildings, one is 60ft by 160 feet, with 6 cruisers up to 42 feet long, you can board and admire with lights and music. The other building is 40 ft by 100 ft, carpeted and clean with the nicest boats and antique cars inside. We also have a 3 story tobacco barn workshop storage building we use to have huge parties; the next is August 19 with 2 bands and dancing. We are blessed and proud to be able to share all this with friends and family. Please take a look at Oldtimeworld.com, on line.
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