"If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do is to save every day 'til eternity passes away, just to spend them with you." Those Jim Croce lyrics take on new meaning as you get older. There is no one person I want to spend every day with. When my sister and her husband took off in their RV, I could not think of anyone I would want to be stuck in an RV with. Certainly not my lover, although I would miss him terribly if I was galavanting around the continent. Maybe I could make it work with my son. He's kind of bossy, though. I can't imagine where he got that from.
Why do I have bottle songs in my head now? "Bottle of red, bottle of white, it all depends on your appetite ..." I love Billy Joel lyrics. He paints pictures with words. "They got an apartment with deep pile carpet and a couple of paintings from Sears; a big waterbed that they bought with bread they had saved for a couple of years." I can see that apartment, can't you? And they're sticking candles in Chianti bottles. I see lots of different colored wax dripping down onto the basket around each bottle.
Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall ... sorry, couldn't resist.
Have you read the novel Ten Green Bottles? Here's the description from the publisher:
"To Nini Karpel, growing up in Vienna during the 1920s was a romantic confection. Whether schussing down ski slopes or speaking of politics in coffee houses, she cherished the city of her birth. But in the 1930s, an undercurrent of conflict and hate began to seize the former imperial capital. This struggle came to a head when Hitler took possession of neighboring Germany. Anti-Semitism, which Nini and her idealistic friends believed was impossible in the socially advanced world of Vienna, became widespread and virulent.
"The Karpel's Jewish identity suddenly made them foreigners in their own homeland. Tormented, disenfranchised, and with a broken heart, Nini and her family sought refuge in a land seven thousand miles across the world.
"Shanghai, China, one of the few countries accepting Jewish immigrants, became their new home and refuge. Stepping off the boat, the Karpel family found themselves in a land they could never have imagined. Shanghai presented an incongruent world of immense wealth and privilege for some and poverty for the masses, with opium dens and decadent clubs as well as rampant disease and a raging war between nations.
"Ten Green Bottles is the story of Nini Karpel's struggles as she told it to her daughter Vivian so many years ago. This true story depicts the fierce perseverance of one family, victims of the forces of evil, who overcame suffering of biblical proportion to survive. It was a time when ordinary people became heroes."
Doesn't that sound like something you want to read? I thought so. I won't give away the significance of the title. Bottles!
The Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors is an organization of people who collect unusual bottles. I'd love to see some of those collections. I'll close with a photo of my favorite new bottle. If I decided to start collecting bottles, I'd start with this one. I have no clue whether the vodka in it is any good. But that bottle!
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