Slim Randles'  Home Country

Two and a half deeks: a high price for protection, but not for invaluables

[DEC. 10, 2005]  ^"You know," Dud said, "there's somebody, somewhere, who collects everything."

"Not enough room to put everything," Steve said, as we chatted down by the barn the other day.

"I don't mean one guy and everything," Dud said.

"But you name something, anything, and I guarantee there's somebody somewhere who collects it."

I nodded. "Knew a woman once who collected church bulletins. Asked her why. She said because no one else was."

"Then there's George and his decoys," Dud said.

"Now there's a collection that makes sense."

True. George Gilbert has been collecting duck and goose decoys since he was born, I guess, because his father and grandfather collected them before he did. When you visit the Gilberts, George is quick to take you down to the basement to see the decoys. His basement is actually a vault, installed at great expense, and is fireproof and theft-proof.

When George hits the light switch down there, these little spotlights come on and focus on glass shelves of wooden ducks and geese with patchy paint jobs at best. Most of them look as though they'd been out in the rain and wind and snow, banging around against each other in a small boat, for a hundred years.

They had. That's one of the reasons they're so valuable.

The other reason is the artists-carvers. These deeks (when you're in the know, you call them deeks) were never ground out by machines or sold through catalogs. These were each hand-carved by people who took great pride in their work. Their work today, George says, is valued the same way as the paintings of the great masters. And none of these deeks will ever get wet again, unless there's a fire and the sprinkler system comes on in the decoy vault.

"This place had to cost a fortune," I said, the first time George showed me his customized museum-gallery.

"It sure did," he said, grinning. "Two and a half deeks. And they were good ones."

[Slim Randles]

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