My favorite annual benefit event takes place next Friday evening, May 22 - The Brandywine River Museum Antiques Show Preview Reception.

Every year when I ask my mother to come as my guest, she invariably answers, “SalIy, I’m trying to down-size. I don’t need any more antiques.”

I explain that the museum board does not expect her to drive up in a U- Haul (what would the valets do?) and drive back to the Main Line with another tall case clock.

It’s an evening for fun.
    
And with five different food and open bar areas – it’s every dieter’s worst nightmare and every gourmand’s dream.

Once, when I was in Italy on a study tour, we visited ancient Pompeii. As our guide took us through the ruins of a wealthy merchant’s home, he described the eating orgies of the time. Walking into an adjoining room he pointed out a line of troughs along the walls, designed to…well…purge yourself of your feast so you could feast some more!  Most of us are a tad more civilized now.
 
At last year’s party, after a successful year on the South Beach Diet, I was quietly congratulating myself on making good food choices and drinking moderately (bad carbs.)

I felt incredibly confident as I strolled through rooms of exquisite antiques hoping I would not succumb to their seductive charms.       

And then I saw the sign: Charles Edwin Puckett- Antique Maps and Prints, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts. My head started to spin. It certainly was not the gin and tonics or for lack of food.

I strolled over feigning disinterest.

Looking down, I saw a box of illuminated manuscripts of Gregorian chant- that stuff of my college studies. In a moment, despite my high heels and long black evening skirt, I was sitting on the floor in front of the files wishing I had a long hallway of empty walls. I was lost in the 13th century hearing the monks, who had touched this very parchment, intoning their weirdly primitive open harmonies in the cold, grey, gothic cathedrals and monasteries.  

After drinking in dozens of antiquities, I crawled over to another file full of beautifully matted historic documents in the dark brown inks and elegantly feather-quilled script of another era.

My inevitable capitulation (followed by subsequent purchase of said document) came when I saw a page from the1769 account book of William and Samuel Vernon of Newport, Rhode Island. The brothers were involved in the export of New England Rum, and were part of what would eventually be known as The Triangle Trade.

You see, while the South was ultimately blamed for their “peculiar institution”, it was the New Englanders, with their large wooden ships who sailed to Africa with barrels of New England Rum. Leaving off the rum and taking on the now enslaved Africans, they sailed for the West Indies to leave off their cargo for auction. Finally, taking on their final cargo of sugar cane, they would sail back to Boston with the raw ingredients for their New England Rum, thus completing the triangle.

I’m looking forward to next Friday. And if you walk by Edwin Puckett’s and see someone sitting on the floor- it might be me!