Earrings I Won't Wear

Back in the early 80’s, I knew a woman I admired a whole lot… she was a bead-worker, a fabric conservator, and an embroiderer, among other things. I was really jealous of the way she decorated her house and of her ability to do handwork.

Anyhow, she had a few pairs of earrings that I admired. They were Chinese silver with enamel and I’d never seen anything like them. She said she got them from a shop in the Westport Flea Market, Bob’s Bizaare Bazaar, and offered to take me down there.

So one Saturday we went and looked around. The shop was empty of any other visitors. I don’t remember what else there was, although I’ve been told since that it was a head shop and that this was the one place in town where you could buy a human skull. The man behind the counter looked stern and had a distant air about him, as if he were pretty much unaware of our existence. “Customer Service” was definitely not in his vocabulary. But I did manage to pick out this pair of earrings, and he focused enough to ring up the sale.

I found out a few years later that he was Bob Berdella, an infamous serial killer. One young man finally escaped his house by jumping from the second story, wearing nothing but a dog collar, and contacted the police. Bob was sent to prison for killing 6 young men (torture, dismemberment, bodies in the trash, etc.) and he eventually died in prison of a heart attack after claiming that the authorities weren’t giving him his heart medicine.

So that’s why I won’t wear these earrings. Do you suppose I could sell them on eBay?