By Melanie Patterson
The North Jefferson News
For Robbie Green, it all started with a family heirloom.
She had always known she wanted to inherit her grandmother’s old iron bed. When her mother passed it on to her, it started the antiques fever.
Robbie and husband Lem Green have been collecting antiques since they were married 50 years ago.
Their spacious Morris home contains countless items from eye glasses and Christmas decorations to a Civil War-era collapsible campaign bed, wardrobes and other large, beautiful pieces.
“We built the house around the furniture,” said Robbie Green. Their son Chris Green, a graphics designer, created a custom spot for each piece of furniture.
Prior to that, the couple had the antique bathtubs, wardrobes, beds, pictures and other items stored in their garage in Center Point.
They have lived in Morris for 12 years.
The house has been featured in Morris home tours, helping to raise money for charitable causes.
The Greens said participating in home tours is a tremendous amount of work, but they were happy to be able to use their home to help others.
Although the couple collects antiques together, they each go their own way on certain items. Each also has a room in the basement that is all theirs.
Lem Green’s room has a Coca-Cola theme, complete with old, but well-maintained, Coca-Cola drink boxes, bottles, signs and pictures.
He also has a collection of lunch boxes and radios in the room.
Robbie Green’s room features a complete Department 56 village. She collected every piece from 1989 until she retired from Maxwell House in 2003.
Lem built a wrap-around waist-high cabinet that the village sits on, while son Chris designed the two-level village layout.
Also in Robbie Green’s room is a large Christmas tree filled with antique ornaments, including one she paid only $8 for, and it lists for $200 in the collectors books.
“I can guarantee that nothing on this tree was made in China,” Green said with a laugh.
Around the corner is her favorite room, the downstairs den. On one wall is dozens of framed programs from shows the couple has seen on Broadway.
Another wall in the room contains large posters from places the couple has visited, including Jerusalem and Paris.
They have also been to London, Holland, Germany, Russia, Scotland, Ireland, China, Italy and Belgium.
Not all of the trips were to look for antiques, but were to “see what I’ve read about in the history books,” Robbie Green said.
Most of the Greens’ antiques were bought at auctions, estate sales, shops or other places, but a few, like Robbie’s grandmother’s bed, were always in the family.
On one desk is an Underwood typewriter that Robbie’s father bought her in 1957. She always kept it because of the sentimental value, but now it is right at home with the Greens’ other antiques.
“I know my mother went without something for me to get that,” she said.
All of the framed photos on the upper level of the house are also family pictures.
However, the downstairs bathroom contains pictures of “adopted family,” or photographs the couple has purchased throughout the years.
“It would just kill me that somebody had to sell their grandpa’s (picture),” Robbie said.
Although the Greens have slowed down on their “antiquing” since their retirement (Lem retired in 2001 from Rexam in Birmingham), they will still buy an item if a special deal crosses their path.
Lem Green said he enjoys collecting, but claims his wife is the driving force in their antiques hobby.
His major role is in restoring and cleaning the items once they arrive home.
He has a knack for it. The house could almost be a museum. It is chock-full of tastefully arranged antiques from America’s long-gone days, mostly from the nineteenth century.
The hundreds of every-day use antiques like kitchen utensils, which Robbie still uses while cooking, and display items like beds and candle snips, are a prominent tribute to American history.
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January 11, 2010
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