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In this episode, Judy Harmon reflects on her late husband Ted Harmon’s remarkable journey from Cape Cod house painter to one of the most respected decoy collectors and auctioneers in the country. Alongside sons Steve and Doug, she shares stories from Ted’s early hunts in Maine, his first decoy finds, and the bold leap from the family painting business into the world of antiques and auctions. The family recounts how exposure to fine art on Cape estates sharpened Ted’s collector’s eye, why the best birds were stored away in safes and bank lockers, and the legendary Massachusetts discoveries—from Melvin Gardner Lawrence sleepers to barrels of Keyes Chadwick's ferried off Martha’s Vineyard. They also share personal stories about family road trips, auctions, and the unforgettable “dryer story.” Listeners will come away with not only a better understanding of Ted’s impact on the decoy world but also a glimpse of the Harmon family’s life immersed in history, travel, and collecting.
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Can we do a mic check, please? Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, doctor Mike Brazier. I'm your host, Katie Burke. I'm your host, doctor Jared Hemphith.
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Katie Burke:So first, thank you Judy, Doug, and Steven for coming and doing this and being patient with me and humoring me for this and all of us. I appreciate that. Okay. So I wanna start first with this interview. Wanna kinda start at the end, and then we'll work our way back to the beginning.
Katie Burke:But as we are here at tomorrow, it'll be the first day of the sale, how are you feeling about that? I mean, I know these mean a lot to you, so how are you feeling about tomorrow?
Judy Harmon:Well, to be very honest, a little anxious. It I you know, it's something that I've lived with for all of my married life for the last fifty five years, fifty six years. And it was something that was part of my children's growing up. And then after I retired from nursing, it was really a part of my life because we worked together. Ted and I were together twenty four seven.
Judy Harmon:It was, you know, it it was different. It was a really different way to make a living. And the thing that I liked the most about it was the people that we met. We traveled all over the country. We took kids with us when they got older and were in college.
Judy Harmon:My daughter, who's seven years younger, used to come with us, and we'd always bring a friend. So I was talking to her today, and, you know, she she said it was I just didn't know anything else. Traveling, waiting in the car while he was in somebody's house or in an antique shop. And, you know, all that kind of stuff was it it was different. And the one thing she said, I remember going to see Adele Ernest when she was about maybe eight.
Judy Harmon:And she and her friend had had lunch somewhere, and then we stopped. And the two of them must have gotten food poisoning or something because they threw up all over her bathroom. And she said, I just remember how nice she was. Stuff like that. You know, those are the things that they that they, took with it.
Judy Harmon:But as far as I was concerned, I remember when Ted decided that he was gonna leave his father's painting business and go into antiques full time. And he said to me, do you want me to do this? And I said, if you as long as I have a roof over my head, the kids are fed. Do whatever you want. Just, you know, go for it.
Judy Harmon:And I think that I remember his father being just wild about him leaving the business because it was a pretty big lucrative business. I mean, they had 40 men, 45 men working for them. They did steeplejack work. They did all of the big, you know, summer homes on Cape Cod. So, you know, it it it wasn't an easy decision.
Judy Harmon:And my parents used to bring bags of groceries because they thought we were definitely starving.
Katie Burke:So so let's let's kinda go a little more into that those early days. So when did Ted, like, first start collecting decoys? Or what is his introduction to decoys even?
Judy Harmon:Well, he was a duck hunter. He he had friends. His family were not involved in a lot of fowling or anything on the Cape like that. But he had friends who took him to Maine hunting. And as soon as he was able to drive, he got this old Willie's Jeep, and he would be out on Sandy Neck and driving all over the place and hunting up there.
Judy Harmon:And that's where he found his first decoy in a bottle dump. There was a triangle with three standard grade masons all repainted and stuff. So he took them home and painted them up and used them. And then his brother collected some, they were, I think, Lincoln scoters. And he kind of got interested in those and tried to buy them.
Judy Harmon:And back and forth, They finally ended up making a deal, and he bought some from his brother. And then after we were married, he used to leave the house every weekend, go all the way to Provincetown, driving, stopping at every antique shop all the way down and all the way back. And he'd always come home with, you know, a trunk full of stuff, you know, and then he'd turn around and sell the stuff. It it was pretty interesting, some of those things that he found. Did he keep one of
Katie Burke:those first masons? Did he keep any of those? He did?
Judy Harmon:Yeah. We have we have that. And one of the first birds that he bought at the shop was a Charles Black bluebell hollow in original paint, and I still have that one. But the I mean, Harrison Huster, who was a collector from New Jersey, and Harrison traveled up to Maine and back. And he used to buy for I I always thought it was Campbell's soups.
Judy Harmon:He used to buy vegetables. So he'd visit farmers and buy you know? And so he'd always stop at our house, and he had a place in in Kutuwet. And he'd always come, like, in the middle of the night, it seemed. So we had a grill, and he'd open the grill, and he'd put birds on the grill, close the lid.
Judy Harmon:And Ted would leave birds for him in the grill. So that was the we hardly ever actually saw him. We just, you know, saw the birds Like
Katie Burke:a decoy Santa Claus.
Judy Harmon:That kind of thing.
Katie Burke:You mentioned the cape so much. So what role did the cape play in, like, this collecting and the people of The Cape and kind of the evolution of Ted's collecting?
Judy Harmon:We were just in the right place at the right time. There was still a lot of birds that people found at the source, you know, in people's barns and people's basements. Some of them some of the antique dealers would pull out with other things, And we'd go to a show, and they'd have decoys. And really didn't take very long for people to know that some people would pay, you know, $15 for a bird, but Ted would pay 20. So they'd call him, and that's that's how he bought a lot of birds on the Cape.
Judy Harmon:Okay. You know?
Katie Burke:So I kinda wanna go back also to him as a painter, a house painter. And what how did that, like, being around those homes in on the Cape, how did that also, you know, help him evolve and affect him as a collector?
Judy Harmon:Well, in Osterville, there was a place called Oyster Harbor. It was an island that had a causeway that you had to go across. And they had a gate, and you couldn't get in unless you were visiting someone there. And that's where the DuPonts and the Melons, that's where they they lived. And they used to do all of those the work in those homes.
Judy Harmon:And there was incredible artwork, antiques. They had some of them did have decoys. But just being exposed to that type of thing and seeing what good art looked like, it it made a difference, I think, in his life. I think he got to the point where he could recognize quality and things. So, I mean, that was Right.
Judy Harmon:I mean And he was young. I mean, was in his teens Yeah. When he was exposed to that. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense.
Katie Burke:We talk about that a lot, like, with coming to shows, like, how to develop your eyes to see them. Right? So that would make sense if he's seeing them that young. He's seeing good stuff. Yeah.
Katie Burke:He's getting a taste of
Judy Harmon:what It it's was the kind of things that you probably wouldn't see anywhere else, you know, except in museums and a lot of cases.
Katie Burke:So Yeah. That's amazing. Alright. So I also wanna talk a little bit about, the safety deposit box and of his safety deposit box storage system and how he did that. What is that?
Katie Burke:Why did he do it that way? Why yeah. I just more of that. Like, I wanna know more about why. His system.
Judy Harmon:Yeah. I I mean, as he collected things, you know, having a house with three kids, a lot of the better things he would bring to the bank. And in Hyannis, The Cape Cod Bank and Trust had these big lockers. So we used we used to be there. You know, he would be putting things away in there.
Judy Harmon:And it it was after he went into actual business of buying and selling things, it was it was difficult to have people come to the house and look at things that he was collecting, some of the better items and stuff, because that's what people wanted to buy. And and he always felt like, I just can't show people that. I've got to put those things away. And
Katie Burke:Yeah. That's interesting because then he doesn't get to enjoy them either though. And
Judy Harmon:that was the thing that I've been telling people that when they you know, John did the exhibit at the Half Degrace Museum. It was the first time we had seen a whole, you know, display case of his birds together. You know, the whole family had never seen them that way. You know, just piecemeal here and there. And, you know, when he'd pull a few things out, we'd see them.
Judy Harmon:But, I mean, when we started taking everything out of he had after the storage lockers went away, we bought gun safes, big gun safes. And, you know, they were the shorebirds particularly were all packed in those boxes, you know, bankers boxes and put in those gun safes. You know, it it was amazing. We were pulling things out of these boxes, and I know Doug and I did it. I had never seen some of the things.
Judy Harmon:Some of them were, you know, oh, where did this come from? And I know John was there when we had them all out on the table in this in the barn. And, I mean, I was I was blown away. I could I said, wow, look at like, you know, you know, I know Doug was too, you know.
Katie Burke:Yeah. What was that like for you to go through that?
VO:It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in one room in my lifetime, and I didn't even know he had, you know, three quarters of the things that came out of those safes. They were just stocked away in boxes in the basement, and in the safe, and when we started pulling those things out, it was like Christmas, you know. You just kinda unwrap one and go, can you believe this? I can't believe this. And I mean, and then setting them all up on the table, and then you look around the room and you realize you've got a fortune in duck decoys sitting on these tables in this tiny little room, you're like, quick, put them back in boxes and put them away, you know.
VO:Yeah. It was it was a pretty amazing thing to to be able to to see. His life's work was incredible as anybody who's seen the whole collection together before can attest to. It was something that you just don't see anywhere.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Yeah. Do you think he knew it was all in those safe deposit boxes?
VO:Do I think he knew? He knew every single thing. Yeah. I remember. Oh, yeah.
VO:Absolutely. He he knew everything that was in there, and it was all cattle. I mean, he had a list of everything that was in every single box. And so, yeah, it was he knew he knows. Or he he's probably still does.
VO:He's probably up there going, yeah, I know what they are.
Katie Burke:When I cleaned out my dad's office, he didn't know half the things that So were in So he starts collecting $19.69, and then your first auction is in '86. Is that right? So what was the transition and what led to starting the auction business at Decoys Unlimited, and what was that like?
Judy Harmon:So over the years, we had sold a lot of pieces. And people would come back to us and say, well, I, you know, I think I'm gonna upgrade or I wanna sell these five things. And, you know, we were sending them to other auctioneers or, you know, like, Ted would try to buy things, but they really wanted to sell them at auction. So he said to me, we'll just do an auction. How hard can it be?
Judy Harmon:You know? I said to him, really? And he said, yeah. He said, you know, we'll we'll try. So we went down to Easton to and Donald Moore, who was an auctioneer in Delaware, said, okay.
Judy Harmon:You know, I'll do I'll call the bids and all this kind of stuff. We had we didn't have a clue. We we were, you know, like, at the last minute making lists of things, and we had to do everything by hand because nothing was computerized. And then we were in the skating rink, you know, the the I don't know what they called it, but The center. Yeah.
Judy Harmon:And we're so we were in there, and we're setting up the whole auction, the whole you know, until, like, maybe 11:00. And then we went outside for one of the auctions. There was, like, two feet of snow, and people were calling and saying, I can't get into the airport in DC. I can't get into BWI. I mean, it was a nightmare.
Judy Harmon:Yeah. Yeah. So we did two auctions with Donald Moore, one in Easton and one on The Cape. And then he didn't he wasn't interested in traveling and doing that kind of stuff. So we decided that we would go into it on our own.
Judy Harmon:And I think most of the other sales that we did were on The Cape for quite a while. And then we did a few in Cleveland and then a few in Milwaukee. And then we just, you know, we stopped doing more than one auction a year, and we used to do one big auction a year on The Cape. So
Katie Burke:Sure. That was much easier to just do it
Judy Harmon:on the And then by 02/2005, I had computerized everything. In 1998, I quit my day job and just worked with him.
Katie Burke:With that, for y'all, growing up in that, how how do you think being around decoys and that sort of passion for decoys affected your lives?
Steve Harmon:Well, I I always loved the decoys and I loved, you know, Doug was out in California, and my sister was in Baltimore and Texas and all over the place. And so I mean, it was nice for me because I got to see everything that came in and out of the house all the time. And even with the auctions, we got to look at thousands and thousands of things and talk about them and, you know, and I always loved to hunt. And so I think, you know, for for dad, it was I I mean, he loved the outdoors. He loved to hunt, and he loved the business.
Steve Harmon:But I think for him, it was more about chasing the stuff down and getting it and collecting it, really. His first passion was collecting and getting things for himself. And I mean, the auction business was a great way for him to kinda pursue that passion, but it was definitely an interesting way to grow up. Right? It's like you say all the trips and I mean, you remember we went one time to a Red Sox game.
Steve Harmon:Right? You remember that? And of course, we had to stop at two or three antique shops on the way up to Boston. And we stopped and we saw our guy and he got two dust jacket crow plovers. Remember that?
Judy Harmon:I do.
Steve Harmon:And we were in our old beat up station wagon, and he got those birds. He didn't wanna go to the game cause he was so nervous about leaving the birds in the car. So he hit, he, you know, stashed everything under the seat and hit it, and we went he like, couldn't even pay attention to the game.
Judy Harmon:He was just direct.
Steve Harmon:You know, it's the seventh day. We should go now. Now they of course, they were still there when we got back. Thank God.
Katie Burke:Nobody really cares about them besides us. No.
Steve Harmon:Right. And but I mean, that's like you say every you know, I would go with him to Maine when I was a kid, and we would just stop all the way up, visit, I don't know, half a dozen people that he knew. He'd pick up a bunch of birds, bring them back. I mean, and that's just kinda what we did. And he bought the little camp in Maine because it you know, he was up there duck hunting and there were crow shadows underneath this little duck camp in Maine, 1969 or '70, and he bought the camp to get the decoys.
Steve Harmon:Thank God he did because I still you know, I spent many many days there with my own family and duck I mean, Duck Hunting and Merry Meeting Bay is fantastic. I don't know if we have any Maine people here, but yeah. So a lot of good came from it all. But it was an interesting way to to grow up. I mean, remember going to the Craigville Motel when we were just little kids.
Steve Harmon:And I know like a lot of Don Snyder's things are here, the Snyder boys would always be at the Craigville Motel and the Moise, all kinds of people. And we we drove by there one day and some lady drove by and she like pointed and she's like this, you know, like, cause everyone has the ducks and decoys all over the they people didn't know what was going on. Right? Yeah. It was fun.
VO:Yeah. I mean, it was it was definitely an experience, and you know, kids would ask ask at school, hey, what what does your dad do for a living? How do you tell the kids at school, hey, my dad's a decoy collector and an antique dealer. They have no idea what you're talking about. Right?
VO:So it it was so much easier to say, oh, he's a firefighter, or you know, he works for such and such. Right? But, you know, for me the experience, because I did leave after high school and and go to different places and and travel a lot, but all of that was, you know, predicated on spending time with my mom and my dad and my family, and you know, like mom said, he knew every back road, every antique shop, you know, he knew how to get to from point a to point b 15 different ways, and always looking for the best way to get there, and you know, gotta go see this guy, and we're gonna go here, and we're gonna check this out. And I mean the influence on me was that, you know, by the time I was, you know, 22 years old, I had been in probably 25 different states, and you know, just wanted to keep going, and you know, I just I loved traveling, and and he had just this incredible knack for finding places and going places, and any place we went, he'd always find a cool place to have lunch, he'd always find a cool place to to pull in and, you know, talk to people, and and it was always fun.
VO:So I kinda got a bug for traveling. I've been to all 50 now, and I I, you know, I I tell people it's because of my dad. And, you know, the other thing that he had was an incredible knack and sense of direction. He could go one someplace one time, and he'd know how to get back there no matter what, and that's something I've inherited from him too. My wife goes, you're crazy.
VO:How do you know how to get anywhere without your phone these days? And and it's just, it's, you know, something that that Ted gave to me. But, you know, as far as growing up in the house, it was it was like a carnival. It was always something going on, and he was always running around here and there, and it was always fun to tag along and be a part of it.
Katie Burke:Yeah. I relate to that a lot, but on the Ducks Unlimited side of things, I had to ride around the story about Amy and sitting in vehicles. I've sat in a truck for many hours entertaining myself while he talked to some random person of about duck holes and whatever else he had to do for DU. But I do relate to that, and it's, I mean, it's very unexpected how it will come out, like, did I think I was gonna do this when I was nine years old? No.
Katie Burke:Like, but this is kind of where it ended up, and it's it's a it's a neat way to kinda you never know what'll happen when you when you have those unique childhoods and what kinda how what it brings.
VO:Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey. After these messages.
Katie Burke:So you mentioned a little bit about coming to this show as a kid. So I kinda wanna talk about your history a little bit with this show, and how that's been over the years, and it's changed, and how it's been a part of your lives.
Steve Harmon:Well, I don't know. Jeez. I mean, I remember driving out in in Uncle Dave's van with me and Doug and all the comic books, and we put little signs in the window, Chicago or Bust, because it was a big trip, and and I think the show was at the Drake Oak Brook then. I don't know who we were talking to, but I think I remember my well, Doug and myself and Jim Haid, Alan's son, we used to skateboard down the hallways at the Drake Oak Brook, they used to chase us around and scream and yell at us. And I mean, we were only, I don't know, eight or nine Eight or nine years 10 years old.
Steve Harmon:And you were just kids. I mean, was fifty years ago almost. Right? I mean but it you know, it was always a big event. We we had fun.
Steve Harmon:Right?
VO:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And there was always a a a holiday inn we used to stop at because it had, you know, an indoor putt putt course, and you know, this and the other thing, all these things that we would go to halfway across in Cleveland, and it was a it was a big event, you know. Something we wanted to do and come out and be a part of. I mean, the decoy stuff when you're eight years old, nine years old isn't as exciting, but you know, getting to travel that far and be with people and and meet people, I mean decoy people are good people and fun to be around.
Steve Harmon:Yeah. A lot of like minded people, I think. You know, we all love fishing and hunting and the outdoors and yeah. I mean, it's it's great.
Judy Harmon:Well, I can tell you one story about the Drake Ogbrook with with this guy.
VO:You sure you wanna tell this story?
Judy Harmon:They they have a dinner every year, and so we bought pizza and left the two of them and Jim Haid, and there were a couple of other kids in the room. And said you know, kept going out and checking on them and stuff. So one of the times when I'm going out to check, here's this one with his little doctor Denton PJs with the feet in them, and, you know, he's standing at the front desk like this. I said, oh my god. And the lady that that worked there, she was the kids used to say she had big hair.
Judy Harmon:She had this big Do do you remember the big hair lady? Anyway, he was standing there complaining that he had put a quarter in the so soda machine and he didn't get anything out of it. So, yeah. There were things like that too. I mean, after they were older, I used to bring my daughter and one of her friends, and, they had moved to Saint Charles by then.
Judy Harmon:And the kids loved the swimming pool there because they could swim under the window, and you could swim outside or you could swim inside.
Katie Burke:Alright. So I have a couple of things I wanna ask before we, like, go to questions. One is, what was it like to be married, like, with Ted, to be married so so so passionate about decoys? And he was just so I mean, just in general being passionate about something. As the wife, what was that like for you?
Judy Harmon:You couldn't miss him. I mean, when he was walking around, he was a head taller than most people. And he was a gentle person, very soft spoken. And then fifty five years of marriage, he never raised his voice to me. That's the kind of person he was.
Steve Harmon:We got licked a few times. Yeah. Deservedly so.
Judy Harmon:But it I mean, that he was generally a very calm, you know, pretty mellow person. And it it was I mean, I had to find things to do myself that I could do when we were off doing things, you know, like traveling and going to shows and things like that. And I always I was a knitter, and I always had knitting with me. I've got knitting in my bag today. It was just kind of the flow of things, you know.
Judy Harmon:You you just had to make sure that you you know, I had to be entertained to a point, and I was working on things. And, you know, I would take that with me, and he would go about and do what he had to do. And, you know, after I started working in the business, it was really a lot more of being involved in the day to day running of the business too. You know, I do I used to do a lot of the correspondence, all all of the billing, all of the, you know, lifting and data entry for the in the computers and things like that. So it it was, you know, it was the way to it was the way we lived.
Judy Harmon:We made a living this way. This was our job.
Katie Burke:Okay. So if you had one story or one story of a decoy or one legacy that you would hope to continue that people speak about about Ted or your collection, what would it be? Well, I I
Judy Harmon:think one of the things that he was he was really proud that he figured out and found were about these Melvin Goddard Lawrence birds. They were at the very beginning, there was a man, and I think he lived in Brewster, Mass, and he owned Pleasant Bay Antiques. His name was Wallace Furman. And he was a carver also. And he made he found a couple of these types, the sleepers particularly.
Judy Harmon:And he made a a bunch of them and antique them. He buried them in, you know, in dirt and put some in water and and Ted saw them all. And he thought, well, they're they're no good. They're they're not, you know, period. And probably, no, eight eight or nine years after that, someone called him and said, there's a lady here with decoys.
Judy Harmon:You should come down. So he did. And she owned a piece of property in a place called the Punkhorn on The Cape, which is an area where there's ponds and streams and there's a lot of hunting that goes on there. It's a it's a really beautiful area. So when he got down to the men's shop, this lady was pulling these birds out of socks and putting them out on the table.
Judy Harmon:And Ted looked at them and he said, they they're right. You know, these are good. And he finally figured out that Wally Fuhrmanbirds had kind of passed by the the thing people figured out which ones they were. But some of the ones that he found, this woman, her name was Ruth, her great uncle, she's made said he made these, and he left them in the camp at the Punkhorn, and she had others at her house in Saugus, Mass. And when he went up there, she opened a drawer and pulled one after the other out of there, and they were absolutely beautiful.
Judy Harmon:And he wrote a little article about it in one of the magazines. I don't know if it was was it Decoy magazine or, you know, one of them. So, you know, you find out things and it it was interesting. He always would say, I I can't believe people say, well, Kroll never did thus. You know?
Judy Harmon:Never did painted things this way or carved wings this way. You find things that you know when you look at the paint patterns or the design. You say, yeah. It it's it's made by the same hand, but it's not typical of what so a lot of those things he, you know, he he realized the longer he was involved in it, the less he really knew. You know?
Judy Harmon:I mean I mean, I think you do after as time goes on, you know, you find out more things and find out more things.
Katie Burke:Alright. So I think we'll give some time for y'all to ask question. Yes. Go ahead, Rick. Okay.
Katie Burke:So Rick asked for you to share your dryer story. These boys
Judy Harmon:were born a year and four days apart, and so they're Irish twins, they call them. And we lived in a little house in Hyannis. It was four rooms and a bathroom. And there wasn't a way to get to the basement from inside the house. You had to go outside and down into the basement to do laundry.
Judy Harmon:And we had a washing machine, but I didn't have a dryer. And they were both in diapers, and I had to hang up all the diapers. And so I said to him, I need a clothes dryer. So he said, well, we'll get a credit card. So he got a Mastercard.
Judy Harmon:And he was gonna go to Sears Roebuck and buy a clothes dryer. Unfortunately, on the way to Sears Roebuck, he had to go buy
VO:Born auction company.
Judy Harmon:He had to go buy Born's Auctions. And they were having an auction, and the the I don't know if you had ever heard about this Russell Gold who was in Fall River. He was a dealer, and he had decoys. And someone had gone into his apartment, which was above the shop, and murdered him. So all of the stuff from the shop was at Bourne's auction.
Judy Harmon:So Ted went in and maxed out the Mastercard on decoys. And he comes home with a box of birds. And I said, that doesn't look like a dryer. And so, anyway, I think about a month later, we paid off the credit card, and he went and got a dryer. But that's the dryer story.
Katie Burke:Okay. So Rick asked about the Martha's Vineyard connection. I don't know this story, actually.
Judy Harmon:Ted probably found more Chadwick decoys than, you know, that and brought them into the collecting community than anybody. But the speller from the vineyard, his name was Earl Peters, and he was a fisherman. And somehow, he had either purchased the Chadwick home or knew someone who had been in there, and he got all of the decoys out of it and called Ted and said, you know, I've I've got some pretty nice decoys here. And so Ted said, alright. He said, I'll come over.
Judy Harmon:He said, no. Meet me at the at the dock in Thalmas. And so here he comes in his boat with barrels of Chadwick decoys. And I think he came three different times back and forth. And there were Brant, redheads, bluebells, golden eyes, black ducks, and, I mean, a lot of them.
Judy Harmon:And I have pictures of you, I think, with the bathing suit on on the back lawn of the house and hyenas with all of these birds lined up, all of the Chadwick's. And then he got some better birds out of the vineyard from Earl. You know, it was I guess because he bought all the ones that he brought to begin with, he started looking around for more of them. And sure enough, they started the rest of them started coming over, and I believe that that organza that's in the auction is one of the ones that was there. So, And I don't know how many of you know or knew Tony Waring from Swansea, now.
Judy Harmon:I grew up in Swansea, and my grandparents and Tony's father knew one another because their family had funeral homes, and everybody in my family who died went to Waring's funeral homes. And that was that was really the connection. You know, they knew one another over the years. And Tony was an architect who collected early on. He was a real he was I guess when Bill Mackie was collecting Lloyd was it Lloyd Johnson and a couple of other Mid the Mid Atlantic, yeah, in New Jersey.
Judy Harmon:He used to get decoys and barrels shipped up by Railway Express from, you know, collectors down there. And my father said to Ted, go go over and see Tony because I know he collects he collects stuff. So Ted did it, and Tony was so good to us. He really was. His neighbor, Bud Prescott, had 1,200 pieces, 1,200 decoys, and his wife wouldn't let him bring them in the house.
Judy Harmon:So he had barns and garages and things full, just full of birds. And then Bud passed. So Tony called Ted and said, go and see her because she wants them out of there. She wants to get rid of everything. So Ted went to the bank and got a line of credit, went there with the U Haul truck and emptied the entire collection into the truck.
Judy Harmon:And he came home, and I I couldn't believe the birds that coming out of the truck. And we had just moved into the house that I still live in, and there was no furniture in the living room and dining room. So he just put them all in there, lined them all up like, you know, there was little walkways in between. And that was the the beginning. I mean, he's that's when he started.
Judy Harmon:He'd take 20 or 25 of them, put them at Bourne's auction, and then he could buy stuff out of the auction. So it kind of, you know, worked both ways. Yeah. He he just he knew everybody on the cape. You know?
Judy Harmon:And people a lot of dealers who weren't decoy people would call him when they had things. As far as the wood duck is concerned, I'm not sure where that came from. I'm not I know it was a Cunningham bird and Did
Steve Harmon:it come with the Ruddy Duck and the Mallard Hen in that group? Remember he bought the it was a Cunningham Ruddy Duck with a turned head, and then also the Low Head Mallard. Weren't those didn't those all come together or no?
Judy Harmon:Was it? Okay. That that's probably where that came from then.
Katie Burke:So let me I'm gonna re ask that question. Actually, was one of the ones I forgot. Yes. So many of your decoys are on the Massachusetts waterfowl stamp. Mhmm.
Katie Burke:What is the story behind that? How who did the artwork? How did that happen?
Judy Harmon:It all started with Mass Fish and Wildlife. They were involved in the stamp program. Peabody Essex Museum wrote the rules for what, you know, what had to be pictured and what couldn't be. And the the basic part of it was it had to be a deceased Massachusetts maker. And it had to be a decoy by one of them.
Judy Harmon:Well, he had the collection of all these Massachusetts decoys, and people would come to the house and take pictures. John Eggart, who's a Illinois native, he was on I think he did three three stamps. Randy Julius, who's in was from Plymouth or Hingham, that area, He had quite a few stamps on there. And then there were different ones. This Doug had a shirt on with the wood duck on it, and that was on one of the stamps.
Judy Harmon:And that guy was from Mississippi or Alabama or Arkansas somewhere.
VO:What about the old squaw?
Judy Harmon:The old squaw was That
Steve Harmon:was Edgar.
Judy Harmon:John Edgar.
Katie Burke:Do we know what happened to the original paintings of those?
Judy Harmon:We have the, you know, his logo bird, the feeding yellow legs. I have that one. I have the original artwork. But a lot of the artwork was sold or, you know, went to They used artists kept the original. Yeah.
Katie Burke:I didn't know because, well, every state's different on how they handle that. So I didn't know if
Judy Harmon:they kept it. Don't think they did. I you know, I think that they just had the rights to reproduce it on a stamp. And I guess the people, the the artists had the right to produce those the prints Okay. And sell them.
Judy Harmon:And then, I think at the very beginning of this, Doc Star had the wood duck, the Lincoln wood duck. And he went ahead and made prints, I guess, or was it Milton Wyler? I can't remember. Who did the artwork, and they went ahead and made a whole series of prints out of this Lincoln Wood Duck. And it was illegal because the owner of the artwork didn't okay it.
Judy Harmon:So they had to pull it and not use it, and I mean, there was a big legal battle over that. And that's when Fish and Wildlife took over and said, okay. We'll just, you know, make this
Katie Burke:yeah. So she asked, yeah, if y'all basically, if you fell in love or caught the bug the same way that Ted did.
Judy Harmon:I collect chickadees and owls, miniatures mostly. And that was the other thing when we went from show to show, you know, we'd go through our auctions. You know, if if he went by himself, he would buy me a chickadee and bring it home. So but I'm not I'm not the way he was, you know, as far as that passion that he had. I mean, I just I do like him, and I've got probably about 35, 40 miniatures.
Judy Harmon:Most of them are the ones that hang on the wall, you know, different types like that. So
Doug Harmon:I think I don't think you can grow up in a in a home like the home that we grew up in and not collect things, and I have some decoys not anywhere near what is where where in my home, and my dad always told people, collect what you like, and you're better off collecting things that one good thing than collecting 20 things that are, you know, mid low. Right? Because you're gonna enjoy it more, you're gonna like it better, and you're gonna wanna show it off to your friends. So the other thing I I have a large collection of that my wife is probably shaking her head at me every time I buy one or fly rods and fly reels and different things because I love to fish and and, you know, my dad also said, buy the things that you like and and doesn't matter if they're duck decoys or, you know, what is the stuff you collect the the the glassware that you collect or buy the things that you like. And and so, yeah.
Doug Harmon:Absolutely. And I know that you have a collection of things.
Steve Harmon:Yeah. I I mean, I have a few things. I don't have the the money to get the things dad liked, but nor do I want really those really expensive things at my house either. But I think, you know, I like, you know, this little Meganza up front here with the crazy head. You know, I have a pair of those and I have a handful of golden eyes that, you know, I've gotten over the years, and that my father's given me because my dad and I used to hunt golden eyes all the time.
Steve Harmon:And and they're simple things and a lot of them are very worn and but they've got a great form and, you know, for me, that's kinda what I like. I mean, although I do love the expensive ones too. But, you know, I just for me at the house, just like some of that stuff like that. I just I love that bird and I love the the golden eyes I have and stuff like that. And I love the rust burr miniatures and I really like those.
Steve Harmon:That's kinda one thing that I try to get, but those are kinda within my price range.
Doug Harmon:And definitely, I think passed along through the family is an eye, having an eye for things, you know, like he did form and see being able to see form the way that that he did. So I agree with what you just said.
Judy Harmon:I was telling someone earlier about my daughter too, because I don't think the apple falls too far from the tree. She she has a couple of places where she buys things and resells them. Most of it's mid century furniture, artwork, you know, all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of her thing. She she likes some vintage clothing, which is, you know, that's her passion.
Katie Burke:Alright. Anything else? Or one more?
Judy Harmon:We he had found a piece, and he just he would be so excited. He'd come home and, you know, and one of the things that he he at one point, there was an ad in the paper, and this woman was having a garage sale, and she's it said decoys. So he went the night before because he was leaving the next day and he couldn't get there. So he knocked on the door and said, you know, I'm here. I just need to look at the decoys.
Judy Harmon:That's that's all I'm interested in. And she said, well, alright. Come in. And he had two mint Mason Premier Mallard hens and three mint Mason Mergans and Drakes. It was in Falmouth, and there was a sporting goods store there.
Judy Harmon:And someone had told him years before that they sold Mason decoys, and they had crates of masons. And when the store closed, the crates were all sold. And so he figured they must have come from that source. So he begged the lady to sell them to him, and she said, well, I was gonna keep one for the kids to put in the pond. So he said, no.
Judy Harmon:No. No. No. I'll bring you back something for them to put in the pond. So he bought all of them, and I think they were on John Delf's, on the cover of John Delft's book, those those Moganser Drake decoys.
Judy Harmon:And, I mean, he came home, he was so excited, he opened the window into the kitchen and handed in a couple of these teeth. Look at this, he said. He was just so excited, and he said to me, someday these are gonna be worth a lot of money. And I think he had paid like $35 apiece for them. So
Katie Burke:Well, thank you. Alright. Does anybody have is there anything else? Alright. Well, thank you, Judy.
Katie Burke:Thank you, Steven. Thank you, Doug.
Steve Harmon:Thanks.
Katie Burke:Appreciate it. Thank you, Rick, and thank you, John, for putting this together.
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