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Accustomed as we are to instant gratification, Americans will only stand in a really long line for one of two reasons. Some lines are necessary, like those leading to the counter at the DMV or crawling through customs at the airport. Others lead to something so exciting it's worth the wait, like a roller coaster, a traveling art exhibit, or a twelve-hour sale. Barring either of those conditions, lines in this country tend to match the attention spans and tempers of the people in them.
So I was surprised when I arrived in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, on a Saturday morning last summer. I had trekked six hours from home the night before with one goal in mind: to participate in a taping session for Antiques Roadshow. I knew the event would be popular—the show is PBS's highest-rated prime-time program, after all—and I had read on the Web site that 6,000 free tickets would be handed out to optimistic antique-toters. Even so, I figured there was no reason to head downtown right at 7:30, when ticket distribution began. "It's not like there's going to be a line around the block," I reasoned.
When I arrived at 8:00, there wasn't just a line around the block. The line wound around every block in downtown Des Moines. Well over 6,000 people were waiting to get into the convention center where the taping would take place. Some had come from as far away as Florida and Hawaii. Of the hopefuls, 2,000 had picked up their tickets the day before. The rest of us had to just hope we'd make it in.
Here's how the show works: A team of antiques appraisers sets up in an arena somewhere in the United States. Members of the public are invited to bring their heirlooms, flea-market finds, and other articles of interest to be evaluated. A camera crew catches the highlights, and producers edit the day's work down to a one-hour TV show. Sometimes a ten-hour day of taping will yield two hours of programming, but often each venue turns up only about 15 broadcast-worthy items.
The people standing in line in Des Moines knew those odds. They also knew that, if they were fortunate enough to get a ticket, they'd have to stand in line for at least four more hours inside the building just to get the chance to spend a few minutes with an appraiser. Yet none of them seemed bothered by this. Apparently, this line was either necessary, or the terminus sufficiently exciting, to propel them. I discovered that, in a way, it was both.
When Antiques Roadshow participants tell the stories of their items, the most common tale by far is that the pieces were handed down from grandparents or even earlier generations. That might be all the current owners know: a rough time-frame and a snatch of a family story. Sometimes people surmise that an item must be valuable, because Grandma kept it right there on the mantel or in another place of honor. So the item has a dual charm, containing a nugget of its own history and anchoring the stories of the family that grew up around it.
While Roadshow participants can only tell their own stories, the show's producers endeavor to make the program a link to the past, opening each show with some background on the visited town and turning every appraisal into a miniature history lesson. Participants and viewers learn about Chinese dynasties, ancient trade routes, artistic trends through the ages, and why a lot of eighteenth-century furniture from New York ended up in Canada (prominent Tory families took it with them when they fled post-Revolutionary America).
Like the show as a whole, this transfer of information has both educational and commercial value; those who do not learn from the appraisers' history lessons are doomed to buy forgeries and overpriced collectibles.
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