The Estate Sale
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Garage sale signs appear on the streets I traverse for my walks fairly frequently, especially during the months of nice weather – translated – not so blistering hot that no one in their right mind would ever appear. Estate Sale signs appear only occasionally, for “Estate Sale” carries a much different connotation than garage sales and from experience, an estate sale is just that, everything in the house for sale, usually with everything out on display in all the rooms, the kitchenware, the bric-a-brac, all the fancy things my dad and mom used to call “dust catchers”, jewelry, etc., the furniture, and anything and everything all around inside and outside the house.
At estate sales, at least those in the neighborhood I have walked into, the items offered for sale – and many times not at bargain prices – usually belonged to older folks – older than me of course. At some of the sales, the items are the lifetime accumulations of the original owners who lived in their homes for 50 years or more. With them, the rooms are stacked with a wide range of acquisitions – used cookware, furniture, some originally expensive but now in need of refinishing, dish sets, vases and decorative pieces – nice, but usually too expensive for casual purchase – and also old fashion and outdated, and therefore not really selling – mostly because no one appreciates or wants these items anymore, even when the prices are somewhat reluctantly reduced on the second or third day of the sale.
The Estate Sale sign shown on this posting caught my eye because it was big, professionally produced, and an attractive yellow green. And I took the photo of the sign thinking and knowing, very possibly, that a sign such as this would be put up for my former possessions when I am gone, with multiple signs posted around the neighborhood, pointing the way to my house, my former habitation. Hopefully, before the sale, my family will have already taken the few items of worth, value, or interest to them, for then everything else will be reduced to the category of, “junk to us that maybe we will get something for”, regardless of what my possessions once meant to me – this also the way that childhood dolls, stuffed animals, and other cherished items finally lose their meaning and fade away.
And as I think about it, in this “hoping for just a few bucks” junk category will be some of my wonderful coffee mugs that I collected over many years and rotate in and out for use on a bimonthly basis, and also, sadly but surely, my numerous cookbooks. Also for sale, if not already thrown away, will be some of my prized bric-a-brac and other items. A few of them are priceless to me because I acquired them from my mother after she died – such as the worn tea strainer with the hole in the wire mesh that my English mom used multiple times a day for years, one of my treasures that sits on the small two-drawer chest in the middle of my small study, and one that I wrote a separate posting about for this website. Other items are priceless to me from association with my sister, acquired after she died – some very pretty large still-in-the wrapper fashion jewelry, one of her rosaries, and a few of the myriad little cat items she collected. I also wrote on these. At the Estate Sale for my possessions, it will be a second death of sorts for these things, if they make it even that far.
Then, of course, there is one of my biggest treasures sitting on the little chest of drawers – the broken remains of the red glazed ashtray I made in kindergarten for a Christmas gift to my parents, which I also wrote about. Now, what possible monetary value could that have for anyone else? It is junk, yes, just by looking at it, and will be thrown away by someone irritated that anyone, especially the old geezer that used to live here, would even keep such a thing!
There are also other treasured items on the chest and around my study, some from places I have traveled to, others based on who gave me the object, or who the objects remind me of – just private little treasures. And perhaps when I am gone, they could be junk of some value to be sold, the source of the true treasuring – me, then gone, and no longer there. Other former treasures, those which did not have any value to anyone else, were, sometime before the sale, thrown into the trash – really just junk of not even a couple pennies worth, not that a few pennies are even worth anything to anyone, anymore.
I have been to a number of these estate sales, even five over the years on the same short street, two of these in the same house a few years apart, I think one when the wife died and one when the man died. At another of these short-street estate sales, I found an almost truly brand-new and shiny stainless-steel egg poacher still in the box, with six nonstick cups for eggs. I have made eggs with this for breakfast with special friends a number of times, most of whom have never had a poached egg, not even one. Imagine that!
Now the one estate sale that I was drawn to and remember most was on this short street in a house where the owner, the original owner of the house, had died. I was on a walk with my friend, Rick, and we saw the sign in front of the house and the street was packed with cars – moving slowly along the street, looking for spaces to park, parking, double-parking, leaving empty, or bearing away some former possessions of the owner – quite an attraction and commotion for a little street in my neighborhood.
With such a crowd and excitement – lacking only the spotlights of an old-time movie premiere, and, of course, a night sky within which to shine up into – we went to the open door and moved carefully into the crowded house. I don’t remember much of the stuff – oh, how freely I use that term for the former possessions of others – but, lo and behold, on a sideboard in the dining area, there were stacks of almost new and remarkable cookbooks, and I zeroed in on them. And as I carefully perused them, one by one, something began to stir within me, and I looked around for a moment, moving out of the way, this way and that way, to let the crowd of people negotiate around me, no one else other than me stopping to look at the cookbooks – the books definitely not a hot item, no.
As I looked around the large, combined living and dining room, I slowly began to realize that this estate sale, was probably an image of my fate, of my things, of all my cookbooks that crowded fully, but neatly, the three shelf Mission style bookcase in my own kitchen, with many cookbooks also arranged on the top of the bookcase, also neatly. And my cookbooks, many new and almost new, were, yes, all opened at some point, and some taken into bed with me for a leisurely evening of joyful perusing, my mind full of delightful ideas and plans, but most not used – still waiting for the time for me to “really” cook to the delight of others – a time, like many other things in my life, that I am sure I will soon have time to plan and enjoy, when I have time… Probably, when I no longer have things to think about…or pray about, or…yes, even write about… And…then…I realized that what I was seeing, was my house, my life, and the final remains of both.
It was a sad thought for my treasures, for my things, for my life. And my mind then conjured within me one of the scenes from the movie, “Zorba the Greek” – for me, a scene truly traumatic and disturbing I saw in my early teen years. This was when Madam Hortense, a woman well-off, but a foreigner to the island, was dying and Zorba, sitting on her bed holding her, was comforting her and telling her to just look at him, as she saw with fear and terror the town galaxy of all the old crones beginning to gather and cackle and creep into the house, like evil crows, outside her bedroom door and eventually inside, ready to swoop in and gather and glean from this woman’s possessions everything they could carry off as soon as she was dead, which was soon approaching – at least that’s the way I remember the scene, so long ago that I saw it.
And my passing, and the possible following estate sale, I hope, will not be as dramatic, tragic, or literary, as that scene from Zorba the Greek, no, but that it will be more like this one at this house, quiet, and perhaps not as crowded, but I know that definitely my cookbooks will be displayed and offered as more than bargain sale items, yes.
Then after musing for a while more at the estate sale, I bought three books – great culinary works, brand-new and almost brand-new looking, though now I don’t remember which ones they were. I took them home, made space on my bookcase, and added them to my collection. I thought the previous owners of these books would be pleased, and even honored, that at least three of their cookbooks, new and almost new, found a good home.
And I…well…I will not dwell on these thoughts much longer. However, I would like to think, and I hope, that at least three of my wonderful cookbooks would also find a good home. Yes…that would be nice for the estate sale of my…former belongings, once owned and enjoyed, and some treasured, by the former me. And that is why I took this photo announcing the estate sale of someone who I did not know, and at somewhere that I did not go to that day, because I did not have time, and…because I thought someday there may be a sign just like this for my possessions and I thought – good – I will not be there to see it.
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