Greetings, friends. (LIII)

Greetings, friends. It has been a busy couple days. Yesterday, I finally got to meet the man called Brian the Liquidator.

Before he came over, Adah had solemnly informed me in no uncertain terms that, once Brian looked the place over, any price he offered for the liquidation was based on his ability to sell anything he chose not to junk. Which meant that basically nothing could be sold or given away from that point forward.

“We can’t bait and switch him,” she said. I agreed.

Brian came at bang on 9 a.m., not in a 30 foot high mecha, but a Hyundai Sonata or something similar. I met him outside. He turned out to be a burly, affable Yankee, and surprisingly garrulous. He swept into the house with impressive energy, appraising everything in sight with a practiced eye the instant we entered.

He also appraised everything with a practiced hand. When we got to the kitchen, he seized up a ceramic bowl filled with things I had set aside with the intention of keeping, and, before I could say anything, started picking items out of it and started a pile on the dining room table.

“I’d like to buy a few items right away,” he said, with the vibe of a kid in a candy store. “I can pay cash.”

Brian added to the pile a box of vintage port glasses I had been thinking of keeping, and then seized a big handful of pairs of scissors. “I can sell these,” he said, “A dollar each.”

“People want scissors?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. Somehow I didn’t doubt it.

He paced around the kitchen, rifling through the cabinets. The complete set of Corelle dinnerware I was hoping he would want? Garbage. Pots and pans? Garbage.

The cast iron, though. He picked up the cast iron pans, recently used and unwashed, off the stove, and started examining the undersides for hallmarks.

“You can’t have the cast iron,” I said pre-emptively. “I’m keeping that.”

“Ah, too bad,” he said. “This one? Worthless. But this one? I could get $50 for it. Sure, Griswold, number 5, number 6, number 7. People love them. Look on the bottom, Griswold big type, Griswold small type…” He trailed off before launching into a full taxonomy of Griswold cast iron pans, but it seemed clear that he was knowledgable on the subject.

He pointed at the washer and dryer. “Do they work?”

“The washer doesn’t.”

“No problem, I’ll take both. I got a guy who does scrap metal.” Of course he does.

I pointed Brian to a folding table on which Adah had assembled some items we assumed were valuable, mostly vintage ceramics, pewter, glass ware.

“Don’t be offended? This is all worthless. I mean, it’s not all worthless, but I can’t sell it. Nobody wants pewter. I mean there are some people who collect pewter, but — don’t be offended — these aren’t collector pieces.”

Brian said that a lot. Don’t be offended. Clearly here was a man who was accustomed to disappointing prospective buyers about the wholesale value of their treasured possessions.

“You can’t offend me,” I said. “I’m ready to deal with the reality of this situation. It all has to go, one way or another.”

I took Brian into the living room. He eagerly rooted around in the costume jewelry, mostly to his disappointment. He grabbed a handful of fans. I pointed him to the 19th century fashion plates on the walls, the creamware figurines. Nada.

“Don’t be offended? No one is buying this stuff.”

He pronounced all of the furniture to be garbage, except for the dining table in the kitchen, which my father made by hand 50 years ago, and which I won’t part with, and the vintage colonial reproduction dining table in the dining room, which we’d already promised to the American Independence Museum.

I showed him the downstairs bedroom that I’ve been sleeping in. He immediately picked up my guitar case and started unzipping it.

“You can’t have that,” I said, “That’s my guitar.” He put it down.

I pointed him to the two original Hogarth prints, still hanging on the wall. Adah had already taken the other two, with my blessing: “The Enraged Musician” and “Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn.” She couldn’t decide which one to keep, so it was obvious to me she should have both.

The two Hogarth prints that remained each depicted a woman resisting a man’s amorous advances, which Adah decried as “rapey.” I agree with Adah and I didn’t want them either, even if they were originals. I was hoping Brian would show an interest in taking them off our hands. No dice.

I took Brian into the library. He rifled through the books, found nothing he wanted. I showed him the massive, seven foot tall armoire.

“Don’t be offended?” he said. “I’m just going to break it up and throw it away. No one wants to buy that.” He looked at a group of wooden chairs, identified exactly one as an antique original, and waved his hand blithely over the rest.

We went upstairs, and I showed Brian the bedrooms. One of them was still filled with all of the toys and nonsense we’d cleaned out of the eaves. He fairly went bonkers. He started gathering up old toys from the 1980s. At that point, the exterminator showed up and I had to go down and let him in.

I looked back to see Brian repeatedly opening and closing the door on a Fisher Price “Little People” barn with the noisemaker which was meant to sound like a cow when you opened the door.

“MOOOOO,” the barn went. “MOOOOO.”

Forty years later and the Fisher Price barn still fucking moos when you open the door like it did back in 1983. I swear they should’ve built the Space Shuttle.

Speaking of 1983, I later found a can of sardines in the kitchen cabinet dating from October 1983. “Made in Portugal,” it said on the tin, above the date. I sent Besha a photo.

“Rest assured I will not be taking this can to Portugal for its 40th birthday,” I promised her. She replied with a barfing emoji.

I then sent the same photo to Adah and Keith. Adah replied with the exact same barfing emoji. Keith quipped, "You should wash it down with some cherry cordial!"

When I came back from touring the house with the exterminator, looking for traps with dead mice, I found Brian piling his goodies into cardboard boxes on the dining table. I noticed a safety razor on the table.

“You found a razor upstairs?” I said.

“No, I found it in the bathroom. I can get $20 for that,” he said.

“That’s my razor, and I paid $20 for it. Sorry, no can do,” I said. I put the razor back in the bathroom.

We went out to the garage. He pored over everything, and asked about the gasoline generator. I agreed he could have the generator as part of the removal job. He fingered an electric outdoor menorah my mother at some point put out in the appropriate season.

“Are you Jewish?” he asked. “I mean, no offense, I was just wondering.”

We live in a day and age where this poor guy is afraid he’s going to offend me by asking if I’m Jewish. Like it might be taken as some kind of insult. Well, maybe some people would be insulted. Fuck those people. I told Brian yes I was and no offense taken.

We went out to the barn. He wanted the vintage apple press, which we’d already offered to a friend of my mother’s who runs a brewery up Center Hill Road. Then we went upstairs and his eyes got wide.

“I think you’ve just shaved a couple grand off the price right here,” he said.

Well that was serendipitous news, and most welcome, because the stuff he was slavering over was the vintage furniture in need of restoration and architectural salvage that multiple purveyors of such things had passed over.

Finally, Brian named an estimated price for the liquidation in the small thousands of dollars, starting in on explaining the complexity of the removal task, and the difficulty of selling the items that chose not to dispose of, and I cut him short.

“I am a professional software engineering manager,” I assured him. “My job consists, in no small part, of telling people with unrelated expertise why the thing they think they want is much more difficult and costly than they imagine it will be.”

I told Brian the sum he named seemed reasonable to me, and to contact Adah, as the executor of the estate, with his estimate. He offered me cash for the items he had already picked out, mostly toys and vintage clothing. I accepted on the spot. It all has to go.

Later on, I met Adah and Keith. We marveled over how Brian had no interest in the things we thought would be valuable, and swooned over the stuff no one else had wanted. I mentioned that I had agreed to sell him the generator.

“We can’t sell him that,” Adah said. “It’s mentioned in the real estate disclosures. I mean, maybe we can change the disclosure, but I’m pretty sure he can’t have it.” We agreed to consult with the real estate agent.

I’ll say this for him, Brian moves fast. He wanted to start on the house today at 8am, but we didn’t have everything we wanted to keep suitably set aside. I spent most of my day doing just that, moving the rest of stuff we wanted into the library and the other downstairs bedroom, and hiding the kitchen ware I still need in order to be able to, you know, live here.

I was very clear on the fact that Brian and his team were going to work efficiently. Anything that didn’t have a label, or wasn’t in a room or a cabinet that was labeled, or wasn’t, you know, nailed down, was going to be carted off. I went around taping handmade signs to the doors of the library and bathroom and both downstairs bedrooms, because I am certain they would take away my suitcase and all of my clothing if I weren’t careful.

I texted Brian to tell him he couldn’t have the generator. He fumed a bit, claiming that he’d already promised to sell it to someone for $300, but then said, look, don’t worry, I’ll be clearing enough on this deal, it’s fine. I felt bad and told him we’d raise the price of the job by $100 to accommodate. He thanked me.

Then he asked if he could send the open container dumpster over before Monday. I said yes. Two hours later, there was a man in a truck depositing a dumpster in our driveway. Thus it begins.

If you’re reading this, I send you my love. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est. More tomorrow, maybe.