Greetings, friends. (XLIX)

Greetings, friends. Today I want to talk about hosting an estate sale, sort of.

We’ve had four visits from antique dealers, who offer us progressively less money on each go-round, in a neat and almost startlingly linear decline.

“Too bad you weren’t getting rid of this stuff thirty years ago,” one of them said earnestly. “The kids these days don’t want this olde-timey stuff.”

Well, yeah. That’s why Adah and I are selling it. Tack on the fact that the same dealer agreed to buy a set of hardwood filing cabinets only if I deliver them, and the whole endeavor very quickly ceases to be worth our time.

Some of it is a little hard to part with. There are items, like an old steel 40 quart milk jug, that I would totally keep, if the pile of things I want to drive back to Portland weren’t already in need of pruning.

There are other things, mainly furniture from my childhood, that has sat gathering dust in the barn attic for decades.

“Was this your playpen?” one visitor asked jokingly. Actually, yes. Yes, it was. And that was my high chair over there, and that was my rocking chair, and that was my handmade rocking horse over there.

One antique dealer wanted two matching step stool / end table type things from the barn. I have indelible memories of using one of them as a child’s dining table while watching television in our house in West Philadelphia. The dealer offered me $20 for the pair.

Twenty bucks for my childhood memories? But why keep the stools, in the final analysis ? I’d only have to schlep them to Portland, and for what? I have no idea. I can’t imagine a use for them. We keep these things because we’ve had them forever.

Sure, twenty bucks is fine. I’ll help you carry them to the car.

The only thing from that era that I am keeping are the oak dining table, built by my father, and my baby cradle, also hand made by my father. Although the latter, flipped upside down, served as a TV stand for the first color television set in our house, for many, many more years than I used it as an infant.

The cradle is in need of restoration, having been gnawed upon by rodents at one corner, during its sojourn in the barn. It feels like a bit of metaphorical commentary on my life. I am going to keep it and restore it. That also feels like a metaphor.

I won’t have a child to give it to, though. I offered the cradle to a cousin who is expecting, to keep it in the family. He demurred, saying that his wife wasn’t much for traditional decor. I know he was just being polite. So the cradle will probably go back to being a television stand when I get done fixing it.

The remainder of the barn includes a couple broken Victrolas, some immense antique furniture items in hopeless disrepair, an enamel cast iron oven and range, a cider press we have promised to a neighbor up the street, a cast iron stove that I desperately want to keep but dare not burden my truck with for the three thousand mile trip home, and a literal ton of architectural salvage.

I’ve already called the two architectural salvage dealers in New Hampshire. One came to visit. The other one looked at some photos via email. Both said no, thank you.

So the day of liquidation progressively approaches.

Today we had our private “open house” estate sale. We made a Facebook group, created an event, and the Ladies added around 50 of Mom’s friends and acquaintances from the historical reenacting community to come and pore over the remaining antique ceramics and prints, the replica reenacting gear, the wall of books on the history of clothing, and the immense piles of textiles.

Estate sales are fucking weird — there are no two ways about it. Someone died and here’s all their stuff. Even if the estate sale is only open to friends and acquaintances of the decedent. It’s still strange to have relative strangers tromping through the house, poking their noses into things, viewing everything with an appraising eye.

It’s even stranger still to try to find a tactful way to tell these people: Buy my mom’s shit, for the love of God. Not because we need the money, but because we need to get it the fuck out of this house.

Now, I am not complaining. If anything, Adah and I had trouble getting people to take stuff away. We fairly had to beg them. New Englanders are a reticent lot, with a Puritan’s hesitancy to appear acquisitive. Most people seemed vaguely embarrassed by the semblance of covetousness, but Mom had a lot of stuff to covet, particularly if you shared her hobbies.

One of my mother’s more religious friends, whom I adore and I know she adored, blanched and even implored me not to use the word “covet.” I understand her concern, but I think it would be a greater sin for my mother’s books and textiles and clothing to go into the hands of random strangers. Please, covet away. You are doing us a favor.

Adah welcomed everyone gracefully. People would ask what the price of this or that was, and she would say, “Please offer whatever feels right to you.”

“It’s what she would have wanted,” we kept telling people. “She’d be happy to know these have found a good home, with people who will use and cherish them.”

Mom’s friend Sue bought the spinning wheel, as a birthday gift for one of the Ladies, Colleen. One re-enactor bought two dulcimers and a freshly polished brass ladle. One couple bought a huge stack of books, and a bigger pile of fabric, and a wooden box that Mom used to lug bottles of homemade cordial to reenactments. Some of the cordial was twenty years old but still drinkable. When they asked about the stacks of blue Canton ware on the table, I threw it all in for free.

“Kids these days don’t want this olde-timey stuff,” I told them.

Bit by bit, many friends filled up their cars and the house leaked away a trickle of stuff. It’s not enough. There’s still a library wall full of books and a dining room full of textiles and a living room full of antique prints and ceramics. More friends are coming tomorrow, I hope.

On Friday, Alena brought round a lady from the American Independence Museum in Exeter, which features the copy of the Declaration of Independence sent to the state of New Hampshire to be published here in 1776. They also do some living history events apparently. They called dibs on a whole bunch of replica furniture and food-safe pewter ware, which we shall be glad to donate to an education non-profit like the AIM. The estate could use the charitable deduction, but perhaps more importantly, nothing would’ve made Mom happier.

But that’s about it. The antique dealers are done and the architectural salvage people have said no thank you, and the friends will have had their pick of the lot by tomorrow afternoon. We will reserve the books and the textiles to hold out for other latecomers, or maybe for a university history department, but after that, it’s the liquidator.

We have one visiting on Tuesday. Adah has cautioned me that once he visits, and we strike a deal for the removal of the contents of the house, that’s it. The price of the removal depends on the value of what’s left.

So this process, which feels as if it has dragged on and on, is about to start moving very fast. Please wish us luck.

If you’re reading this, I send you my love. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est. Hasta mañana, mis amigos.