The Gavel

It appears to have finally stopped snowing. In fact one day, not too long ago, I got out of bed, put on a pair of wool socks and a sweater, prepared for a traverse over the tundra, only to discover it was at last Spring out on Rusty Hinge Road. Hallelujah!

A week later it was summer. Go figure.

The verdant foliage and colorful flowers had Melissa and me longing for a visit to Vermont. We have been regular visitors at my sister's house up there most spring times, but with all the hullabaloo of work and real estate speculation of late, we'd barely had time to think straight, let alone contact our cat wranglers, pack up our skivvies and roar up the interstate.

Last Thursday night after I emptied my bank account into my truck’s gas tank and off we went. The main highways were at a standstill, so we took the scenic route. Less scenic in the dark, but less traffic.

The next morning we did our usual retail therapy in the nearby town, ogling the residual, aging hippies and Subarus that crowded the otherwise sleepy streets. Is it the air? The water? What makes it all so darn soothing in Vermont?

Later, we "previewed" an auction in my sister's tiny town. While there isn't much going on there, save for a whole lot of maple syrup production, there is a formidable auctioneering concern right on the main drag. The proprietors, a couple of real Vermonters, empty out old houses and auction off the contents.

The auction inventory can range from Tupperware to antique cars, there tends to be something for everyone.

My brother-in-law, Charles, is a morning person and while we snoozed through breakfast, he was off mowing a lawn or delivering “Meals on Wheels.” By the time we were out of our pajamas, he had perused the auction and was off in the hills.

We found a few things we planned to bid on if the price was right, so the next morning we got a number from the lady at the desk and stood on the sidelines as the auctioneer started moving his wares.

I had my eyes on an old trombone and a couple of Hudson Bay blankets, but first, we had to sit through a bunch of other stuff.

The auctioneer, a portly fellow with a bad tie and a scruffy beard, described each piece as if it had fallen off a truck on its way to the Metropolitan Museum.

"Look at the fine work on this lamp," he'd say, with the aid of a chin mounted microphone, "look how the naked lady's head is where you screw in the light bulb. You'd have to pay a thousand dollars for this on EBay!”

And a thousand dollars was pretty much the minimum value he imposed on every item in the place. One of his crew members would hold up the lamp, plug it in, and switch it on and off.

"How about a hundred dollars? Do I hear fifty? Ten dollar bid?"

Someone might raise a paddle and get things going, but if no one seemed interested, he'd complain to his partner, who ran the schlepping end of the auction, and save the item for another time.

"I can't believe nobody wants this lamp. They have no idea what we've got here. This is ridiculous!" He could be heard throughout the barn, since his microphone was on full blast. Maybe he thought that guilt would make the bids start coming in. Unfortunately everything he had wasn't all that wonderful. If someone did go in for a dollar, he clicked into full, manic auctioneer mode. "Dollah, dollah, how about two? Two Dollah, Three? Anybody, Four?" And so on, at a hundred miles an hour, coiled like a spring, able to catch a nod or a wink from a bidder across the room, as the dollars flowed into his till.

This went on for hours, and it was intoxicating. My sister, Babbs bought two tables and tiny Mexican chair. Melissa bought a Persian carpet, I nearly got a nice Stickley table. So it goes.

There were several seriously interesting items, like a genuine 600-pound roll top desk, but the idea of transporting some of these pieces was daunting, and once transported, where to put them? In the clogged, cluttered corners of our abode on Rusty Hinge Road? No, don't. Please.

All in all, it was a bit like eating peanuts. Each tray of glass baubles, every hotel quality painting called out with potential. Every art deco, rococo, curlicue, thing-a-ma-bob was the unappreciated Duncan Phyffe, hand-carved, one-of-a-kind, Antiques Roadshow, heart-stopping retirement plan, and for only a few dollars more than the guy on the other side of the room, it could be ours.

I was outbid on the trombone. I set a limit for myself. I wanted it for my daughter, Hannah, as back up for her more expensive trombone that is safely locked-up and unplayed at her mother's house. I figured I could afford to risk having it stolen if it was gotten cheaply enough. She'd have to play it, of course.

I got the Hudson Bay blankets for a pretty good price. There's only a moth hole or two in them and you can never have enough blankets. I am pretty sure we can find a place to store them for the summer, which should be over any minute now.

Going going gone!

A Trip to the Dump

Shortly after buying my new red truck, I purchased a ladder rack at the nearby truck accessory store. I justified the purchase because I knew, at some point, I would need to carry longer items like the occasional ladder or the long piece of lumber overdue for the side of the garage. I dug out my ratchet set and carefully mounted the new rack on my rig.

The rack was not particularly sexy, and went virtually unused, but it stayed on the truck until last week. I was in the house, minding my own business when I heard a loud “thump” on the street. Since there is a speed bump pretty near the front door, loud thumps are fairly regular music on Rusty Hinge Road.

I got up and looked out the window and saw a fellow rearranging the tools and ladders in the back of his truck. I assumed he had hit the speed bump hard and something had jumped out. Later when I went out, I saw that the rear section of my still-shiny truck rack had been sheared clean off. It had landed in the bed without damage to the truck itself.

Whatever hit the rack was pretty solid because it cracked the half inch thick aluminum mounting as if it was balsa wood.

Every car we have ever owned since we moved to Rusty Hinge Road has been damaged at least once while parked on the street. Only once, because our neighbor was out washing his car, did the culprit own up to his crimes.

Things have been tough at work, so I was glad to have my schedule rearranged so I could take few days off in the middle of the week. After the most extended and miserable winter of my recollection, today took us by surprise, delivering a sparkling spring day, full of blossoms, robins and feathering trees. I dug out a t-shirt, and decided to take the rest of the rack off the truck and take it to the dump.

I had been meaning to go down there anyway. Our blue recycling bin, issued to us as fresh homemoaners, ten years ago, had been all but smashed to smithereens by the ensuing weekly curbside garbage pickup. For a nominal fee, I could get a shiny new one at the “transfer station.” I don’t know how much it costs to get the garbage men to stop throwing my containers around.

So I set about finding my ratchet set, ironically, it was last used to install my truck rack. After checking all the obvious places, including the garage, which made the most sense, I found it up in the attic of all places. Maybe the cats lugged it up there. The culprits won’t own up.

The job was far less arduous than expected and in a few short minutes I dismounted the rack and put it in the bed for disposal.

I had a full hour until the dumped closed, so I jumped in the truck and headed across town. The city was bustling with traffic jams and blocked streets. Drivers on cell phones, windows darkly tinted, ignored all available traffic laws as well as the social contract, effectively trimming any extra leisure time I had built into this excursion.

In order to utilize the garbage dumping facilities, citizens of my current home town have to go down to City Hall with their car registration to obtain a sticker. Last time I was at the dump (sticker affixed) I was informed by man at the scales that I had to fill out some forms because I had a pickup truck. Disgruntled, I filled out the papers and the little man handed me a card.

Today, the guy at the scale took my card and plugged my number into the computer.

“I can’t find you,” he said.

“Here I am,” said I, pointing to myself.

He was perplexed and looked in a few files and tried to dial a phone number that did not get answered. Finally, he asked me if I could remember (back to November) who had issued me the card. Since I hadn’t been at the dump since, er, November, I told him I couldn’t. Nor, I thought to myself, should I have to.

While I threw the rack remnants into the aluminum pile and the crumbled bin into the plastic pile, the man at the scale straightened things out and, after waiting in line again, I received my card back with the promise it would work next time.

I took the back roads home, my now streamlined truck dodging potholes along the route. The sun had opened the buds and the long closed front doors, and brought out blossoms, lawn rakes and kids with over-sized t-shirts. Flattened Sprite cans glistened at curbside, while Walmart plastic bags loop-de-looped in the gentle breeze.

The truck now crouches like a soldier in front of the house, fearful of incoming artillery, always lurking around the corner. Over by the porch, gleaming in its shiny plastic blueness, stands a brand-new recycling bin with a solitary empty can of cat food in its optimistic emptiness.

Next nice day, I am going to go buy a long piece of lumber for the side of the garage. How am I going to transport it?

Maybe I’ll have it delivered?