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!