Saturday Story: Going, Going, Gone

Image by Venita Oberholster from Pixabay

This story was Longlisted on Furious Fiction a while ago, but somehow I never posted it here, so here you go!

Going, going, gone

Dad liked to imagine himself an auctioneer at our neighborhood garage sale. He’d stand with a hammer as a gavel, and as each item that came up for sale, he’d say, in mock seriousness, “Beautiful mahogany lamp with vintage lace shade, twenty dollars is the bid. Twenty-one anyone? Twenty, twenty-one, twenty, twenty-one! Going once, twice, thrice – gone! To the lady in the red striped sweater. Thank you, ma’am!”

I found these sales bittersweet. My favorite things were on display for anyone to mess with. I found it embarrassing, sad and disappointing all at once to watch a child pick up my stuffed animals, play with them, then drop them on the floor. Dad noticed though, brushing them off, then grinning at me while he gave the toy a kiss.

A man was looking at Dad’s old tools.

“This is nice,” he said, holding up a table saw, his fingers dangerously close to the blade. Dad walked over.

“No, sirree, I can’t let you have that!” Dad exclaimed. “You, sir, deserve better than that old thing. Let me show you something…”

Dad was great at sizing up people. His one look told him more than I could see in a lifetime. He knew this guy was not an expert. He probably wanted to be, though, and he could sell him a bunch of things at once under the heading of “things you need to be a real handyman.” He enticed him into another saw, an entire toolbox of tools, several books on home repair, and a DVD collection of “Fix It Up.” He threw in the original table saw, worth nothing, for free.

He also horned in on things that weren’t his. When my sister came back from college, her stuff was in his purview. The old woman who eyed her spice rack didn’t escape his attention, and he sweet-talked her, though he’d barely ever boiled water. “Now, I’m partial to oregano myself, but my mom, she put marjoram in everything – pasta, stuffing, steaks, you name it. Space here for thyme, rosemary. You been to Martin’s down the street? I like their herbs – my girls swear by ‘em.” He’d wave an arm at me, then wink. A sure sale.

In the decades after, I found consolation in many of these items finding their way into homes around the country as we moved from place to place. I estimated that ten thousand (if you counted each video and each fork) of our things lived with others. An irony, since Dad never had enough money to buy the things we sold. Instead, they were all found or given – on curbs, in dumpsters, as birthday gifts. He never sold anything of ours without our permission, and we each got a cut.

Years later, my sister and I had a yard sale together. A neighbor came up to look at an old rusty hammer. I walked over.

“Let me tell you, this is no ordinary hammer…” I began.