by Cynthia Wall

Created on: July 17, 2008

Gold in the Garage

They line up at dawn, drinking coffee, chatting with strangers, but making sure no one butts ahead of them. The "Estate Sale" won't open for another hour, but rumor has it that this is a good one. The couple who lived here died suddenly in their 80's, one a day behind the other. A double stroke of sadness except that there are no close relatives.

An estranged nephew has put the sale together, anxious to get the house cleared out and sold. He is the sole heir and he is focused on the value of this midscale home rather than its possessions. The people in line know that. It's the kind of information that travels in the Friday, Saturday crowd that underline the garage and estate sales in the paper. They've already driven the town, charting out their path for the day. This one is first: it's the most likely treasure trove.

The nephew with a couple of buddies that he's paying to help seem bewildered by the response. "Who wants this junk?" one asks the others. More people drive up and the nephew tells them that they'll be allowed into the house twenty at a time. He read that technique somewhere and seems proud of himself for applying it here.

8:00 a.m. and in they go. Like vultures looking for the organ meats on a carcass, they swarm through the living room, the bedrooms, the kitchen. What the nephew thought were the most valuable items have been individually priced - $200 for the Spode china, $100 for the china buffet, $50 for the lawnmower. Bathroom items are dumped in baskets - $5 take all. Ditto for kitchen utensils, dried flowers, and wrapping paper. Some larger items are marked "make offer" and others say "free."

What surprises the nephew is what some of the buyers want: incomplete puzzle sets and worthless stock certificates even handwritten letters from 100 years ago. The woman in a handmade quilted jacket who buys these items will turn around and sell them to scrapbookers and card makers.

By late afternoon, most things are gone. His uncle's hideous ties have all been sold for 50 cents apiece. When the nephew overhears one young woman say they'll be good for costume parties, he has a brief moment of regret. Uncle Ned loved those ties and was careful to wear a different one every Sunday to church.

But now is no time for sentiment. His buddies are inside counting the cash. They've made over $2000 today and the house is literally stripped down to the bare windows as even the curtain rods have gone. It's hardly worth opening up for a second day of sales. Instead, he'll just pile it on the lawn under the "free" sign and take whatever is left to the dump.

Two people's lifetime of memories gone in a day. The nephew and his friends will go out for beer and call it good. And the items? They'll go on to be owned by other people until the day they are sold at another garage sale.

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