Saturday, January 05, 2008

overheard at an estate sale

somewhere on Jefferson Street,

woman with thick Southern drawl, answering her cell phone:

"...hulllllllll-o?...yeahhhh, at an estate sale...aw, not much, just a whole lotta stuff that makes you wanna go home and cleeeeeean uuuuup..."

at that point, I put down the painted martini glasses and nodded her an Air Five over my shoulder.

man looking down at woman working the sale, writing receipts, minding her own business:
"...hey, Shorty!...I betcha get that one a lot, huh? Yeah? My wife's short, and I call 'er Smurf."

Then I came up a behind a man leaning over the jewelry table inspecting the goods. With no good segueway around his buttcrack which was showing a good five inches, all I could think to announce within earshot of anyone else around me was, "Man, look at that. You could park a bike in that thing." (-- which has become my standard quip these days when treated to these uncomfortable buttcrack moments. It used to be, "Wow, the moon certainly came out early tonight!"; but, resigning myself to the fact that one of the gypsy curses placed upon me at birth is that I will always be treated to these uncomfortable buttcrack moments, I've decided to shake up the monotony a bit with new quipping.)

They had an incredible amount of nice, heavy, woody antiques displayed well within another style of massive, intriguing decor more traditional than modern, and there were intricate collections upon collections of original artwork at this sale -- sculptures, carvings, prints, and paintings (complete with a period-painting of a family of monkeys that I wish I could have, actually) -- all very expensive, most quite unique if not rare, I'm sure. But like a lot of other estate sales, this one just reinforced my core belief that 1. no matter how much you paid for it, you can't take it with you, and my sub-belief that 2. if it's over $2.00, forget it -- $10.00, max.







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