i just noticed a really hilarious thing about yesterday's post's title was that i was in the same house as an actual yappy dog at the time.

elvis & i went for a walk today and we stopped by an estate sale which is sort of like a garage sale, but sort of not. a garage sale is generally when folks select from their own belongings and put a portion of their stuff out to sell. an estate sale is generally when someone has died and someone else is selling off the dead person's belongings.

so. elvis & i, we stopped at this estate sale which just happened to be taking place in a house on the street where we were walking. that is to say, we didn't go out looking for it. the woman in charge appeared to be the daughter of the now dead householders, knew most of the shoppers by name, and bustled around the house trailing an aura of authority in her wake. she was equipped with a fanny pack full of dollars.

on the ground floor, besides the costume jewelry, a plethora of hummel figurines, and the silver & crystal detritus of a lifetime of house parties, there was a complete electric train set that looked to have been fairly savagely pulled from its mounting and crammed into a box. the way the pieces of track were broken and stuffed into the box really made me wonder about the story behind that train.

another interesting piece was a box of bronze flatware. bronze? yes. the set was a complete service for like 8 or maybe 12 people, including different sorts of forks and knives for different activities. into the handle of each piece was fashioned a buddah and the buddah was sitting on the word "siam". i have never seen anything like it, and i do wish i had asked the price. (i googled to find you a picture and was amazed to find many dozen pictures. google siam flatware. do it!)


the basement appeared to have been used as a ceramics studio but the typical basement moisture had caused the unfired pieces awaiting glaze to become a bit moldy and soft. in the upstairs rooms, it began to be obvious that the grown children of a dead doctor and his wife had just opened up the house and proclaimed everything to be for sale without bothering to sort or establish any order. partially used toiletries, clothes piled on the beds, dusty shoes, books, stationery, record albums, costume jewelry, toys, momentos, blankets, paperwork, journal articles.

so it was a complete mess, but also a bit of a time capsule - fascinating and pathetic at once.

in the corner of the basement, a ceramic christmas tree like the shaman had made back in the day. post-a-notes like we all had at summercamp. ashtrays. gerber guide to raising your baby, dated 1962. an open bottle of old spice. a bridge set like they sold at ye olde book shoppe. fountain pen nibs. and, all that crystal and silver. there must have been a dozen silver trays, a testament to the sort of life where dinner parties and luncheons were commonplace.

there were 50% off signs posted everywhere, so one would assume that the offerings were well picked-over at this point. and, it wasn't a retail outlet or even a thrift store or even a garage sale, so there was really no reason to expect organization. it was an adult child of dead parents trying desperately to offload her parents' belongings on their neighbors.

well, somewhat desperate. really desperate folks don't price a mangled electric train set at $100, discounted to $50.