I See Dead People

I love scavenging - 'thrifting' in PoliteSpeak -as much as the next person, and here in Marin the pickings are good. I tend not to seek out garage sales since every item I bring into our tight little ship requires that another goes overboard. Last week I passed up a mid-century solid maple tray table with the requisite exquisite sticky-out legs for $4 at the S.A. because I really didn't need it (I certainly hope it went to a good home), but there was an estate sale in a road which always excites my curiosity, so we stopped in on our way back from the Miwok Camp.

Big, comfortable house. Dining room overflowing with glasses and crockery, maybe twenty sets. Piles of copper and more humble jelly moulds. I counted nine clocks.

Outside was even worse: half a dozen barbeques, Foreman grills etc, some still with their boxes. Tables and tables of junk piled high. I had a vision of a couple surrounded and eventually overwhelmed by all that dreadful stuff they had accumulated, until one day it was there and they weren't. Then strangers picking through.

We didn't stay long. I rescued a solid, sensible little pan to boil eggs, 75 cents. I am not as austere as I would like, but I hope when I buy the farm my leavings are in better order than that.