Auction action
It was Ken, the floor guy. Of all the times for him to call, that time was not the best. Pain-induced sweat poured off me and my back was a screaming agony. How the hell was I supposed to put on my game face for dealing with Ken?
It dawned on me that I wouldn’t be in my current agony had Ken shown up and done his job. A-ha! I could channel the pain into anger at Ken. I took a deep breath and focused.
Time to play.
I stabbed the talk button and raised the handset to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Anders0n?”
“Yes?”
“This is Ken, the floor guy. I guess you’re about ready to shoot me right now.”
“No, Ken, I’m not ready to shoot you.” But I do have a surprise for you.
He launched into a detailed explanation of the problems he’d had over the last several days with his mother-in-law and his wife. I don’t remember the details, because if I haven’t mentioned it, I was in serious pain. You really and truly don’t understand just how much you use your back until you do something to injure it.
Like I said, I don’t remember the details of what Ken said, but I remember this: he didn’t sound like he was feeding me a line of bullshit. He’s either a better actor than his wife, or he was telling the truth. Personally, I think he was telling the truth.
“…and so all that’s taken care of and I can get started on your floor tomorrow,” he said.
The moment I’d been waiting for had arrived, and now I felt like he really HAD had all those things with his family to do. Not that any of those were an excuse for not at least calling to explain what was going on and how he wouldn’t be able to make it, but still. I didn’t really need to pile onto his problems by being an asshole, did I?
“Well, Ken, I don’t need you to come tomorrow. The floor’s already fixed. I did it myself.”
Silence.
Then: “You did it yourself?”
“I did. I told you my wife was on me every day about not having a bathroom. I couldn’t wait any longer if I wanted to keep calling my marriage ‘happy’.”
He burst into laughter–not mocking laughter, but joyful.
“Well, bless you, Mr. Anders0n,” he said. “You saved yourself a lot of money.”
I could hear the smile in his voice.
“I guess I did, but more important, I have a bathroom now,” I said.
“That’s just great. Just great. Did you have any problems?”
“No, it was a piece of cake. I even did the toilet.”
He laughed again, and told me again that I saved a lot of money. We discussed payment for the wood, and he asked me to leave him a check in the mailbox on Friday morning. He’d be out our way on a job and would pick it up then.
As we brought the call to a close, he asked me once again to keep him in mind for the floors of the new house, since restoration is his specialty. I told him I would.
But I won’t. I have plans for that floor for myself.
(and before you leave a comment filled with helpful unsolicited advice, bear in mind that anything you believe I’m going to do to the new house’s floor is 100% assumption on your part)
What an event-filled weekend we had. One of the good things about the times I pull that muscle in my back is that if I dope up on anti-inflammatories quickly, the really bad pain only lasts about 36 hours. After that it’s just normal pain for about a week. I can deal with that, though I bitch a lot. Manageable pain means I can get out and do things as long as I’m careful about how I move.
A week or so ago, Robyn found a site that lists auctions happening all around the country. There were three upcoming auctions in our area, so we planned to try one (in Pulaski, Tennessee), see how we liked it, and maybe try one of the others.
Ken the floor guy, incidentally, didn’t show up on Friday to pick up his check. He showed up Saturday morning right before we were to leave, and kept me in the garage, talking about weight and health issues (he’d seen my workout stuff and had questions) until Robyn finally came out and said, “We need to leave.”
The trip to Pulaski was uneventful, or would have been had I been able to find Pulaski. We left without the map, and while I had a good idea of where Pulaski was, I took a left when I needed to take a right. While we technically were in Pulaski, we were just kissing the very edge of it and were about to move on out towards Lawrenceburg, so I stopped at a liquor store and got directions to where we needed to be. We were on the right road, just going the wrong way.
The Pulaski auction sucked. It was 90% glassware and knick-knacks. We had to stand in full sun. Or did, until I suggested we get in the shade of an old 50’s car. Then my back started hurting, and I spent time alternately wondering if we’d get chiggers or bitten by something scary creepingcrawlingslithering out of the rusted hulk we leaned against.
After about 45 minutes we decided to go over to Lawrenceburg and see what the Mennonites were up to. Maybe we could find a couple of nice rockers for the front porch of the new house.
The most interesting thing at the Pulaski auction was this golden orb weaver,
easily the biggest one I’ve ever seen at 4 inches end-to-end.
Driving between Pulaski and Lawrenceburg on the 64 bypass, my car started making a really scary flapping noise when I reached about 50 mph. It sounded like something with a tire, so we pulled over and I looked at each tire while Robyn slowly drove down the shoulder. Nothing. At Robyn’s suggestion, I looked underneath to see if we’d picked something up, and found something had come loose. The sound we heard at 50 mph was that thing bouncing off the road.
Into Pulaski we went, looking for a service station. We didn’t find one open, but we found an O’Reilly Auto Parts, who had a helpful employee that looked under the car, found a snap-in connector, and fixed us up (it was the splash shield hanging down) for $1.74.
O’Reilly Auto Parts has earned my business from now on.
We went through Lawrenceburg to Etheridge, which is where the Mennonites live. Way back in the middle of nowhere, we found a family that did woodworking, and they had a couple of kick-ass pine rockers, handmade, that were only $65 each. This necessitated a trip back out to the highway to find an ATM, and the whole thing took on the air of a Three Stooges skit when Robyn and I tried to fit both rockers into my car.
Here they are from yesterday, when I was staining them pecan.
Despite being really scary, Mennonites make good furniture and baskets.
Robyn bought several baskets, I hooked us up with some jams and fried apple pies (the important things in life), and we headed back to Madison after eating some pretty bad Mexican food in Lawrenceburg. For the record, because I know there are people who care about what I eat, I’m no longer doing the junky Fridays because we’ve been eating out a lot on the weekends. I figure it’s a fairly even trade, and the scales seem to agree.
We got home about 4:15, and planned to stay in the rest of the night. Except we both kind of wanted to go to the 5:00 auction in Madison, because it advertised lots and lots of furniture. We’ve been planning the layout of the new house, you see, and really need a good small table to put in the front room. Plus, the spud’s 150-year-old dresser is starting to look kind of crappy, so we thought we might be able to find a replacement, possibly even one with a mirror.
So, instead of settling down with a fried apple pie, once Robyn had taken care of the bottle kitten we’re fostering we were off to another auction.
When I was a kid, my parents dragged me to auctions regularly. I hated them then, having no interest in that sort of thing, but I have pretty fond memories off the sights, sounds, and smells. On TV, when there’s an auction, it’s something of a genteel affair, with a well-dressed man behind a podium holding a gavel and clearly enunciating during the bidding. He’s slow, even when bidding gets fast, and everything’s easy to follow.
Auctions in the south are not like this.
I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but down here auctions are furious and frenetic things. The auctioneer speaks so fast you don’t understand what he’s said until a couple of seconds after he’s said it. His litany of words is almost musical, and it’s a blast to try and follow along. There are men up there with him, watching for bidders, and they yell out each time they see a bid.
I took the liberty of snagging some video Saturday night, so you can see what an antique auction in the south is like.
Heh. Right after I stopped the camera on that clip, I bid $7.50 on the lamp, our first bid of the night. Robyn freaked because she didn’t expect it, and was all “What the hell are you doing?”.
“We need a floor lamp, remember? That’s a decent one.”
Unfortunately, someone else bid $10 and I didn’t want to pay more than that, so they won it.
We did, however, clean up at the auction. We spent $350, but I think we got a good haul for that.
The game table (front) we got for $110, the wall table was $100.
We got the game table for the spot in the new house, then the wall table,
which is more perfect for what we wanted, came up about 10 minutes later.
The spud gets a new dresser, maple, for $110. What’s really nice is that we
discussed the dresser when we saw it, and agreed to pay up to $250. It needs a new mirror.
I got a working jig saw for $10…
…and working plunge router for another $10.
Sunday wasn’t as busy as Saturday. We picked up the dresser using my stepdad’s pimped out truck (with a fur-covered steering wheel), then I spent a couple of hours staining the rockers. I did some more work on the front door, this time with a sander, and made it look even more like it was natural, but didn’t take a picture.
Then I took a nap and a bath, because my back hurt. It was nice having such a full weekend. Especially cool was the fact that even though it was so busy, it still didn’t seem particularly short.
