A Family of Scoundrels - Part Two

A Family of Scoundrels

Part Two

By I. M. Picker

            My Grandmother taught me the use of linguistics in the trade.  She taught me the ratios of setting, style, timing, inflection, body language and smile.  She taught me to “show them the money”, the angle to stand to “see” into the barn; to peek past the clean and see the dirty, the old, the “junk”.  She suggested the development of vocabulary and its theater:  A Romeo & Juliet at the barn door, basement stairs or attic window.  The old fainting couch fills with the form of the swooning seller while the buyer refreshes that old treasure in its first fresh air in decades (centuries?) as it passes to the back of the... truck.  It’s an aura that is never cute, clean, polite or... given.  It is love and death.  One learns these things and their special soul.

            It is a special soul.  It is by far more vibrant to me than any THING I have ever owned.  It speaks in a linguistic clarity surpassing any fine art or prose.  My sense of “these things”, a wisdom of human sensation, rests as a utopia in my portfolio that many of my fellows seem to search for.  Language selection is a vital part of “these things”.

            Early in my career, when I was old enough to drive and be a dealer, but still young enough to lie in my childhood bedroom and consider HOW I could find “treasure” that day, I had an experience that began with language use and... has ended with it.  That is, if this incident has ended.

            My teenage stupor was roused in the barn yard by an older neighbor who rushed over to tell me “they” were “cleaning out a house” that we both knew had been closed for several years after “they” put the old witch that resided there in a “home” where she promptly... died.  “They” were from Connecticut.  “They” had appeared at the home and were now stuffing “junk” from the main home into large, plastic garbage bags and putting them into the back of the old truck of the aging town handy man AND drunk.  His name was “Stub” or “Stubby”.  I promptly went to the street corner and confirmed this report.  The truck was nearly loaded.  “They’re going to the dump.” I said.

            My friend said nothing.  “We’ll follow the truck.” I continued.  We did.  It went to the dump, the old fashion kind, along a bank of the river, where one backs up and dumps over the bank.  He backed up and dumped.  We waited, watching.  He left... to get the second load.  There was already a second load.  We had seen the mound of dark plastic bags on the screen enclosed porch.

            Over the edge of the bank I went.  My friend stood looking at me from above.  The bank was open to the heavens with a scenic vista of white pine trees dotting the river edge fading to a mountain landscape in the distance.  Aside from the raw mounds of rural Maine afoul that included the smell, rats, mushings, oozing and the visual disparity of this, it was a rather natural setting.  For myself, to whom the side of the town dump bank was familiar from extensive rat hunts,[1] these circumstance offered no ...trepidation.  My older friend, a mere antique hobbyist and sensible to his position in the community, wavered.  Looking down on me was his propensity turned to action.

            I tore open the first bag and spilled forth the treasure.  Treasure it was, the kind that one expects from people from Connecticut who have finally gotten their hands on “the old bitches” material obsessions and go to “cleaning it out”.  I beheld.  My friend beheld as I ferried the “junk” to him and he to our ...truck.  It was a direct line.

            “Go buy some beer.  Two six packs”.  He looked down at me.  I wasn’t old enough to buy, let alone drink, beer.  “GO GET IT.” I shouted to his blank stare.  “AT THE STORE on the hill.  BEFORE HE GETS BACK”.  He stopped staring at me, waffled and... left.  I rummaged; we’re talking about thirty bags in the load.  It takes time to sort that much “treasure” out of the “junk” on the hillside of a town dump.  He returned, with the beer.  Stubby returned, backing in.

            “HE’S BACK.” yelled my friend, this time staring away from the top of the bank.  I scrambled up and saw the truck swinging to back up.  I took one six pack and walked straight toward the reversing truck.  The driver’s side window was down.  As it moved toward me I stepped to it, presented the six pack to the window and said:

            “DUMP IT OVER THERE.” pointing to the clean far end of the bank.  He did that, taking the six pack first.  NO FURTHER WORDS WERE EXCHANGED, ever again.  As I said, this is about linguistics and their use to ...buy and sell... antiques.  My friend was awe struck.  He never went over the bank.  I started on the new pile.  We soon had the truck full.  Stubby returned with another load.  It took him longer to get there this time, the beer was cutting in.  I gave him the second six pack, non-verbally.  He took it non-verbally, dumped the load “over there” and ... left.  “I can’t believe it” my friend said.

            We decided the promptest solution was to re-load the bags, take them to my grandmother’s barn and sort them there.  We did this.  Stubby returned with another load while we took our first load to Grandmother’s house.  She, understandably, became, as we say in the trade, “interested”.  She knew the house, the stuff, the situation and acknowledged my act of, well, ...choreographing the ballet in progress.  She eyed the bags, tore one open.  “How many are left?” she said.

            “Two loads” I replied.  My friend was still waffling.  As I noted, he was a hobbyist, not a dealer.  He collected.  WE were dealers.  He muttered and pushed at some of the “finds”.  My Grandmother chatted him, filling the vocabulary void between an excited teenager and a responsible citizen of the community.  She continued to chat him.  And chat him.  He stopped peeking at the stuff.  Then he... “didn’t want any of it” he said.  Then he “didn’t want to go back”.  I went back.

            I got the loads, each time driving by the home to see if Stubby was still loading.  I knew it wouldn’t last much longer.  Subby would get drunk and “not show”.  The people from Connecticut would tire of throwing out “junk” and go off to the motel and to “clean up”.  This went as forecast; the house was locked up, the yard vacant.  I brought another load into the barn.

            My Grandmother was going through the bags.  She knew an antique so the residue of her sorting was confined to the “new” “collectibles”, subjects on the information highway of the antiques world she had not studied nor cared to.  I sorted these.  “How much is left?” she asked.

            “Just the stuff from the first load, in the garbage over the bank.  It’s too dirty to bring here.  I’m gonna finish it there”.

            “Let’s go.” she said.  My grandmother was in the truck and we... went.  We went to the dump.  WE ...went over the bank.  We had the place to ourselves, tearing the bags open with our backs to the mountain vista, river and pines.  Sea gulls hovered, rats scurried and garbage smelled.  We worked together, commenting on the discoveries and making small piles that I would ferry to the truck.  We worked side by side.

            Suddenly at the crest of the dump, a family appeared, trash in hand.  A local, prominent family, trash in hand.  “Mrs. Ashby, is that YOU?” the father said.  We both looked up.  The foursome family looked back.  The son was my age, the daughter a year older.  We were in school together.  “What are YOU DOING?” the father continued.

            She explained, as best as antique dealers can to the lay population that doesn’t know this refined business exists, that there is a material oblivion and that there is... .  Obviously, it did no good.  My grandmother, using her linguistic skills, did not try to enlighten.  They tossed their bags by us, stared again and left.  We continued our work, disregarding them and, in fact, forgetting them.  Their sighting of us did come up at dinner, in casual conversation.  The main conversation was on “buying the estate”.  The how to do it and the linguistics of that, among other considerations.  We devised the trajectory.  My grandmother would hit ’em a dawn, cash in hand, before they started “work”.  I would be along side to compliment the “We’ll get it ALL OUT NOW” clause that we always offered with the “YOU CAN KEEP ANYTHING YOU WANT” clause.  People from Connecticut have taste, know what they’re doing, what’s valuable and... what isn’t, especially in old witch’s homes in rural Maine.  Our plan worked; my Grandmother used the proper linguistics.

            This family at the top edge of the dump faded into my past.  I lived as an antiques dealer and did an antiques dealer’s world.  My girlfriend would become my wife and... a dealer too.  We would wander together being dealers.  One day, over a decade later, we had one of those chance encounters one has in life with someone from the past.  In this case it was the son of the family.  It was one of those neo-college days encounters, when both youths are passing to “career” (and destiny) of “choice”.  The fumbling conversation on the street extended to an invitation to the parent’s home on the “they’d love to see you” clause we ... hate.  My wife and I went, per invitation and endured one of those ridiculous movements of human interaction.  This situation was complicated because they, the parents, “collected antiques”.  They “ we always have, you know”.  Everything in the home was valuable, bought “right”(cheap) and showed their variably fine taste.  Nothing was for sale.  We withstood a show and tell; a “sharing” as they called it.  I told antiques dealing stories and deflected the inquisition proffered my wife.  Finally, the “Mother”, a women of the home, related to my wife the story, from their vantage point, of my Grandmother and I at the dump.  Self-satisfied at the end of her story she continued by confiding to my wife “You know, he comes from a family of scoundrels”.

            Such fine linguistic use, so carefully chosen, sticks with one.  A courageous compliment paid for the world to hear is actually hard to garner.  My grandmother was not dead yet so I passed it on.  She did not suffer the intellectually vain, nor bothered to respond about them.  Such stunning linguistic gold we treasure in our repertoire.  This example is one of the finest in our collection.  We always repeat it to ourselves when we’re listening to the spoken language used in an attic.  Then we listen past these nuncupative utterances.  We listen to the sound of old things in the attic.  We listen to the soul of this sound.  We are a family of scoundrels.

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[1]:  We’ve all shot them at the dump, with a twenty-two, right?  It was a former wholesome Maine boy activity, now vanquished by “land fill”.