The Ira Benjamin House Contents Sale, On Going - Part Two - "Dog Fight"

The Ira Benjamin House Contents Sale, On Going

Part Two

"Dog Fight"

            “Spring” means “March” as a Maine estate sale... planning... dateline.

            By March I could ‘hear’ ‘something’.  I did.

            I had been through the whole house and attached buildings in February.  I bounced off all the walls, opened all the any door and

            Furtively looked at all the ‘their contents’.  And said nothing.

            “Bailed right in there” is, in picker words, what I ‘looked at’.  IF... the back corner of a room showed a Colonial era banister back chair’s TOP sticking up... I saw that and, too, will not tell you (or anyone else) if it “is” “an arm chair”.  Most of you wouldn’t ask after it any way.  “I can bet on the dog”.

            Is picker ‘say’.

            About this... and what happens next.

            Straitening my tie and ‘approaching’ the ‘estate’ was

            Not going to work.  I

            Dropped that.

            Sister Bitch got herself into trouble herself ‘in there’ trying to over-manage Edn’s own over-managed ‘grab that’... ‘quest’.

            I heard that in March.

            “Fourth of July” I heard “that the FAMILY”

            “Plans”

            to “DO”

            “THE SALE”

            What I’d seen of the bailed-in-there... be a dog fight of  a sale... doing that.

            So I stopped by when I see’d the front door... to the Ira Benjamin house... wide open one day and

            “Jesus the whole damn family” squeaking like rats and bats up FRONT in the house with I noticing that ONE of the “garage” stalls’... doors was open showing stacked up banana boxes... evidently full... next to the next stall that still had the one car of the estate there “No one’s taken that OFF yet?” I said to myself

            THAT is a trail sign, Mr. Man.  Especially when those banana boxes are FULL:

            “THEY’RE BRINGING SHIT IN”.

            Inside the front door Ms. Bitch was bitching at the hiding men and

other ‘barking dog’ women.  Outside this front door smoking.  Hand-on-can drinking

            SO-dah

            I could see

            With their BIG-BLACK pickup truck BIG WHEELED backed up TOWARD the door.  And that garage stall.

            “THEY UNLOADED THAT SHIT” (in the banana boxes).

            The front rooms to the right and left were qualified by a “PUT THERE” table next to the front stairs ‘go up’ to block a straight walk to the back of the front hall AND be the ‘pay here desk’ for... ‘the sale’.  The actual stairs was ‘piled high blocked’ with

Banana boxes.  I

            Could only get admitted to the doorways of the two front rooms and them rooms was ‘in make-up’; having a make-over and were not “READY”

            I was told.  But my eyes ripped around both rooms and I could...

            I’m not telling you what I saw.  Go to the damn sale yourself.

            The line will be down the street

            And that bitch told me that “No one can go in before the sale”

            Too.

            I seen enough to ‘figure’:  “Bet on the dog”.

            My dog.  I’ll bet my dog against your dog any day:  Any dog fight.

            Any day.

            “I’ll bet the dog”.

            You can bet all you want on your dog.  You’d be better off betting on my dog.

            You can bet on that too; that betting my dog is better than betting your dog.

            I went betting them too; that bitch and her family.  Easy bet.  My dog will rip their dog’s head off.  “Better keep that little dog LOCKED in the CAR”.  So I poked out.

            After poking in.

            “Others tried it” I heard; other pickers tried to ‘get in’.  “Bet my dog that’s one Hell of sale.” one picker... confided.

            “Ain’t gonna be no God Damn SALE.” Another one confided.  “THEM BRINGING IT IN.  I ain’t going there to buy their GOD DAMN baby toys JESUS”.

            Him... he bet his dog right.

            This sale... was a  ‘Frozen Charlie’.  That’s doll collector slang for an antique doll;  the deliberately fixed white ceramic porcelain unmoving head and vacant mesmerized expression of a classic ‘NOTHING THERE’ Victorian doll head.  A ‘frozen Charlie’ of a ‘SALE’

            I bet the dog.

            But there’s gonna be a dog fight

            At that sale.

            First they moved the sale ‘back’ to Memorial Day Weekend.

            Then one of them told the other one that she’d hear that ‘they run out of money’ before that (professional yard sale buyers have spent all their money before Memorial Day so ‘stop buying’ ‘good’).  So they moved the sale back to the first of May.  And had it:

            The sale.

            You’s stood in line and they let twenty people in.  At a time.  You’s could ‘go in’ the garage stall next to the estate car in its stall.  That car weren’t for sale “BUT TELL US IF YOUR INTERESTED”.  The banana boxes were gone and the open stall was full of... ‘brought in’... ‘for sale’.  You didn’t need to stand in line for those offerings.  You could ‘just buy them’.

            INSIIDE the ...front rooms of the... Ira Benjamin house... was the

            Heart of the sale.  I understand; was told... so... understood.

            I didn’t go to the sale myself.  I bet my dog.

            That “ROOMS” were the only “ROOMS” where “ANYTHING IS FOR SALE”.  No others spaces were accessible.  Nothing else but what was in those rooms was for sale.  Very little, I understand, “CAME FROM” “THE HOUSE”.  Pickers told me that.

            Over and over.  Most of them had ‘bet their dog’ on the “SALE”

            And lost.

            The sale was held Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  It ‘started at nine’ the first two days and ‘after dinner’ (1 PM) on Sunday.  When I arrived at the sale on Sunday, no one was there except a stringer of family members ‘sitting’

            Around outside the front door.  No one was buying anything.  Both front rooms ‘still have’

            “A LOT”

            “FOR SALE”.  I didn’t buy anything either.  I didn’t even WANT anything.  I poked around.  I joked around with one guy about his ‘chop saw’

            “IT DON’T WORK” he... confided.  IN the front right room, at the front wall... between the two front windows, the wall was blank.  A small hole suggested that something had ‘hung there’.  I stared at the wall.  The blank spot.  The tiny hole.

            I tilted my head back and looked up at the ceiling.  Right up above where I stood was the upstairs room used as ‘her dressing room’ (Part One).  In that room, directly above where I stood looking up, hanging centered between the two front windows of the room, was the small Federal Neoclassical gilt wood looking glass.  I’d ‘seen’.

            And said nothing.

            I bet my dog.

            It was still hanging there with I standing below it looking up at the floor board ceiling and ...feeling the looking glass’ warm light halo shining down through the floor board ceiling on me right then-there in the front room...

            I bet my dog.

            The next year they; the heirs of the Ira Benjamin house, had the exact same sale all over again.  Just exactly the same with I going on Sunday exactly the same and standing in the front room the same staring at the floor board ceiling.  This year

            I bet my dog

            They’re gonna “HAVE ANOTHER SALE”

            There

            Too.

            “This year’s gonna be a dog fight in there”

            One of the local pickers has already told me.

            “HOW YOU KNOW that (looking) GLASS IS STILL HANGING THERE?”

            “I don’t

            Know.  But I’ll

            Bet my dog

            It is”.