"Can" B. Worth - Part Ten

"Can" B. Worth

Part Ten

            “At seven” begins for me… by ritual innovated in 1968 and perfected to a “never wavering” by 1974 …at three.  AM.  Everyday.  Seven (or a little earlier) is my preferred already-arrived-at-the-site-estate-cleanout-start-time.  Start at seven means I must “leave” for the site by five allowing two hours to “get there”.  To be “ready” by “five”, in a pleasant and cheery way, is best done with …two hours to do what could be done (“jammed”) in thirty minutes.  I do not like being “jammed” in the morning.  The solution is to allow enough time.  In my work day, six o’clock is “I’m late”.  I will not mention flat tires and those et al.

            “At three” starts with hot and strong black coffee. It concludes with “breakfast”.  Today’s breakfast was …leftover stir fried green beans and roast chicken mixed into a …heavy on the garlic… “my wife (home) made it”… white bean soup.  A large portion.  This is a standard hardy meal.  I cannot have my system go into hunger alert at 10:15 when I’ve been at it three hours “on site” AND have to “talk to the owner” who …just showed up.  No; I have to be able to “go past lunch time” should I need to “no matter what”.

            My hair combed, teeth brushed, jacket and tie on, brief case loaded, packing  and moving supplies tied down on the truck, cell phone and extra truck keys on board and “I HAVE THE KEY” (to the purchase lot in the locked office) ready… I pause outside to look across our rural Maine farm pasture as the sun starts to rise and… reflect on how I am “pretty God damn lucky that this is what I do it looks like I’m off to a good start to the I OWN that office full of antiquarian & rare book GOLD LET’S GO!”  Another hot cup of coffee in the cab, TWO “Are you up?” cell phone calls to my… “help” and… a glance at the gas gauge… completes “the start”

            I arrive at the same parking space seventeen minutes early.  My help “is coming”.  I have one man in his oversize “too expensive to run for this business” pickup truck and TWO “boys” in their regular “beater” pickup truck.  They all get paid by hours of work.  I decide those hours and the pay.  In addition to generous accounting, I allow them extra “paid” time without mentioning it… always.  I don’t tell them ANYTHING about ANYTHING… even if they are loosing money “doing this” by “thinking they know what they are doing”.  They don’t.  I have been in this business way too long… so know that they will “not make it”.  Brute force, strength, work ethic, civility, interest, enthusiasm, on time and each-the-master-of-their-own-finance… CANNOT overcome the core flaw of “don’t know what they are doing” about “the stuff” “even if it landed on their head”.  I chose them for THIS JOB because of that; they know …only what they think they know… about “rare books”.  When it comes to THIS actual cleanout, the cast of characters alone; Can, Mr. Lawyer, the history professor and the girl in the office with Can’s can AND the parking tags “at eight”…:  In the estate trade the damnation is in dark detailing of those people, the leverage of that AND the setting, in total, including “risk management” financing.  The day any of them (my gathering of “help” drawn from “the trade”) brings their first estate cleanout hooked and into their boat, and it NOT BE a “my aunt’s house”, I WILL BE THERE and “will gut it” (buy all the good stuff cheap) if I can.  The disciplines of this work are ruthless.

            HERE and NOW at this moment of starting “on site”… with this being an ALL ME event, “on schedule” I practice my CORE cleanout RITUAL.  “The building opens at six” and I could see by the well lighted halls IT WAS.  Out of the truck, into the building, down the hall to… “number nine”.  Key out, in lock, turn lock, unlock, door opens, VERY DARK.  Turn light on.  STOP.  STAND there.  CAREFULLY LOOK AROUND.  SLOWLY.  RE-DO THAT.

            “Undisturbed”.  My me says that.  My GUT says that.  My EYES say that… right down to the pipe rack holding up John Neal’s CDV.  I reaffirm ALL THAT again.  Then I am done.  NO ONE “broke in and stole Can’s stuff”.  I made it… this far… in “sweating the deal”.  ALL I have to do now is …get everything out of here… as fast as I can… without “being bothered” (have the deal messed up somehow) and LEAVE THE SITE.  I closed the door, locked it, walked back to the truck and “get ready” but NOT before noting two things.

            One.  There was an office door a crack open with “someone in there” up the hall.  It was NOT the history professors office.

            Two.  BEFORE I lock and leave the office… and am still standing there at the door “affirmed” AND the clean out is about to begin… I have my reverent moment… as I do EACH TIME in EACH estate purchase – clean out.  ALL are singular and all have the character cast, usually dead, of “I OWNED THIS” and “NOW IT IS TOSSED AT SEA” “TOO YOU!?!?”.  Yes; me.

            I got it, I’m getting it, it’s mine.  ALL MINE.  THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED to “all” your “stuff” Can.  Can… sat in that office “for at least a century” filling it jammed full in cardboard boxes and… in the end… I got it all “untouched”.  NO ONE has ever looked in ONE BOX …except me… looking in one.  (Remember that box?  I am coming back to it shortly).  “He was in there” fifty, sixty, SEVENTY years?  Actually not quite fifty.  It is a very poignant moment in my estate trade craft; the baton of ownership “ALL OF IT” passed, here totally unscathed, from Dead Can to ME.  AND NO ONE ELSE or their …craven… eyes “see it”.  Even my help is protectively selected to “Just carry the boxes out, load them and put them (VERY CAREFULLY) in the …empty and waiting for ALL of them… storage unit”.  I get ALL of Dead Can.  Right here, right now.  Each estate cleanout / purchase HAS THIS MOMENT.  Savor it.  Actually… most people just “bitch about the mess” “CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!”.  They’re in the wrong business.  I LOVE THIS MOMENT.  IT IS WHAT ALL OF THIS (being an estate contents trader of antiques and rare books) IS ABOUT.  And it will affect the rest of this story.

            How?  This isn’t about the ‘rare books’.  “Why?”  Because Dead Can wasn’t about the rare books.  OH don’t worry there plenty of ‘rare books’ in that office and those boxes.  But they are not worth a line by line glory count of old pamphlet treasure found.  No.  This is about Dead Can; the book collector, the man, the method, the meaning, the bibliomania, the book madness and WHAT MESSAGE he left IN THAT MADNESS… AND in that packed office that… I had already correctly identified as “his fort” that he built to …hide from the world’s “I HATE”.  I knew THAT right STANDING THERE and:

            Also knew the Dead Can must begrudgingly acknowledge the “HIS LUCK” that it was ME who showed up and “got it”.  In more ways than one.

            So what happens next is …I go back to the truck, free up the moving supplies, the other trucks arrive and WE go to the office.  By 7:15 the first dolly load of boxes goes to the trucks.  Box after box is stacked on to the dollies and loaded.  NO BOX IS INSPECTED in any way at all.  I…. I tape each box shut with ONE piece of tape QUICKLY.  Boom, boom, boom, BOOM that box is in the back of the truck.  A full truck goes to the storage unit (thankfully) SIX MILES AWAY and is unloaded into a ready and waiting EMPTY “ten by twenty” “pack them EIGHT HIGH”.  I don’t say “Don’t look at anything”.  They don’t.

            I never leave the office …except to pee down the hall.  We get the parking tags at eight.  No one comes to the office or to the trucks.  The truck loading site “looks like someone is doing something and they know what they are doing and are supposed to be doing that”.  The one open door on the hall is closed and locked.  No one is around in the building; we see no one.  We roll.

            I am in charge IN the office.  I “cleanout” from front to rear without inspecting anything.  Box after stacked box “goes”.  AS I SUSPECTED along the walls of the office and throughout the boxes is “loose iota”.  Lots of it.  I brought empty boxes.  I…. EYE…that and pack and tape that into those boxes… as fast as I can.  THEY ARE LOADED, mixed in.  It become quickly apparent that this is YEARS and YEARS of packed boxes smothering past packed boxes backward into the whole office… WITH an overdrive of down-along-the-wall-sides having “bookshelves” “full” AND… loose and uncharted (on the Dead Can boxed timeline) “more iota”.  “Hoarder / hoarding” is personally declared by me… TO ME only.  More boxes, “TAKE EVERYTHING”… even ALL OF the trash.  EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING… GOES.

            By ten we are “DEEP” to the rear.  The whole two thirds of the front is “exposed” and “getting empty”.  MORE BOXES still block back to the …buried… windows.  “EXTRA WORK THERE” is my eyeball appraisal as I glance back.  “KEEP GOING” and “NO ONE HAS SHOWED UP YET” was the working policy.  One truck leaves ONLY when the next truck “is back”; “IT’S ONLY SIX MILES”.  The storage unit WILL reach capacity I am told.  “Abandon the furniture” comes to mind.  It “sucks” and is just old clunk office furniture, ca. 1941.   I always leave that “you can have it” stuff for LAST anyway.

            Ok… so we make it by noon.  Cleaned out by eleven thirty-NINE.  Both trucks loaded AND my truck full TOO.  The office furniture is grouped together in the center of the OTHERWISE “broom clean” (we took the sweepings too!) (might be a piece to something in that) EMPTY office.  I put a penciled note on a chair seat:  “College Property”.  That should take care of THAT.  I only have to get it by Mr. Lawyer.  That note will DO THAT.  After that “who cares”.  I lock the door.  The trucks leave.  I turn the key in at the office.  It’s a different woman and she is at the other second tier desk.  I see no soup can or handsome books.  “Thank you.” she says.  I drive to the storage unit after calling Mr. Lawyer’s office and saying “we are done key turned in at office”… leaving that as a message to his “receptionist”.  I never hear from him “about it” again ALTHOUGH I DO HEAR FROM HIM about the estate… again.  I unload the trucks, pay the crew, they leave, I unload MY truck and close the storage unit.  Then… I am homeward bound.  I don’t look at or take ANYTHING.