"Can" B. Worth - Epilogue - Part Two

"Can" B. Worth

Epilogue - Part Two

            To by-pass Dead Can’s early collecting was easy if one confined the time line to the buried office beneath the packed boxes.  The old stuff from that era was placed in the office and remained where it was placed.  And buried.  I did box up most of it myself.  I knew in the shortest seconds I handled these old books that “there were some good ones” but “I’d get to them eventually”.  MY real passion was to return to that one first test box I’d peeked into on the first day; the “tip of an iceberg” box.  That box exhibited an entirely different Dead Can as a book collector… with “real” “rare books”. 

            Please recall this box (Part One).  Beneath 1974 tax papers I quickly discovered a copy of CRONICLES OF CASCO BAY in its original - from-the-rare-bookseller – mailer and… two early Maine railroad pamphlets.  After completely processing the contents of that box …in about ten minutes… which held more similar Maine pamphlet format Americana… the mailer I threw out.

            MY dull witted vision focused on one of the original railroad pamphlet’s owner’s signature at the top of the front wrapper; William Pitt Fessenden, the Maine politician and Secretary of the Treasury under President Lincoln.  This signature elevated this old book to a… Maine Civil War – President Lincoln association copy… meaning… slightly more money… only… BUT “easier to sell”.  Smacking my lips and rubbing my hands together I …moved on in search of more… JUST THIS SORT OF RARE BOOK; the “yeah that” rare book purchased “back then” cheaply that NOW had elevated itself through time and rise of interest in the details of American history to be… a… “better” rare book.  THOSE rare books “I can sell”.

            The CHRONICLES OF CASCO BAY had two trail signs I did review at this time.  I knew that Dead Can lived with a view of Casco Bay so logically a… scholarly based… interest in the local history of his house view “made sense” AND that critical (scholarly) study WOULD include “reading everything” about the region with that meaning “buying everything” (rare books) about the region …even if one had never seen the publication before as long as it “was cheap” AS this Boston rare bookseller would have priced THIS old pamphlet:  “CHEAP” because “who wants it” because …only an obsessive scholarly local history reader would “want it” because… rare Americana booksellers ALREADY KNOW THAT THE BOOK… does NOT contain “good historical” (read: good reading active factually accurate source narrative history) content so “is no good” (NOT worth a lot of money).  BUT:  Dead Can; the professitorial local history buff reader AND rising rare book collector… “would have to read it”.

            And be disappointed.  Right away.  After a single “cover to cover” “reading” he… put it back in the mailer and “screw that” chucked it into the box and… never touched it again.  EVER.  No one did until I DID and… the quality of the pamphlet has not changed… nor has the market for it… AT ALL in four decades.  The same applies the railroad pamphlets; DULL READING, “with folding map”.  Old, attractive to the rare book eye but… “not valuable”… EVEN WITH THE ASSOCATION signature:  (“Really?  YOUR collecting Fessenden?”).  They will sell.  Sort of.  After buying them “cheap”, reviewing them, probably looking them up in Williamson and… unfolding and looking at the maps… once… INTO THE BOX they went.

            Putting a more favorable vantage on all this I denote:  JUST that someone is doing this… radically separates them… from the rest of …anyone.  Dead Can I NOTED at the time of the original box poke… was “ONE OF US”; a participant in Maine rare books.  NOBODY has this sort of pamphlet “around” unless they are a rare book fellow traveler.  The “in the original dealer’s mailer” alone (disregarding ANYTHING that’s IN IT) is a trail sign of THIS.  That the old “kicked back” pamphlet was inside IS NOT UNUSUAL to my work.  I HAVE SEEN THIS… VERY OFTEN in rare book collector estates.  I KNOW THIS, in seconds, AND WHAT IT MEANS.  It means “tip of an iceberg”.  FROM that very first moment… I KNEW I was “good” in this stuffed full office because only a true rare book collector would have “kicked back” that pamphlet IN THE MAILER.  Outside of the rare book world… “never would happen”.  I could bank on it.  And did.  By ravenously sleuthing “the boxes”.  “For more”.

"Can" B. Worth - Epilogue - Part One

"Can" B. Worth

Epilogue - Part One

            Was I stupid?  Or being stupid?  Or just being “normal”?  Or just being an …antiques and rare book dealer?

            The simple solution to estate purchases is to claim victory at the end of each purchased estate lot when “all of it” “is yours” and the “cashing in” begins.  As I stated earlier, once in the storage unit, Dead Can’s “stuff” was “whose in a hurry?” for I knew it was good, profitable and …actually easy to realize this latter.  All I had to do was sort through the mound of boxes, take out “anything good” and …sell it.  Quickly the boxed mound would be sorted and gone, the storage unit “empty”, the “anything good” turned into cash and… I would be off doing another similar “deal” somewhere else.

            I was already proceeding to do just that when I returned to the office with my test box and grocery bag of old books.  The latter I took out of the bag… restacked them in approximately the same three piles they’d been stacked in on the table by the window… at the back right far corner of a cleared sorting table... putting the cherub-on-book paperweight on top of one stack and… proceeded to not touch them for several months.  It’s not as if those books were “VALUABLE” “RARE BOOKS”.  Most were, at best, “attractive” “old” “used books” of no value ($2.00-$15.00).  The rest; the clutch of old Maine local histories, were “valuable” as “rare books” until one endeavors to find a premium buyer for… a “HISTORY OF WEST SUMNER MAINE”.  At that point, cash-into-wallet “slackens” unless one “sells it cheap” meaning at a price (ten to fifteen bucks) that “anyone would buy it”.  Soooo… at the back corner they rested… being “preserved” for me “later”.

            The test box was more rudimentary… and tragic.  Hefted up on to the sorting table it was… truly… promptly… as fast as possible and …very cavalierly… “sorted” into GOOD, SALEABLE, BOX LOT, NO GOOD.  It took about fifteen minutes to go from packed-to-the-top full box to empty old cardboard box DISCARD IT.  The whirling ratio of my knowing eye and nimble finger tips “picked” through whole boxes full of “old paper” to display …in just minutes… a neat stack of “rare books” found, a neat stack of more ephemeral “rare books” found and… “the rest of it”.  This last was put in another cardboard box that was stacked with actually matching (uniform stacking) cardboard boxes in a new, growing larger …but fully distilled… mound of boxed paper to be “disposed of” “eventually.  The “disposed of” is the common plan of all estate “waste”.  The “eventually” is what actually happens.  It can be… decades… before an estate waste paper lot is ACTUALLY “disposed of”.  Usually they end up “getting sold” somehow.  But that all “takes years”.  Of crucial importance here, the procedure of processing the boxes was started and… raced along… as little piles of “gold” were extracted from box after taped shut box.  I was “doing great” at getting that part of the job done and finding… “great stuff” “too”.

            Or was I?  What I actually found was, as a review of the rare books highlighted so far as this tale has gone along shows; was an “ALL OVER THE PLACE”… gathering… nearing an accumulation at times… of truly “good” “rare books” VERY erratically, very disorderly, very “no plan?” and very “WHAT THE?” stored… in most cases… neatly, safely and CONCIOUSLY within… a non-descript cardboard box …that was stacked up on top of the one before it and …buried after the next one was placed on top of it… in the office… that had been filled; packed-solid-full, from back to front… over decades.

            “Hunky-dory” and before I gave any thought to this procedure at all I had… knowingly… selected and processed at least a third and nearly one half of all “the old boxes”.  “Knowingly” defines that my sharp eye and quick wit merge early to be able to “spot” an older “Dead Can” box among later or packed-by-me boxes.  I “naturally” preferred and selected these because they were “better” meaning they contained older Dead Can collected “rare books”… and I… “liked that better”.

            Therein began the new dawn-upon-me light.

            First I began to inkle that Dead Can “evolved” as a collector of rare books.  He started out a young professor with an empty bookshelf lined office and a “I like old books” attitude and… went from there …until death… ALL in the same room.  His early shelf filling was “beginning collector” classic.  He read.  He liked to read.  Therefore he purchased books.  To read.  By his… highly educated and preferential standards that HE developed as HE went along.  Then he began to have an “eye for an old book”.  That is; old books caught HIS eye and HE started to prefer them AND be interested in them.  And collect them.  Sort of.  “Sort of” means “money” “spent”.  He didn’t spend much.  Of course back then the old books didn’t (“Who wants THOSE?) cost much.  He began to wander around …into the rare book trade… with a developing eye for “old books”.  And… having the education and love for reading that supports that… on a teacher’s salary… “during lunch time”, (?).  An example of his colleting of this era?  He gathered at least eight “old” but NOT “rare first edition copy” of Sara Orne Jewett’s DEEPHAVEN.  All were “a nice copy” but not “valuable”.  I did NOT hunt for Dead Can boxes from this era.  Most of this era was confined to the long buried book shelves anyway and I… had boxed those books up myself.  I… KNEW what THOSE BOOKS WERE, already.  The exceptions; treasures of a “good book” are shown by the Longstreet and “FAMOUS FLIES” volumes; found in the open.  THEY show the Dead Can of the future actually “finding” “a rare book”.  Somehow, during lunch, these tomes had appeared before him, appealed to him, he purchased them and brought them back to the office to become part of… HIS COLLECTION.  By my configured timeline, “FAMOUS FLIES” was purchased between 1945 and 1950.  But possibly… it could have been purchased TWO decades later… for the same reason.

            This first phase Dean Can became MY first phase dawn-upon-me light.  I quickly developed the mental portrait of Dean Can.  Young, new professor.  New wife.  New Family.  New home… overlooking Casco Bay.  New office; empty of books.  Lively, interested, interesting, funny, happy, clairvoyant, man on campus, fellow traveler on all University matters, omnivore reader, library frequenter, “loves his wife”, commutes to work in his new car that SHE drives, home for dinner, lunch with “students” or “other members of the faculty.  Etc.  This etc. means… slowly… old books began to appear on the book shelves in his office and… he read them.  And liked them.  More and more he “liked” “old books”.

I DID NOT LIKE THEM or this early Dead Can portrait.  I …BLEW RIGHT BY IT… looking for “good boxes”; the boxes of Dean Can BOOK COLLECTOR.  But I did find, notice and track Dead Can’s trail into the “good boxes” era.  I couldn’t miss it and knew it well from seeing others “did the same” in other estates.  Therefore, I DID actually “care” without taking responsibility for that caring.

            When I found the scattered old Portland, Maine and hither used booksellers business cards… sometimes with a title noted in pencil on the back… I DID care.  Printed hand lists of old books offered… sometimes… actually had a book underlined on them… THAT I “knew what it was”, cared about that and FOUND THAT BOOK “later”.  One had a purchase receipt in it.  I took it out and “BOX LOT – NO GOOD” it went.  Later-later I actually looked at the boxed stacked mound with this receipt in mind and pondered “which one (box) do you think it’s in?”. 

            Within this foggy beginning of book collecting …I… watched Dead Can …leave the water of his good life and …walk on land INTO the devil’s snare of book collecting; bibliomania.  Starting as a “fine young man” he became a book collector.  One solid step into the jungle of that exotic land following another.  I… started to find myself… following him.

"Can" B. Worth - Part Twelve

"Can" B. Worth

Part Twelve

            For ten days I had no contact with the Carlton B. Worth estate.  I did not explore my purchased office lot stored in the storage unit and… I had no other contacts.  On that tenth day’s morning TWO contacts occurred.  At 7:00 AM, I, alone, visited the storage unit holding my purchased lot.  An hour and forty-five minutes later Mr. Lawyer telephoned me about the estate.

At the storage unit, I surveyed the tightly packed mass casually.  After very little deliberation I selected ONE old box, taped shut by me, to take with me and “look at”.  The little deliberation was that I knowingly selected a moderately “old” box; one from the 1960’s or 1970’s I calculated, that DEAD CAN himself had packed full and put away so being sure it was not one that I …had packed full and put away.  Being as it was a sort of “test box”, I also made sure it was NOT the “test box” (“tip of the iceberg”) I had initially poked when I was pretending to inspect the office contents.  I already knew THAT box was “good” AND …easily identified it in the piled mass.  Taking this single old box… that was heavy enough that I used a dolly to move it… to the truck, I then closed and locked the storage unit and …drove away.

The telephone call from the Mr. Lawyer was …crackling cell phone brisk and to the point:  “Would you (I) come with me to (Dead Can’s actual private residence that his wife lives in) and tour the estate with us (Mr. Lawyer and Mrs. Dead Can) and tell me (Mr. Lawyer) if you see anything I should know about you will be paid how about ten thirty OK meet me at TEN.”

I did and we; Mr. Lawyer and I, arrived at the Carlton B. Worth …homestead… at ten fifteen “early”.  Mr. Lawyer ignored that and was greeted, with me tagging behind him, by Mrs. Worth who obviously was expecting us and seemed pleased that we actually were there… “early”.  I was introduced and titled as “assisting with the inspection… to help if necessary”.  I never had to say anything else though I did make some light chit-chat about the birds at the bird feeders outside the living room and kitchen windows.

“Neat as a pin”, nasty clean and “un-lived in perfect”, all circa 1950-1963 “with additions” into the 1970’s and… all upon neutral “wall to wall” carpeting… describes in short the …long… end to end one floor ranch house that …rolled away from me as we entered the side door by the attached garage, stepped into and through the kitchen forward to the dining room and… beyond.

We stopped in the dining room.  I scanned with my raking antiques dealer eye “discovering” a… 1950’s dining set AND matching “buffet” AND “cups and saucers; “a collection” displayed in THAT along with the… “good china” “we eat off at Thanksgiving.  Easter.  Christmas day.  And New Years day”.  Mentally clicking to “NEXT” room “PLEASE” did no good for I did have to …nose ALMOST touches the buffet door’s “it’s locked” (thank GOD) glass… “inspect” “the collection”.  “Very nice.” MIGHT have been murmured by me but …I don’t recall specifically.  The living room was next.  And worse.  Sterile, “new stuff” and… never a rare book EVER… including “art work” “by local painters” on the walls (covered bridges and larger long view of “deer” “in the meadow”. 

AND a glass door “locked” bookcase of “spine ends” of …obviously THE collection of “handsome copies”.  “Should I unlock it?”

“Ah, no.  I don’t believe we need to.  These are all YOUR books.” I said while carefully bending down to visually interrogate the spine ends.

“Oh yes.  Can gave them to me.  All of them.  Over the years.  One maybe two a year.  He loved them. (pause).  I love them too.”

I glanced at Mr. Lawyer.  He had made the correct configuration; “not worth making anything about”.  That was conveyed to me by his mute face.  I returned to the interrogation for my OWN intrigue.

            Beginning at the top left with Hawthorne’s TWICE TOLD TALES… (not a first edition but lightly “extra illustrated”) (I DID look at that book) and progressing across the shelves with, at first, similar classic ilk… that slid ever downward in title bite as… the years rolled by… Dead Can had covered birthday and holiday annually, unrelentingly …and progressively with ever less “give a damn” but with NO comprise on the “handsome copy” binding.  Each gilt gold spine end reinforced its neighbors so that the bookcase, as a whole fixture on display… “knock the socks… OFF” any passing-by biblio-curious …eye.  He did the job there and Mrs. Worth did not question the obvious; those old books in that locked bookcase were “very good” and “hers”.

            And not for sale… in the lifetime of.

            Escaping was easy.  I stood up, turned, faced the picture window overlooking Casco Bay (Maine) in the distance.  I walked to the window and contemplated the view.  It was NOT a “money” view.  It was a “safe and sure” view of the classic sort found in these 1950’s subdivisions; just enough “glimpse” to always assure that one “lives on the coast” but without the cost of “living on the water”.  Dead Carl never owned a boat.  Or ever thought of owning one.  Or ever thought of this view.  Or ever LOOKED OUT THIS WINDOW.  It; the window, was one of those windows that NOBODY looks out of… except to “look at the bird feeder”.  And that I did.

            We went to the next room; “THE DEN” or “TV room” “your choice”.  The TV was on.  The sound was very low.  She; Mrs. Worth, sat in THAT chair… I determined.  Dead Can had sat in THAT CHAIR… over there by the small table before a window with the little stacks of old… mostly 19^th century publisher’s cloth bound books (!!!!) WITH, on top of one stack, a …matching… 19^th century but faux and cast in plaster green with gilt gold publisher’s cloth book PAPERWEIGHT… with a little faux bronze angelic cherub attached to its top.  I actually touched that.  I did not touch the actual books.  I did eye them enough to “I’m ok” and “walk from them”.  I thought.

            Mrs. Worth did not think so.  SHE watched ME.  Mr. Lawyer watched HER.  I, after glancing at the Mrs. Worth profile being watched by Mr. Lawyer… proceeded more energetically to… be about to touch that damn books… WHEN… Mrs. Worth says

            “THOSE books are CARL’S BOOKS from the COLLEGE.  I forgot about them.  They have to go BACK.  To the college.  To his office”.  This was, at the utterance beginning, directed toward me but was turned upon Mr. Lawyer.  This left ME not touching the books and looking toward Mr. Lawyer too.  “I’ll get you a BOX to put them in.” Mrs. Worth said and… walked out of the room.

            Observing Mr. Lawyer… do nothing, glance at me, resume doing nothing and ignore me… I did move to the ‘do something – inspect the books” animation mode... and was exonerated from this by …Mrs. Worth returning with a … doubled brown paper grocery shopping bag (“TRADER JOES”), walking right over to me with this, handing it to me without word so forcing my acceptance of it… as I glanced again at Mr. Lawyer.

            He scowled a silent omen to “just pack up the books” that I understood and …did.

            The books passed through my hands; twenty-one books in three little stacks with the cherub paperweight… on top… after my eyeball danced on the spine ends as I “largest on the bottom to smallest on top” packed them into the bag… to see …very imprecisely… not rare but READER copies of… Thoreau, Whitman, Dickenson, Jewett and Alcott, 19^th century English and American literature survey (?), Wadsworth, Shelly, American Colonial Living (?), and SIX small Maine 19^th century town histories; Saco-Biddeford, Belfast, West Sumner (!), Peaks Island (Casco Bay), Gilead and “The Kennebec Valley.

            They fit.  The cherub was on top.  The bag full… on the floor… by the little table… with its lamp… by the window… with me looking toward Mr. Lawyer who was looking toward Mrs. Worth who was… leaving the room into the … it turned out… “bedrooms” off of the “HALLWAY” along the whole back side of the house.  “SWIFTLY” describes our review of these rooms, including the barren master bedroom and “never use these” “guest” (former… though one would never know it… “the children’s” “rooms”.  We ended up at the hallway’s end with this being the back entrance to “the kitchen” beside “the basement door”.

            This was opened, we descended the stairs …to a PERFECTION of “well lighted” bone dry supper vacuumed clean “basement with a …nasty, NASTY neat laundry area and… way off across the emptiness past the oil furnace, water tank and bulkhead “door to the outside”… a stand alone older 1960’s  Sears / Craftsman style workbench with a few tools and a, possibly but not inspected, small “tool box” on its top.  Mrs. Worth surveyed this cement walled desolation with, in my words; “utmost satisfaction”.

            We left.  I carried the bag of books… NOT by the handles but with my arms around it.  I put it on the floor of the back seat of Mr. Lawyer’s car.  It was not mentioned.  He didn’t mention anything nor queried me to “did you SEE anything?” as he usually did.  There was NOT anything anyway… except the bag of books.  This was resolved by him when he parked next to my truck and we got out.  “Don’t forget your bag of books” he said.

            “My bag?” I said.

            “I don’t want ‘em”. he said.  “You LIKE old books don’t you?  They’re yours anyway; from that office.”

            Including a very SHORTEST glance at him, I didn’t question that, plucked the bag promptly out of his car and… put it into the passenger’s side of the cab next to the …carefully selected test box… I chosen that morning.  And left… AFTER Mr. Lawyer thanked me and said the “I think that is it for THIS one” meaning my work for him on this estate was done by HIS view. 

            MY view should have been that it was going to just begin… but I was TOO STUPID to recognize this … “Can B. Worth” wholeness “yet”.

"Can" B. Worth - Part Eleven

"Can" B. Worth

Part Eleven

            “Pretty cavalier” I’m told to “don’t look at or take …anything”.  Why?  And why NOT?  Why is because I am, at that moment, a little too involved, sweaty, dirty, discombobulated and …frazzled… to be messing with “obvious treasure”.  Why not is because… whose in a hurry?

            I worked for a dealer… who was a hoarder… too… in high school who …drove home, literally… that “if you can get it to your property it’s yours”.  Taking that youthful mantra into estate cleanouts for forty plus years teaches… that BEYOND the abstract of possession in the trading of antiques and rare books… “things move very slowly”… especially in ‘rare books’.

            NOTHING HAPPENS to fifty year collector’s accumulated gatherings stored in boxes in a storage unit AT ALL excepting the monthly debit of “rent” “due”.  A decade in a box… for a rare book that has already been two-three-four decades in that same box… no one is going to notice… in the ENTIRE rare book world.  “Yep.” and there was only one person with a key, one person who knew about it, one person who “could”… and I, being that one, SAID “maybe not today”.

            But there must have been SOMETHING …when we “cleaned out”:  “Something FOUND”.  Of course there was.  Dead Can, as I sensed from the inspection, was “all over the place” so logically his STUFF was all over the place and… my click-bang eye-spy… “did see” a “that”.  Or a “this”.  And I kept my mouth shut.

            To no avail.  FOR …down along the bookcases on the office side walls…. being exposed as the stacked boxes were peeled away… I couldn’t “get there fast enough” and… Mr. Big Truck helper… bent over to pick up a box… and stopped …with his puffy face looking at a spine end… on a shelf … before him.  Gilt gold lettering upon “polished calf” read “FROM MANASSAS TO APPOMATTOX” with “LONGSTREET” below.

            HE:  Pause with facial squint.  Hands come off of the box he’s about to pick up.  Hand reaches to spine top.  Arm pulls the book from shelf as whole human form rises erect.  Then a stupefied look at the front cover.  A glance at me.  He title pages it.  Pause.  Closes cover.  Pause.  Tilts spine up to view it.  Glances at me.  His arm sets book down sideways on top of the book shelf.  He glances at me.  He bends down and picks up box and puts it on top of the current dolly load.  He wheels the loaded dolly out of the office to the truck.  I look over at the book.  I leave it there.  It stays there.  And stays there.  TWO and a half hours later he says to me “There’s a good Civil War book over there”.

            He wants it.  He doesn’t want it … because he “KNOWS” “it’s valuable”.  He doesn’t actually know that but “THINKS” (a dangerous form of quicksand) he KNOWS “it is”.  So he “wants it”.  But he also “thinks” he “knows” that BECAUSE “it’s valuable” he DOESN’T want it because… I’d “dock” his “pay” “a lot” IF he “wants it”.  A quandary that is enhanced by my “leave it there” …in plain sight.  HE KNOWS I know TOO… after about twenty minutes of “shelf time”.  He never says anything more about it.  After THREE hours I put the book on the top of a box I’m packing up, tape it closed and… it’s dollied away.

            Meanwhile, on another front of this rare book wilderness frontier… and after I DID back pat myself on the Longstreet for it being a “better” “handsome copy” of an equally NOT RARE book compared to the Bryant’s set in the History Office… (and I’ll take it thank you)… I discerned a member of employed helper team two …endeavoring to find their OWN “rare book”.

            This took place up at the front and over to the… behind the opening-in office door… to the seated-at-desk LEFT of Dead Can’s academic office poise.  That region of boxed wilderness we’d “gone past” due to the cramped quarters.  Now having opened space “below” that front corner… behind which I could see… a closet… with its door so piled with boxes it had been “shut forever”… I had ordered that area “cleared”.  Two thirds of the boxes had been moved and the problem of there being a lot of loose iota in and upon these boxes… due to the “just stuff it there” proximity of this area to the desk… had become apparent with me having to double time up there TOO for boxing that stuff up…:  So I was scrambling a bit to stay on top of this “it”.

            This left my employed “them” “alone” “up there” and I could see “slow downs” as they “discovered” LOOSE items “of interest”.  At THIS moment of estate cleanout peril I saw one of them see… a thick plain green cloth bound ‘old book’.  Retrieving it by hand-fishing-it-out… from upon a box with an equalizing stack of old papers… UP into the LIGHT OF DAY it came… after… oh let me say …a quarter century of BURIAL.

            I couldn’t see what the book was but …big, thick, plain, green cloth with no glittered embellishment visible (?) …did not seem to “be a problem”.  BUT young Mr. Holding It In His Hand… seemed TOO curious and captivated and NOT PUTTING IT anywhere and:  HE STARTED LOOKING AT COLORED PLATES… I …saw.  “WHAT ARE THOSE IOTA DABBLED COLOR PLATES?” my mind requested as my eyeballs STRAINED into the cluttered dusty distant darkness of that …frontal frontier.

            I couldn’t tell.  BUT Junior Jenius COULD and was enthralled.  I stopped MY pack-up actions… creating a silence from MY zone that enhanced the stopped work silence from HIS ZONE so… he glanced at me.  Then looked down at the book.  Then back at me while CLOSING THE BOOK and… then turned away from me and set it near the middle of the…had been moved out of the direct way… top had been completely cleared off… desk.  Where it stayed.  For an hour.

            I did nothing for an hour.  I said nothing at all, ever.  During a round robin rotation of the dollies going in and out I went forward to the desk and checked this book.  Instant gratification came to me for it was… the very well known… classically rock solid… forever considered a “good” ‘old book’ … Mary Orvis Marbury “FAMOUS FLIES AND THEIR HISTORIES” (Houghton, Boston, 1892).  Note the “Orvis” in the name AND the THIRTY-TWO … “landmark showcasing” chromolithographic plates of “FAMOUS FLIES” within to behold an “American angling icon” that crosses beyond that due to the intensive apex color depiction plates’ frontal quality …to ANY eye.  I title paged it, plated a couple and… closed the book WITHOUT bothering to “First edition?  First printing?”.  It was easier to ASSUME it was a “second printing”, of five hundred after a “first printing” of five hundred.  They usually are, when found on the loose.  The gone immediately” first printing went to an exclusive group that still “has mine” in their “library” (read; rich people).  This doesn’t matter much… for it’s about the plates.  NOT THAT the little fly fishing stories by a who’s who in American pioneer fly fishing… are not “good” “too”.  Again, “I’ll take it thank you” and I did by waiting until Junior Jenius returned and could actually see me box it up WITHOUT COMMENT so …HE could say something about it… should he choose to.  He didn’t choose to.

            Quick money “can be worth” on these two books?  The Longstreet $150.  FAMOUS FLIES $350..  Don’t worry; there are plenty of copies of either “for sale” at higher prices.  Pushing the penciled “offered at” price to $600 and $1250 respectively completes this “can be worth” by using the “some things can be done as well as others” … rare book pricing moral.

            When that closet door was opened everyone expected to gasp at the gold inside but … it was frontally full with a half century ago collection of Dead Can’s winter coats.  (Eventually I did check ALL the pockets).  There were some more boxes IN THERE TOO but the… closet had fallen into its time capsule sealed state early on so escaped Dead Can’s piggy middle hoarding period of his all of everything stewpot gumbo method of ‘putting away’.  THAT; the scrutiny of this hoarder’s hoard …truly WAS taking my breath away as my morning probed deeper into this…bibliotaphe.  BUT:  IN the front left corner there was promptly discovered… the classic Maine estate old closet find of the (mystery of) the “old rolled up wall map”.

            It… seems to me that NO old Maine estate is complete without at least one “OLD WALL MAP… rolled up… and stuffed… in a closet.  Most of them are “no good” meaning they are of no historic cartographic interest, of little or no cash value and are… often times “absolutely will not sell THAT!” KEPT by the owners of the estate because THEY “THINK” (quicksand again) IT’S VALUABLE.  HERE our discovery did not wrangle with this last.

            It did embrace the “rolled up and stuffed” and the being an “OLD WALL MAP”.  This map was promptly acknowledged by my team “to be good”.  They “think”.  “Unroll it.” I said.  They did.  They view it.  It is “THE STATE OF MAINE”.  I view it.  I don’t think.  I know.  I bend at the waist to see “THIRD EDITION” …. “1844”.  THEY DO TOO.  With creasing, age toning, darkened varnish surface and ratty here & there, it looks, lying on a bed of trash kick toward the front of the office… like a big brown blothed paper NOTHING.  That is what it IS except for the …I’d spied… “By MOSES GREENLEAF” printed below the title.  THIS name means HERE WE BEHOLD the fourth state actual fourth and final edition of his (“GREENLEAF’S”) Maine map, the first to show Maine as it is today.  NOT particularly “rare” but a “the landmark” of Maine mapping, one must tip hat and WALLET to this map …even in this last edition.

            Earlier editions will wrench the wallet from the hands.  This edition can be found… and is.  My quick glance saw an undisturbed state and a “good enough” condition status.  What does that mean it… “Can B. Worth”:   A real quick “four to five hundred” onward and upward to “$2450.” and these days… that’s getting pushed along by steady hands.  I said noting.  I waited until Jenius et al finished deep contemplation and then said “roll it up”.  Then “put it in my truck”.

            There is a book about Greenleaf and his maps… now.  There never used to be one and the maps were still “good” then:  Walter M. MacDougall, SETTLING THE MAINE WILDERNESS  MOSES GREENLEAF , HIS MAPS…., Portland, 2006.  The biggest biblio – commercial sand with lines drawn in it is “Part 3, Maine Maps”, about 100 pages, in “the Thompson sale catalogue”:  Edward V. Thompson, IMPORTANT MAINE MAPS, BOOKS, PRINTS AND EPHEMERA, Orono, Maine, 2003.  The first book will background one on Greenleaf… fully.  The Thompson catalog not only marks the old Maine map sand with “Can B. Worth” but, I add, one will not go far in Maine rare books “without it”.  Both demonstrate why I said noting to the “think it’s valuable” except “put it in my truck”.  It will “be a while” before they discover AND READ either of these reference books. 

"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.