I went to my first auction on Saturday.

It was an estate auction that was down the road from our house and Hubby wanted to go see what they had and asked if I wanted to go. At first I wasn’t going to go. I didn’t think I would like it and since the only thing that I gather in my pockets anymore is lint, I told myself it would be a waste of time. After some persuading on Hubby’s part and one look around the yard that was waiting to be attended to, I figured, “What the hell…why not?”.

The old man that once lived at the house was a recluse. There was only a handful of people that actually talked to him a few times. I don’t think anyone really KNEW him all that well. I’ve passed his house almost everyday for 16 years and I’ve NEVER seen the man. People that live directly across the street from him never seen him. Maybe he just lived his life at night when everyone else was asleep. I don’t know. He was found beside his pond one day, face down in the dirt with a bump on his head. His death sparked some pretty wild imaginations among the ‘hood’ but in the end they (meaning the police, medical examiner) had said that he had a massive stroke and hit his head on a huge rock as he fell.

His wife and kids….(that was a shock to the hood)……….didn’t want the property so it was put up for auction on Saturday along with the contents of the house…or what I thought was the contents of the house.

Once we got there, Hubby took off in one direction while I headed straight towards the goods. I was curious to see what they had. Ok..ok…I was being nosy as hell. I’ve never seen this man and there have always been plenty of rumors (I know…I know…believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see)…BUT…..I wanted to find out if the contents gave away any clues as to what the man was like.

What I saw as far as contents of the house only made me more confused as to what type of character lived at the house. There were Persian rugs, numerous oil paintings, porcelain dolls, Avon bottle and collectors plates, a fur coat, quilts, sets of plates, glasses, fishing poles and other fishing junk, lamps of almost every shape and size, numerous chairs but none that matched any other that was there. There were women’s clothes, kids clothes, men’s clothes. There were a few toys there. There were tons of books….from the romance novel to western to self-help. A very, very nice grandfather clock. A curio cabinet with different crystal figurines, porcelain figures, plates, etc. It was just an odd assortment of stuff that. I’m not sure what I expected but it wasn’t that. Come to find out, the stuff was brought in from the outside. As far as I know, maybe the old man didn't have any contents.

Anyway, the auction got underway. Never having been to one before, I was watching how it worked and what kind of prices the stuff was going for. I had walked around before it started with nothing really jumping out at me so I didn’t bother to get a number. About halfway through the auction, I was looking around at the different stuff when my eyes fell upon a set of three park-like benches that screamed, “BUY ME, BUY ME!!!!”

So I went and got my number.

The auction took FOREVER. I guess it was because I was waiting for the benches to come up and they kept on and on with the small stuff. I was sitting on one of the very benches that I was planning on bidding on talking to a guy beside me about the different stuff that was going and the pricing. He then told me that he was only bidding on one thing.

The benches.

Well, go figure. He had just won the bid against Hubby for some other item. We continued talking…mainly about the benches and then some other guy joined in saying he was thinking about the benches too.

Wonderful…great…The only thing I wanted and I won’t end up with because someone else will out bid me. I already had my price limit in mind and wasn’t going to budge over it even by a dime.

Well…..It seems I didn’t really need to get my panties in a twist anyway.

When they pulled one of the smaller benches to the front, the auctioneer’s voice crackled in the microphone, “Who wants to start me out with a $2,000?”, I almost fell OFF my bench.

I don’t have THAT much lint in my pockets. I was thinking I could scrape enough money if I saw something that I really, really wanted that was a good price but $2000 was not in my ‘good price’ category.

Those benches could sit there and rot for all I cared but that was not the sentiment of the guy I had been talking to earlier about bidding on the benches. Once no one took the bait for the $2,000 that the auctioneer threw out, he threw out some lower numbers to get the bid started. The guy beside me was really excited when it go low enough for him and he was getting into the whole bidding war that was going on between him and another guy. When the auctioneer rattled out $175, the guy bidding stopped for a second and looked at me asking if that was for all three pieces. I hated to destroy his happiness but I had to tell him that it was for EACH piece. His grin turned straight and he looked like he had just lost his puppy. He stopped his bidding. They were sold for $200 each.

I talked to that guy for a few more minutes and then made my way back around to my original standing place. There I noticed an old dry sink, some other small cabinet type thing and an old pedal sewing machine. Three items I would be bidding on.

I missed the sewing machine bid because I was too busy waiting for fries and a drink. It sold for $22.50. Unbelievable. I got out-bid on the dry sink and the other cabinet because I wasn’t willing to scrape that much lint into a piece of furniture that I had really had no room for to begin with.

Although I didn’t get any of the stuff that I wanted, I had a blast and met some really interesting people.

I think Hubby may created a monster.

Last night on the way to softball practice, I rode through some of the old area where my daddy once lived. It’s funny how 20 years can change so many things but not touch some things.

The old 7-11, where some friends and I would walk to every weekend and buy slurpee’s and candy and just hang out for awhile, is no longer a 7-11. The building is still there but it’s no longer and hasn’t been for a long time, a 7-11. Everything around it still looks the same other than an old business sign that replaced the 7-11 sign out front that once advertised the now empty building.

The old school beside the 7-11 is still standing. I’m not surprised about this. It was a very OLD school 20 years ago. They have added on to it and added football fields and baseball fields. The school was a pleasant surprise. It looks better now than it ever did.

There’s a small, white, house across from the school that was once a residence. It is now a tattoo place. The old Hardees is now a check-cashing place. The gas station on the corner is boarded up. The grocery store where we would go every weekend is now some Mexican restaurant on one side and a nail place on the other.

The nice apartments where Daddy once lived are no longer nice. I find it hard to believe that the same apartments I saw last night are the same ones I once spent my weekends. The houses across from the apartments that were once occupied by older people, with manicured lawns and nice looking homes no longer look inviting. The paint has chipped or faded from most of the houses. There is some form of junk vehicle sitting in every yard. The front porch railing, or in some cases, the fence was being used as a clothesline (instead of using the one that was empty in the backyard). Dogs, a kid or two and at least one couch occupied the front porch of almost every house along the road.

About two miles down the road from the apartments it looked like almost everything went untouched by time. There was another school that looked identical to the way I remember it. The houses along that stretch looked the same. Maybe they were painted a different color as my memory can’t recall the exact color of each home but otherwise, I felt like I had stepped back in time.

I’m not sure where the invisible board is that stopped the destruction but I’m sure it won’t last for long. It seems that once the old move out, the new come in and destroy what was once nice and pleasant.

I spent my weekends in the city as a kid and young teen. I wasn't a 'city person' then but it wasn't so bad. It wasn't such a bad place to grow up or spend time. When I was younger, the city was decent. The people were decent. The homes were nice. People took pride in what they had and what was around them. They had respect for themselves and others.

Now, when I go into the city (which isn’t very often), it's just not the same. I don't feel that sense of 'peace' anymore. I am disgusted by the destruction. The filth. The uncaring. The total disrespect for others and their property.

I'm just flabbergasted!!

What was once not a bad place to be has turned into somewhere I don’t care to ever go back to.

The choice of riding in the canoe or my rubber boat was taken from me on Friday morning when we got to the river. I unpacked my rubber boat, started inflating it only to hear the air come out as fast as it went in.

Now that’s exactly how I planned to start my float trip

Hubby patched the hole while we were still at the boat ramp waiting for the others to arrive. By the time everyone got there and we were ready to leave, the patch had set-up enough for Hubby to pump it up and tie it to his canoe so it would have time to set-up completely before I climbed aboard. So I had no choice but to grab a paddle and hitch a ride with Hubby in the canoe.

By the time the patch on the boat had set-up, I was already in “canoe mode”, which takes me awhile to get over the initial fear of them, so we just continued to pull the rubber boat behind the canoe. Hubby even held it up at one point trying to make a sail out of it. I think he got a little nervous when he couldn’t see where we were going and he had to rely on MY eyesight to get us there so he put the boat back in the water.

Eventually a gust of wind caught the rubber boat and started slinging it around the canoe. I’m sure Hubby and I looked like complete idiots, sitting in the canoe trying not to tip over and catch the rubber boat that was blowing around the canoe at the same time. It didn’t take long for us to grab it and once we had it back down on the water, I pulled the plug and let the air out of it.


After that little adventure with the rubber boat blowing around, it was time to sit back and enjoy the river. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. The sun was shining with a nice breeze blowing (as evident by the rubber boat blowing around). The glare off the water from the sun was a little rough on the eyes first thing in the morning but that changed fairly quickly with the movement of the sun.

The first half of this trip goes through prison land. The land stretches for miles on both sides of the river. You can’t see the prison from the river but you can see a few of their outer buildings. This prison was once a huge farm. They, meaning the prisoners, still farm and raise cattle here. Which was very evident by the smell.

Funny because where we live, we smell cow patties all the time. There are two farms we bypass going to our house. I guess the only difference is that in a car, you blow by the smell and it's gone in a few minutes but when you're floating in a canoe down the river, the smell just stays right with you. The arms just don't paddle fast enough in this case

There’s a one-lane bridge that connects the prison land on each side of the river. I’ve been across the top of the bridge via vehicle and under the bridge via water. I’m not sure which one frightens me more. Being ON the bridge with only a 6” concrete barrier stopping a vehicle going over or being UNDER the bridge for the same reason. Neither prospect is too appealing to me.

Once you pass the bridge there’s a very small damn that we had to cross on our way downstream. We made this one of our stopping points to enjoy the water. The water at this point is only about 2 feet deep, if that. We pulled our canoes up to rocky damn and everyone got out to cool off and just relax for a while. We had been in the water for about 15-20 minutes when someone, not sure who, spotted a snake curled up in one of the crevices of the rock where we were standing . Now, I know there are snakes in the river, it IS their habitat after all so I’m not shocked that they are there but I've been lucky enough to have NOT seen any up until this point and I could’ve very well done without seeing this one. It was huge. We couldn’t see his head or tail. The only part we could see was a section of his body that was about 4-5 inches long and a good 3 inches in diameter. That may sound like a small snake to some but anything longer and fatter than an earthworm freaks me out!

Once seeing that, I was more than ready to hop my butt right back in that canoe and carry on down the river. The only thing stopping me was that I knew I had to take my time walking on the rocks to get in the canoe . Hubby was laughing at me saying that is was only a water snake, it wasn’t going to hurt me. My response to him about this snake, like with every snake, is that I don’t care what KIND of snake it is. I don’t take time to stop and ask the snake, “Hey man, you got any ID? I was wanting to check you out a little closer as long as you’re not poisonous.”

I don't think so!!

After visiting Slimy, the snake, we once again continued downstream. Eventually finding our camping spot for the night. It’s what we call Rock Island or Prison Island. Rock Island because…….well……it’s a rock. Prison Island because……..well…..yep you guessed it……….because it’s right by the prison.

Yeah, I know. The imagination department must’ve been out to lunch at the naming ceremony. As my son would say………”Ok, Captain Obvious!”

We're leaving tomorrow morning for our annual river float trip and will return on Sunday. Unfortunately, our crowd is considerably smaller this year for various reasons but the few that are going will have a blast.

I usually float in a small rubber boat but this year I am debating on whether to stick with the game plan and the rubber boat or maybe hitch a ride with my son in his canoe. The water is low right now and I really don't want to be bumping my booty against many rocks . A short amount of time in the canoe kills my back. So it's my booty or my back.........Decisions....decisions

 

 

I hope everyone has a great weekend!!

 

 

Once upon a time,

In a land far away  

 

A beautiful, independent,

Self-assured princess  

 

Happened upon a frog as she sat

Contemplating ecological issues

 

On the shores of an unpolluted pond

In a verdant meadow near her castle  

 

The frog hopped into the princess' lap

And said, "Elegant lady, I was once a

Handsome prince, until an evil witch cast

A spell upon me. 

 

One kiss from you, however

And I will turn back into the

Dapper, young prince that I am  

 

And then, my sweet, we can marry  

 

And set up housekeeping in your castle  

 

With my mother  

 

Where you can prepare my meals  

 

Clean my clothes, bear my children  

 

And forever feel grateful

 

And happy doing so  

 

 

That night  

 

As the princess dined sumptuously  

 

On lightly sauteed frog legs  

 

Seasoned in a white wine and  

 

Onion cream sauce  

 

She chuckled and thought to herself:  

 

I don't fucking think so