xtcian

taggin' it!

7/5/03 Columbia County, NY

We had a tag sale at our farm today, and made over $300 on total junk. I find it hard to believe that companies pay millions for advertisers to market high-tech products people never use (god knows my ex-dot-com was one of them) - but if you pull out a non-functional ceramic lamp in the shape of a swan, you've got thirteen salivating tag sale shoppers on your doorstep at 8am on a Saturday.

Seriously, the shit people buy. Anyone who knows me can tell you I'm one of the world's worst pack rats, but stuff I thought was actual discarded trash was flying off the shelves at a brisk clip. It helped that the tag sale was helmed by Tessa's mom Sandy, who could sell snow to an Inuit village - her demeanor is perfect for this sort of thing, and having just sold Fords and Dodges for the past year, her business acumen was bulging.

I remember we had a garage sale at our first house in Cedar Rapids, and I thought it was terribly exciting that we could actually make money without leaving our yard. I don't recall much being bought - round orange stickers that said "10¢" remained on our books and toys for years afterward.

With this tag sale, a large remnant of Virginia Nelson, the 50-year previous owner of this house, is gone. If this house was built in 1820, then she and her husband lived here almost 30% of this farm's unbelievable existence. While there are still some rooms in the house that bear her initial 1950 design (where Tessa and I sleep, for instance), very little will be left by the time the renovations are done for the wedding.

A few things will live on, however: her perennial flowers, including a set of peonies that are almost five feet tall, will outlive her by decades - Tessa will make sure of it. Also, the wallpaper in our "library" will be hers, as will the crests on the barn, her husband's unending set of tools, a goofy owl decoration in the kitchen, and my favorite: her downstairs toilet is extra high, making it a delight for me (and any tall person) to poop therein.

She also left this place with an incredible karma, and a contagious warmth. We never met the woman, but we walk through her good humor every day, and I know that ditching her swan lamps at a tag sale won't lessen her impact.

most of this stuff is in the loving hands of others - except my beloved crappy pool table

by the way, it's almost impossible to find the "cent sign" (¢) from paragraph three above - here's why