Anodyne
Saturday, April 03, 2004
 
The first really warm day so far this year, the air thick with pollen and the scents of grass and earth.

Out most of the day in my friend John's battered white van. We made a few prearranged house calls and collected the remains of a garage sale, up Main Street near Riley Park, a pleasant half hour spent pushing moving dollies stacked with boxes of books back and forth to the van. Birdsong, young couples and their dogs, a few people dropping in to haggle over stemware, CDs, or an electric kiln.

Then, later, down by English Bay, 127 boxes of hardcover drek in a parking garage, not really my kind of deal at all, but I went along with John to make the insulting lowball take-everything-and-make-it-disappear offer customary in such circumstances. The books were described as "the remains of a private library," but looked more like "the remains of a church bazaar." The collection's owner, a strappingly hale-and-hearty guy in his early 60s who might have been a retired stockbroker or a motivational consultant, beckoned us inside to make our pitch. While John talked, I eyeballed the widescreen plasma-screen TV, the wet bar, the huge billiards table, the ostentatious chandeliers, dripping with cut-glass jewels, and the expensive couch, from the end of which protruded an elderly female hand.

John made his offer. Phone numbers were exchanged. The hand and its unseen owner didn't stir the whole time we were there.

- posted by cjb @ 9:37 PM


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