Well, now, THERE was a week!
Elections on Tuesday. It was heartening to see that our precinct (Garrettsville A) was up over the prediction of the Board of Elections, not much, but every little bit helps. I think that Garrettsville B was over too but I didn’t check. It’s also neat to see so many former students whom I exhorted in the seventh grade to step up to their civic duty and vote(“If you don’t vote, you don’t complain.”) Not that I can take all of the credit, their parents were there too. So that was good…and the parks issue passed too…Whoopeee!
Then Wednesday I finally found an auction that I could get to, a biggie. So, as it turned out I was NOT the only one who got that memo. The cars and trucks were parked on the side of Sheldon Rd. for probably three-quarters of a mile on either side of the driveway to the auction site. The driveway itself was likely a quarter mile long, so anyone going to the sale got in a fair amount of exercise just getting there. The notice in the paper said that the folks who had lived there were collectors and the notice did not lie; those people had a little bit of all kinds of things and a whole lot of some others. Antique furniture, pictures of horses, pictures of long-gone relatives(of somebody, who knows who), pictures of landscapes, there was even an advertising picture of “the Peerless Girl” (in driving attire—hat, duster, glasses—very elegant.) one of a set of possibly twelve young ladies. A new girl appeared every year with the new model Peerless automobile until the Cleveland , Ohio company succumbed to the Great Depression. Each one was a pretty spiffy-looking young lady just waiting for someone to come by in a Peerless automobile—Barney Oldfield, maybe? He drove their Green Dragon racing car. People collect the antique prints of the gals but no one has ever found a print of # 12, so she may not be out there. Anyway, somebody got this one and it wasn’t me.
There were two auctioneers going at the same time which means that one has to scout around to try to determine where the most interesting stuff is located. Plenty of evidence that the owners were, indeed, collectors. I did spot some wooden boxes, some little stools and side tables, miscellaneous knick-knacks (Oh yeah, I need more of those!)worthy of some attention and just kept circulating. One of the attractions of estate sales like this is that a person can wander around in somebody else’s house. This was a very large new house, built to look like an old one. One look at the bathrooms( Yes, more than one), the kitchen and the closets (One walk-in per bedroom, plus linen and storage) and it was totally clear that this was NOT an old house. I paid no attention to the two or three tractors and/or garden tractors OR the Honda Element and went back to the watch on boxes. The pile I had my eye on also had a wood and brass antique level in it. That’s what caused the mix-up.
The auctioneer picked up the level, described it and started the bidding. I thought that I was bidding on the whole pile. HE was selling me the level. Oops! When I went to take away the pile, after having won the bid, it was pointed out to me that I had the level, not the boxes, and another bidder had purchased the boxes. Awkward. The auctioneer was good enough to cancel my transaction and resell the level; he didn’t have to do that, and later I approached the guy with the boxes and managed to get him to part with three of them that I wanted. Look on my kitchen shelf for a container with the words “cultivated dew worm farm” printed on the side.
Then it was off to the band banquet and recognition ceremony on Wednesday evening and the school groundbreaking on Thursday. Friday was open. Whewww.
Saturday I was out and about taking pictures of the various demolition/construction projects around town—the Liberty Street bridge, the curbs on St. Rte 82, the Buckeye Block fire clean-up. That last one did me in.
I’m walking around the back by the truncated former parking lot, outside the fence, when the reason for those heavy boots that the demo guys wear became crystal clear. Yup, a nail—a rusty, grungy-dirty nail—came through the bottom of my tennis shoe. Luckily, it just grazed the bottom of my foot but the red mark was not clearly distinguishable as either a wound or a bruise. When was my last tetanus shot? Good question. Got no time for lockjaw. Well, then, it’s off to Urgent Care.
Do not trust your telephone book in looking for such a facility. They lie. When friend Becky found the correct information online, I got the hours and took off…after having washed my foot and doused it with peroxide. “Urgent Care” seems sort of like a misnomer. Nobody there seemed to be into “urgent” at all. The receptionist was totally pleasant, gave me papers to fill out, some people left; I was glad that I had brought the Reader’s Digest. Nothing moved.
I was eventually ushered into an exam room which had the approximate temperature of a meat locker and eventually a diminutive South Asian-type physician came and looked at my foot , asked a few pertinent questions and went off to write a prescription for an antibiotic and to send in somebody else to give me a tetanus shot. Have to say, the shot-giver was good at her job. Minimal hurt. No lingering ache. Good to go.
Called my mother on Sunday. Heard about the demise of her refrigerator and its imminent replacement. Planted flowers.
I don’t think that the meeting of The Friends of the Library this week can hold a candle to all that.
We’ll see.
