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Unburied treasure

As soon as I answered the phone and heard, “New in town, sailor? Looking for a good time?” I know who it was.

No, it was not a lady of the night plying her putative charms. It was my friend Kookie, goofing as usual.

“So,” she said, “do you know what tomorrow is?”

“Do you mean the anniversary of Aguinaldo declaring Philippines independence?” I said.

“No,” she said.

“Maybe the discovery of the Comstock Lode?”

“Uh-uh.”

“OK, I’ve got it,” I said. “It was Alexander the Great’s crossing the rainbow bridge?”

“No, no and no,” she said.

“All right, I give up,” I said. “What IS tomorrow?”

“It’s Bloomingdale’s gala, town-wide garage sale,” she said.

“Garage sale?” I said. “Look, Kook, I need a garage sale as much as Mick Jagger needs Match Dot Com. Not only don’t I need more things, but there’s no room for them.”

“So you say,” she said. “But I’d bet dollars to donuts you could find the room is you scored a priceless addition to your collection.”

Ah, yes, my collection!

Indeed, I have a collection, but it’s the opposite of everyone else’s.

First, other people’s collections are specific. They collect stamps or coins, dolls, silverware, guns, bottles — you name it.

Second, their collections are organized.

And third, they expect that over time their collection will increase in value.

My collection is none of those things.

Though I have a whole bunch of things, almost no two of them are the same. The only things they all have in common is they’re old and I like looking at them.

Second, not only are they not organized, I don’t think they can be. Nor do I even know where all the things are.

And as for my stuff appreciating? Listen, if some paskudnyak ripped me off and tried to pawn the swag, any money he made would be a drop in the bucket compared to what what he’d spend on dump fees getting rid of the rest of it.

The Dreck-o-Tarian’s Dreck-o-Tarium

I started collecting stuff when I was a mere poppet, and I don’t why I did, or even if there is a why. Quite simply, I was fascinated by old stuff — old cars, old clothes, old watches, old everything — and found modern things either gaudy or crass or just plain dull. Probably the best example of my not feeling a part of “progress” was this: In the ’50s, what with heroes like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Captain Video, almost every boy I knew wanted to be an astronaut. I, on the other hand, wanted a top hat.

When it came to buying old things, I had only only two guiding principles — they had to delight me, and they had to cost a pittance. Thus over the decades I’ve managed to turn my house into a full-fledged Dreck-o-Tarium.

Some of my treasures I use quotidian, like my 1930s floor lamp, my 1950s toaster, my 1970s Corningware percolator. Others I use as the occasion demands. One is my Waring blender (late 1940s) that weighs about as much as a shot put and can grind granite to dust. Another is my egg beater (1950s). And still another is my turn-of-the-century bifocals.

But most of my tsotchkes have no practical use and can only be admired for their aesthetics and history. Among them are my plaster of paris bust of Jimmy Durante, my drunk-hanging-on-the-lampost ashtray, and my archeological whiz-bang — a petrified turtle turd.

A slice of life

Suffice it to say, for a treasure hunter of my proclivities, my resistance to the B’dale garage sale vanished as fast as it appeared, and the next day found me and Kookie on the prowl.

“Ya know,” I said, disappointed after we’d driven around a bit, “I’m surprised so few people are selling stuff. Doesn’t look like the odds are in our favor.”

“Don’t be a defeatist,” Kookie said. “It only takes one big score to make the whole day worthwhile, right?”

“Right,” I said, suddenly refreshed, renewed and refocused on my mission.

We hit up a couple of places but found nothing of interest, when the Kook said we should check out a place on the River Road. It was Frank Tuthill’s old bait shop, and his son Bryon was manning the tables.

I looked the first table over but found nothing of interest. Meanwhile, Kookie found a neat little metal rainbow trout desk ornament for a mere buck. I checked out the other tables but still found nothing of interest. Then, after talking with Bryon about this and that, I was about to head out when I glanced under the table and some dull-red thing caught my eye. I focused on it, and when I did, I saw what it was — a two-man crosscut saw.

I picked it up and looked it over. One of the wood handles was missing, but other than that, the saw was in good shape. Not that it mattered what kind of shape it was in, since there was no way I could even consider using it. But still, it intrigued me, for the same reasons all my treasures do: It was a link with Way Back When, a survivor of a distant past, and an insight into a way of life long since vanished.

Of course, having worked at Paul Smith’s as long as I did, I saw dozens, maybe even hundreds of woodsmen’s competitions, so the crosscut saw was a familiar object. But the idea of actually owning one had never occurred to me … at least not till then. And what would I do with it if I bought it? The same thing everyone else did — nail it to a wall as a decoration. And a decoration in the finest Adirondack tradition.

“Where’d this come from?” I asked Bryon.

“It was my father’s,” he said. “He and his brother used it when they worked in the woods as young men.”

“How long ago was that, do you think?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” he said. “But it had to be at least 60 years.”

I hefted it a bit and thought of people working in the woods all day, felling trees with it. And when I did, it became apparent why one of the nicknames for the two-man crosscut saw was a “misery whip.”

“How much you want?” I asked.

“Twenty bucks?” he said.

And then my mind got its wires crossed, or something like that.

I never bargain with people for a couple of good reasons. One is I’m lousy at it. The other is I figure if I really want something, I’ll pay the asking price and so be it. But with the saw I was in some odd, in-between state. I liked it, for sure, but hadn’t decided I wanted it. And thus conflicted, more talking to myself than Bryon, I said, “That’s too much.”

Which, of and by itself, was ridiculous. Twenty bucks for that saw? Hell, any ex-pat from the suburbs now living in My Home Town would gladly shell out five times that to adorn the wall above his Prius. And I knew that. But essentially I was thinking out loud, rather than consciously engaging in a discussion.

“OK,” said Byron, “I’ll give you the Paul Smith’s discount — 50%. How about 10 bucks?”

“Deal,” I said, now back in reality.

Then I handed him — you guessed it — a sawbuck.

After that, we said our goodbyes, and the saw, the Kook and I headed out.

When I got home, I felt bad about not paying Bryon the 20 bucks when he asked for it. But as I said, I wasn’t running a game on him — I just wasn’t in the moment, at least not in any clear-headed sense.

And, frankly, I still feel bad … though less so.

Ultimately, even if I wasn’t a stellar gentleman to Byron, I think I did right by the saw. It’d been lying in some dusty corner of a shed for at least a half-century — but no longer. Now it’s on my wall, a source of delight for me and for anyone else who sees it.

Plus it’s not only a tribute to the old-time loggers and how hard they worked, but it’s a memorial of sorts for Byron’s dad.

And let’s face it: The rest of us should be so lucky with the earthly goods we leave behind.

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