Estate Sale Vultures

We went to an estate sale today, held along the way I drive My Youngest to school everyday.

I looked forward to it all week. 

Now, we don't usually make it to a sale like this one at its opening. 

Somewhere around the middle, or even toward the end of the sale - that's when we usually arrive.

Today, we were within thirty minutes of the  (official)  start.

We parked fairly far away from the house - a little brick ranch with a spacious yard.

I felt a slight touch of panic when I saw so many things being carried out to vehicles

before I could even begin my perusal. We started in the garage and moved through the house, 

room by room, ending in the laundry area of the basement. 

It was  who gets to go down the hallway first  crowded. 

Employees of the estate liquidation team were everywhere, ready to quickly

and firmly quote an unreasonable price for every bit of flotsam I brought for inquiry.

After it became obvious that the prices were not in my range, 

I was free to just browse and ponder without any competition to consider.

A story was written, ever so obscurely, right there in their leavings.

She left a charmingly mismatched set of china plates.

He left a tidy garage with perfectly pegboarded tools.

She must have loved quilting, and he fishing.

Their clothes were hanging on a rack in the basement - 

his smallish dapper blazers and her polyester slacks.

A man rooted through a huge box of hangers, ramming the wooden ones in his back pockets. 

A chic blonde woman put her readers on top of her head and pulled iron garden-markers  from the dirt.

Two old men discussed UK basketball at the bottom of the basement stairs.

An odd character with a long ponytail and an even longer beard sported a fedora with a

hawk's feather and clutched doilies to his chest. 

We seemed to be a flock of oddly feathered vultures, picking over the meat and bones 

of a once-full lifetime condensed within a 2,000 square foot boundary. 

A downward focused group of Mrs Dilbers and Ol' Joes, 

busily unhooking bedcurtains as brisk, early morning exercise. 

*****

We brought home their impossibly heavy concrete table and benches set to anchor our own front yard.

None of the other vultures even cast a glance our way as it was loaded.