Estate Sale

Estate/ Attic Sale
Old dishes, glassware, antiques, lots of miscellaneous items. Something for everyone.
Saturday 9-3 Mount Zion Road, West Topsham

As is our habit in the summertime, Saturday was yard-sale day. The way we work it is to get the local newspaper Friday afternoon and Friday evening after supper we look over the yard sale section, noting the sales that sound good and planning our route for the next day. This ad caught our eye. Estate sales are always sort of interesting because instead of your basic yard sale, where people get rid of what they don’t want around anymore, estate sales get rid of everything that’s left. You can find some really good stuff at an estate sale. The prices are usually higher than at a yard sale though, the heirs, the ones who are selling the things, generally have an inflated idea of what things are worth and they are trying to get the most they can for the stuff.

We hit a few yard sales on the way up Route 25 to West Topsham, nothing spectacular although I did get a new pair of tin snips and Chris found a set of old LP records: Songs of the Red Army with a wonderful cover picture of a red star with a tank in the middle.

Finally we saw a sign in orange spray paint with an arrow pointing up a road to the right: Mount Zion Road. We turned up the narrow dirt road and wound our way up the hill. We pulled up next to an old white cape farmhouse with attached garages and sheds meandering off it in haphazard fashion, your typical Vermont architecture.
On the weedy, rutted lawn in front of the house, two young kids were playing with a bouncy little puppy while a striped cat looked on. The estate sale was spread out next to them on the grass.

Some rickety old occasional tables, rusty tools, a gun rack. A framed quote from the Book of Isaiah. A few china plates. A dusty cut-glass punchbowl with some matching cups, chipped. A new cheese grater, some old spatulas and other assorted kitchen tools. A metal bound trunk with a bow top, an old wooden high-chair. Not much we needed.

The low cow barn across the dooryard was of that silver sort of color that means it was once white. No paint remained but it had stained the weathered clapboards. It seemed empty.

An addition to it, might have been a chicken coop or something, had fallen in on one side. A sheet of plastic tacked over one of the broken windows flapped in the breeze.
Across the road, what was once a pasture, though still relatively open, was tall with brush. The hills surrounding the little place were like the sides of a soft green bowl.

A stocky man looking to be in his early forties or so, younger than me but not young, came out of the garage dragging an old wooden snow rake.
“Lots of bits and pieces” he said “I haven’t gone through everything in the attic yet”
He sat down heavily in a plastic lawn chair, lit a cigarette and drew in the smoke with audible hiss.
“Looks like this was a pretty nice little farm, one time” I said
“Yeah” he said. “Sold the cows twelve years ago. Nothin’ left. Couple horses”

I asked how much for the bird feeder I had picked up. “Oh, I dunno. Whatever you want to give me for it’s fine. Dollar? ”
I gave him the dollar and we walked back to the car. We pulled up into the barnyard to turn around. Inside the barn I could see a horse’s head peeking inquisitively over the stall rails.

Set up right up tight to the stall rails was a plastic lawn chair.