LURE OF A COUNTRY AUCTION (part 13 )

CRAZIEST AUCTIONS

Just last summer I attended what I think will be the craziest auction of my lifetime in Marshfield, Wisconsin.  The contents of the entire household were being sold by the city because the owner, still living in town at a different residence, had stopped mowing her lawn for the past five years.  The city ended up doing the mowing and billing the owner who neglected  to pay the bills which totaled just over $1,000.00, so they took possession of her home.  How the city was able to do this is beyond me, as the property taxes were paid up in full on the home by the owner.

The only thing that I could think of to make sense of the matter, was that the home must have been filled with bad memories.  It was as if the owner had just walked away, everything was still inside if the house and the refrigerator even had food in that was now five years old!  All of the rooms upstairs and down were full, and amongst the usual household items were some antiques and many handmade quilts, everything imaginable, and it all was being auctioned off.

After the house was beginning to clear out someone asked if they could bid on a picture that was still hanging on a wall inside the living room.  An auction employee took the picture off the wall and there was a hole behind it.  Several berry pickers were still inside the house browsing at items that were left yet to be sold and witnessed the picture removal.  Inside the whole in the wall was a box full of money.  There were rolls and rolls of hundred dollar bills with rubber bands around them.  Too many to count.  The auction continued and the staff put the money aside to count it after the sale was finished.  I later heard the bills totaled up to more than $40,000.

The city planned to raze the house and it was thought that there would most likely still be money left over from the 40 grand and the sale of the contents.  I don’t know if the owner wasn’t aware of the money being hidden in the wall, or if she ever was given any of it back.  How could someone just walk away from a house full, just abandon it like that?  Many questions are still unanswered in my book.
I bought a few items that day, but nothing memorable.  I am still puzzled whenever I think about that auction.

                                                                 Grandpa's Jar Shed

MOODS

What makes me change from happy to sad?

Sometimes I don’t know the reasons.

I go from sappy to chatty to happy,

Always changing like the seasons.

It doesn’t take much to make me flip

A book, a phone call, a picture of you

And me together back when we were younger

                                                            Can leaving me feeling so blue.

                                               And then again the same things that make me
                                                       Feel sad, might make me feel high
                                                 Especially when putting them all together
                                                          And eating a slice of pie.

                                                      If I could find a way to paste
                                                  That smile on my face, so sublime,
                                      And remember that others are worse off than me
                                                 I’d have the right mood all the time.