The Auction

I went to an auction today.

Actually, the first one since Elizabeth and I were constant auction goers last year. It's fun to have an auction buddy.

This was a big auction. And they only auctioned off half of the contents of his houses.

He was a local big wig. A restaurateur and avid collector.

And it seemed like he collected a variety of things, from upholstered furniture, to gorgeous wood dressers and sideboards, pictures and portraits, glassware and china, large room size rugs, old book collections, museum sized mirrors, children's rocking chairs, tables of all sizes (especially nice drop leaf tables) etc., etc., etc.

I was interested in the old barn door with gorgeous hardware. The back door to our barn at 44 is composed of wooden planks nailed in place. Actually there is no door and I want a working door back there, especially if I get my chickens this spring. The Amish were not at this auction so I thought I would be the only one interested in that big old door (who else would want a barn door, right?) but I was wrong and it went for much more than I was willing to pay. I hope it is going to be used on an old barn like I was going to use it.

But I did acquire a 9 foot waiting bench that used to grace the front of one of his restaurants. It will be an addition to Litengard's front wrap around porch this spring.

The auction made me a bit sad though. Here this man collected this vast variety of things all through his life and in one fell swoop they were being dispersed to people all around St Lawrence County, Canada and beyond.

Our possessing of our world, or our trying to, is surely a temporary thing. We stamp our ownership upon our surroundings, call them our own and give them new meaning and familiar names and places in our lives. We erect rooms and comforts and possessions and it is all swept away so quickly, so easily and so irreverantly. Many of us knew this man, but many had never met him and only had heard that his "stuff" (which was of good quality) was being auctioned off. Sad. All his collections gone, dispersed.

This world is not ours forever. We are just pilgrams here. Just temporary. Just care takers. Just journeying through to a far better place.

I don't want to hold my things too tight.

People, yes.

Things, no.