I
might win $121 million in a yard sale lottery...or not
by
Robert LaFrance
On Saturday morning I gathered up
whatever coins I could find and whatever little paper money my wife missed in
the laundry and headed for yard sales in Perth-Andover, Plaster Rock, Grand
Falls and points in between. It was my annual Search For A Picasso or Van Gogh.
We’ve heard about people who found
an Emily Carr painting in a yard sale in Flin Flon, Manitoba (haven’t we?) and
things like that, so I had been asking myself: why not me? A Van Gogh painting
sold in 2007 for the sum of $121 million, and would that be a lottery win or what?
So I packed a nice lunch, for what
would be the point in packing a lunch that wasn’t nice, and I headed out on my
yard sale odyssey. The first place I stopped was a little place in Upper
Kintore, and then I noticed it wasn’t a yard sale at all, but a garage sale.
Although we already have a garage, I
rewrote my itinerary to include garage sales, lawn sales, porch sales, barn and
driveway sales.
At the Lower Kintore sale they
weren’t really selling their garage (how was I to know?) but I did pick up a dandy
set of swag lamps for a mere $5 each. They would go nicely in our living room;
at least that was my idea at the time, but evidently I have since changed my
mind. At the same sale I found a table made by a famous furniture maker.
Scratched on the underside was ‘Duncan Fife’ so it was worth thousands. When I
got home Flug pointed out that the real guy’s name was spelled ‘Phyffe’.
On to Upper Kintore, where I found a
barbecue at a porch sale. “It was used only six times by an elderly
schoolteacher,” the homeowner (and I assume porch owner) told me in confidence.
He was asking fifty dollars, but I wasn’t born yesterday. It wasn’t long before
I had him happy to accept $45. Once I had removed the charcoal briquettes, it
was much lighter. I also purchased what he said was an antique VHS tape
containing the movie “Roy Rogers and the Line Shack Gang”. Only nine dollars for that.
Back to Perth-Andover, I was amazed
at the number of yard sales, until I remembered that after the flood many
people saw everything but their yards ruined by the St. John River. One item I
bought was a dartboard with a picture on it of Beechwood Dam and the caption:
“I had nothing to do with it!” Underneath the dartboard was the sentence, added
later: “Now tell me the one about Goldilocks and the Three Bears!”
Perth-Andover proved to be a gold
mine, because it was the day of the Village Market. There was a great selection
and a lot of food. This included Kathleen Farquhar’s table where she was
selling pies, muffins, cookies, and all sorts of other stuff that keeps us all
happy and heart surgeons in business. I bought a ‘raison’ pie and teased
Kathleen about her spelling ability. It was an absolutely delicious pie, no
matter how it was spelled. I was especially impressed by the label, which
contained "π", the mathematical symbol for ‘pi’ or 3.1416. I find
that cooks think a lot.
In a Perth-Andover yard sale I found
a painting that I was sure was one done by the famous ‘Saturday Evening
Post’ illustrator Norman Rockwell. It
turned out to be the work of house painter Norman Roswell of River de Chute. I
should have known that Norman Rockwell wouldn’t have painted two Goths skating
in front of the Perth Elks Club. Also, the velvet was a giveaway.
(I should mention that my 2012
odyssey should in no way be compared to the Odyssey written by Homer, the
Greek 8th century BC poet. I
don’t even know what part of BC he lived in. His hero was Odysseus, but later
the Romans wrote the same stuff and called their guy Ulysses.)
On to Plaster Rock, Bluebell,
Drummond, Grand Falls, Portage, and Aroostook. In each of those places I found
more treasure and I refuse to tell you where, because you’ll be there next week
at Jensens’ yard sale or LaForests’ lawn sale and find just the sort of thing I
did – two paintings that have to worth upwards of $75,000 each. True, that’s
not $121 million, but it will keep the wolf from the door.
NOTE: Pay no attention to my wife,
who voiced the opinion that they didn’t have Paint-By-Numbers in the time of
Manet, or even Monet. She’s the same person who, back in 1985, paid $300 for a
rocking chair that I had seen the day before in Bon Accord dump – excuse me, landfill.
-end-
No comments:
Post a Comment