Great Value

Another project for my Creative Non-Fiction class...

My great aunt has a bumper sticker that says, “I BRAKE FOR GARAGE SALES.” And she does. She accumulates the most bizarre things from auctions and garage sales and then sells them on ebay for 10 times as much as she paid for them originally. Like a detective, she looks for serial numbers and brand names on the bottoms of glass vases and animal figurines. She rubs her hand across the smoothness of lamps as if to release a garage sale genie. She puts jewelry up to her mouth and clicks it against her teeth to check for authenticity. And after she Googles and caresses and tests, if she determines that the trinket or knickknack is valuable, she lists it on ebay and a few days later it is on its way to Albuquerque, New Mexico, or Bogota, Colombia.

Once a year, she has a sale to get rid of the un-ebay-able stuff, the stuff of no worth and no value. The good stuff, if you ask me. Tables are not organized by “kitchen items” or “clothes” but instead by “owl figurines” and “Korean porcelain.” She lets me come and scavenger her things if I agree to help with her sale.

I arrive with tennis shoes on and my hair pulled back, ready to unearth my own treasures amidst her rejected goods. I carry boxes up her red carpeted stairs from her basement to the garage and begin to unpack on to make-shift tables constructed out of old wooden doors and sawhorses. I watch out for the hinges and doorknobs that get caught on my sweatshirt.

On the “Guys Stuff” table, I unpack tools that are heavy and worn and archaic. I hold them up and wonder what they used to do and if they do it anymore. I unpack two pairs of binoculars, some broken pieces of fishing lures, and one ashtray in the shape of a goose.

I move on to “Glassware” where the pads of my fingertips quickly turn black from unwrapping old newspaper that has been safeguarding the fragile contents of the Rubbermaid tub. I can’t tell what’s a vase, what’s a drinking glass, or what’s a glass tube that belongs with something weird at the “Guys Stuff” table. As I try to organize, my aunt comes up behind me, rearranges, and is amused at my bewilderment of the variation that is the “Glassware” table.

Then I move on to the “Catholic table”. There are a dozen rosaries, 4 different paintings of the same blue-eyed Jesus, an Our Lady of Guadalupe candle, and a couple warn prayer books written in Latin. Near the bottom of the box, I pull out a two foot tall porcelain statue of Jesus exposing the sacred heart, a flaming and bleeding heart pierced and surrounded by a crown of thorns. I remember learning from CCD as a good Catholic girl that the Sacred Heart represents Jesus’ divine love for humanity. The statue is a bit worn at the bottom, and I notice a chip on Jesus’ chin, but the heart is bright and detailed and untouched.

My (Lutheran) aunt turns to me, sees me holding the statue and says, “Isn’t it beautiful? I meant to buy a box of Betty Crocker cookbooks but the auctioneer said, “I’ll throw in the Jesus for free.” She told him she would take it. I think I do that same thing. “I’ll take Jesus… if he’s free.”