We went to an auction!
Not too long ago I read an article in the Boston Globe about an auction house down in Holbrook that held weekly auctions every Wednesday at 6pm. On this particular afternoon the weather was lousy, and we had nothing to do before the Bruins game started at 8pm, so we made our way through the South Shore rush hour traffic. On the way we listened to dire storm forecasts and tornado warnings but, seriously, when's the last time a tornado touched down in Massachusetts? Maybe never!
The auction is housed in a small cramped warehouse space in the rear of a lighting showroom. They hold a preview from 4-6 pm, but with the traffic and the weather, we arrived with little time to spare. We circled the building twice before we found a barely legal parking space to squeeze into. And once inside, there wasn't a seat to be found.
In this picture there appears to be a lot of empty chairs, or so we thought. But as we made our way down the rows we realized that every single chair had a sticky post-it with someone's name reserving the seat while they perused the merchandise. LOL. Apparently this wasn't their first time here!
We took a walk around and examined the goods, but there wasn't one thing that I would have bid a dime on. We have an attic and two basements filled to the brim with much of the same
Well can I tell you, I almost fell off the sofa when we saw what some items sold for. A teeny ceramic hurricane lamp went for $700. This guy in the black shirt spent several thousand on all sorts of civil war stuff, including a $900 sword. There were two women who consistently bid against each other for anything sterling and drove the prices pretty high. Another guy next to us bid on (and won) every iron door stopper, and there were plenty to choose from.
Who were these bidders? By the look of their clothing (and the cars in the parking lot), these did not appear to be people who had money to throw around. Were they serious collectors? Ebay vendors? Agents? I just didn't get it.
There were some antique furniture pieces that sold for prices in the four-figures. The woman in this picture is one of the auction house owners, Ms. Kelley, and she had a cell phone to her ear most of the night placing bids for an anonymous bidder who purchased most of the estate antiques.
And yet, some furniture pieces (mostly bureaus and dressers) sold for $20 each...a great steal for anyone furnishing a first apartment or a vacation home. The only thing in the entire place I might have considered bidding on was an old fashioned cradle, that I thought was an antique, in great condition. However, it sold for a mere $10 and I kicked myself that I didn't have a bidding number. But in retrospect, I would have no use (or space) for it.
The only thing TH was interested in purchasing was...food. There was a table set up at the back of the room, under a poster-board sign for the Gavel Cafe, where they sold homemade food out of crockpots and aluminum tins at reasonable prices: meatballs, salads, chicken-broccoli-ziti, Boston cream pie, and carrot cake. I told TH not to even think about it...that was NOT where we were eating dinner that evening.
After about an hour, Ms. Kelley came over to kick us off the sofa so that it could be auctioned off. And although it came with a receipt proving it was recently reupholstered for $2000... it only sold for a few hundred. Such a bargain. It also turns out that TH and Ms. Kelley knew each other. They finally figured out they had both worked at Dana Farber at one time. Small world.
Once we lost our seats, we decided to leave. But it was raining so hard that it took a while before we worked up the courage to run to our car. Once in the car, however, the visibility was so poor that we pulled into the closest restaurant to wait out the storm. Ironically, it was the Halfway Cafe where we chose to stop.
While we waited for our food to arrive and for the Bruins game to begin, every TV set in the place was tuned to breaking news about the weather. Apparently, tornados had touched down in the western part of the state and caused extensive damage, and storm warnings were still in effect throughout the region. It was pretty surreal. By the time the first period ended, however, the rain had stopped and we headed home.
The drive home was quite eerie and more than a little scary as we witnessed the most amazing non-stop display of lightning. There were also very few vehicles on the southeast expressway, as apparently most motorists had heeded the weather warnings, which made the ride even creepier. Luckily we arrived unscathed and there was no damage to our property. Many others were not so lucky.
The Bruins lost game one of the Stanley Cup finals that night, but we all know now how that fairy tale ended.
What will be most memorable to us is WHERE we watched many of the playoff games. TH and I were in California for the first six games of the Montreal series...where the games aired at 4pm on the west coast. We watched game 6 in a bar packed with Boston fans at Sonny McLean's where TH was over-served just before we took a red-eye home. I am still amazed we were ever allowed to board our flight because TH was so inebriated that he started twirling and jumping and pretending to be a ballerina while in the body scanner.
I was back in Santa Monica for games 4 and 5 of the finals and in the air during game 6 on a Jet Blue flight where we were able to watch the first period on Direct TV. It was so cool to be surrounded by Boston fans on a cheering plane as the four goals were scored in succession.
And after all the years our sons spent playing hockey and watching the Bruins play in the old Garden, we still can't believe that both of them were out of state when the Bruins finally brought the Stanley Cup back to Boston!
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