a review of estate sales and the lessons they teach

A penny for your thoughts
A dime for your dreams
A dollar for the whole damn thing
–Gene Strother

His name is Lt. Col. Milton J Blake. He was a soldier, a leader, clearly, of some distinction. He once lived in Chicago, Illinois. He was living in Southlake, Texas when he died. If the scant information I could locate about him on the Internet is accurate, he was born in 1934. He would be 91 at this writing, if he were still around, which he is not.

I rummaged through his life one Sunday afternoon and found a copy of the book Hamburger Hill by Samuel Zaffiri. Blake had carefully noted ownership of the book in the kind of handwriting that indicates a certain self-worth. And maybe some flair. I am not an expert.

The estate sale is a sad, sad state of affairs—and one of the saddest places I have been. It is where the living land like carrion to pick at the bones of a life, to find a bargain in the things loved and left behind.

Lt. Col. Blake had filled four rooms of his house with military and first-responder collectibles, from metal war plane replicas to bags of soldiers, model military vehicles, fire trucks, police vehicles, comics, magazines, and military manuals and books. There were banners and board games, posters, and replicas of weaponry, as ancient as the Samurai sword and as modern as an M-16. The collection could well have populated a small museum. It clearly represented a huge part of his life.

It was all reasonably priced, too.

I felt like crying, but instead, I was buying—at least that book. And maybe a brand name dress shirt that fit me pretty well.

We married young, and if you read me much, you know this. We were not out of our teens, green as the Grinch, sure as rain, and poor as a church mouse. We had good taste in things; we just lacked a budget.

So, she introduced me to the yard sale; which is to say, Dante’s Inferno.

Some say, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

I say, “One man’s trash is that man’s problem and I will not pay him to take it off his hands.”

Unless she insists, and often, she did.

She has good taste and some people do part with fine things for a fraction of their worth. This did not change my philosophy, nor dissolve my aversion to sales in yards and garages.

We got over the yard sale thing within a few years, but then stumbled onto a new way to hunt for unburied treasures—the estate sale.

I sometimes call them “rummage through a life sale.”

Now, I have been to some sales in homes that were not, in the strict sense of the word, estates. I mean, they were in a state—usually of disrepair, paneled walls, rusted tools, musty furniture, mismatched kitchenware, and shag carpet. I know the deceased couldn’t take it with them when they went, but I often wondered whether the survivors wished they had.

On the other hand, I have walked the halls of the dead in houses that felt like castles or museums, filled with the ornaments and implements of a life lived on a grander scale. There, I have wandered in awe among works of exquisite art, handcrafted furnishings, China, crystal, and silverware that was actually silver.

I am a trinket guy, and I have found wonderful trinket treasures in dead men’s remains.

Sometimes, I think I have felt the presence of the deceased, standing beside me or looking over my shoulder, breathing down my neck, trying to tell me the story behind that painting or this sculpture, or the worn leather chair…or the Lt Col’s treasured copy of Hamburger Hill.

Lessons from the Leftovers

Love things, collect things, acquire things, enjoy things, but understand, they are your things and the people you leave behind may put a price tag on them and if it doesn’t sell Saturday, it’s half off Sunday.
Make a life bigger than the things you have so the people you leave will want to keep the things that remind them of you.
The only things you take with you are the things you send ahead—your deeds, your words, your heart, your mind.
The most important things you leave behind are not things at all.

Lessons for the Left Behind: A Final Word from Hamburger Hill

I don’t know, but I cannot help but wonder whether Lt Col Milton J Blake was there on Hamburger Hill. Was that why the book was special to him? Is that why he eloquently claimed it with an inscription that included his signature and address?

At any rate, the book was made into a major motion picture. I remember watching it years ago. The epilogue for the movie was a poem written by Major Michael Davis:

If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.

If you are a family member left to rummage through the things of your loved one’s life, to decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to include in an estate sale, remember Major Davis’s admonition:

“If you are able, save them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go.”