This morning I drove out to palatial East Eureka, where 70’s mansion estates take cover in redwood valleys.  I was going to investigate a $25 dryer being sold in a sort of estate sale by a used car dealer.

I pulled up and Bob was working his mobile phone on the front porch.  The dryer was loaded onto a dolly in the middle of the driveway:  70’s GE, stale avocado green with dark brown and orange highlights.  Awesome.  I shook his hand and peeked inside;  it looked good, with a hammered black and gray finish inside.  He cleaned out the lint filter for me as he asked, “What do you think?”  Sold!

I backed my truck in as he wheeled it over.  He and his wife manned the bottom as I hopped into the bed and pulled up.  The wheels of the dolly caught on the tailgate and the device nearly flipped, but we combined for a heroic gesture as we slid it into the truck.  Bob took my tie downs and went to work, ratcheting the dryer into place.  “You should come inside and take a look, we’ve got a lot of other stuff for sale.”

I went inside and looked around.  The carpet was white and thick as long grass.  There were square ornamental hedges and beds of quartz in the back yard.  All of the rooms were filled with time warp 70’s garage sale goods.  There were crude oil paintings of ships in the harbor, gigantic glass grapes, a closet full of corduroy.  I didn’t really want to take a look, but Bob was such a great salesman I felt compelled to.  I took interest in some odd nautical prints which he offered to sell me for a dollar.  He encouraged me to examine the stem wear, where I found two cute orange vases for a dollar each.  His wife instructed me, “Flowers, Scott!  Get some flowers for your girlfriend at the Safeway on the way home!  She’ll like that.”

In the back room he tried to sell me stuffed animals.  “See any of these your girlfriend might like?”  Not really.  There was a taxidermied duck in the study.  “Is that a bufflehead?” I asked him.  He grew excited, “Know your ducks, eh?  You can have it.  Free of charge.  Just put some turpentine on a brush and that dust will come right off.”  Poor little guy!  I felt like I had to adopt it as a monument to the occasion.

I walked out with my duck and my vases.  His wife was working the phone, but paused to say, “Is that a bufflehead?  That was the first thing I ever shot!”  Oh, is this yours?  “No, Bob didn’t stuff mine.”

“We couldn’t find it,” Bob said, “it was too small.”