You Wanted Obtuse? Well, Here Ya Go!

Pete and I are too old to be writing about such bullshit. We need to be doing what people our ages do: spend our Social Security checks on Lotto tickets, and take cruises bound for exotic destinations like Yokohama, on ships filled with nice Chinese people who, despite being so nice and polite, do cough a lot. 

We digress, but we may never get another chance to use that. 

And go to estate sales. 

But you can't even do that. We've met the only two people in Michigan capable of turning an estate sale into drama. And, since we know that You The Readers have been demanding more accounts of local obtusiveness, we're pleased to tell the story.

One Day Only Sale, read the headline in our local Craigslist's garage sales category. This Monday. So where are they this weekend? We'd never heard of a one day sale held on Monday. Whatever. There were pictures, we saw books, and made plans to check it out. 

Come Monday, we drove to the location, on Fisher out past Wildcat. We knew we hadn't gone too far when we saw the Optimum Estate Sales sign by the road as we turned onto Fisher. 

The house was on the Sanilac County side of the road. Optimum, however, is in Port Huron, and that makes them eligible for a blog named "We Hate Port Huron Michigan."

The sale did have books. A few boxes worth, and a couple small bookcases full. Mostly shelves and shelves, and boxes and boxes, of books about various crafts, with a few novels and non-fiction sprinkled among them. Not sorted. Just there. And an entire garage full of fabric, and sewing and quilting supplies. 

I don't do either. We started to leave. Pete saw a sign with an arrow pointing down some stairs, with MORE HERE on it, and went down for a look. 

As he tells the story, the family room he ended up in was mostly empty. One wall, and part of another, were covered with shelves of craft books, and unsorted novels, children's books, non-fiction, and book books, In a corner were a couple sofas, a banana box filled with VHS videotapes, a few hardcover books, and several quilts. He saw one he thought I'd like, and took it upstairs.

"It isn't for sale," he was told by a large woman.

Now the plot accelerates. 

The quilt wasn't for sale because it was on one of the sofas that were positioned to demarcate the portion of the room whose contents weren't for sale.

"There's a sign down there," he was told. 

"Really?" he asked. "Show me. I didn't see it." 

The "sign," it turned out, was something written in black ink on a piece of blue painter's tape stuck on the back of one of the sofas, where no one would see it unless it was pointed out to them.

Pete went back upstairs and delivered a lecture to the not-so-little snowflake -- actually, she could have been an estate sale all by herself -- and her companion who, as he learned, are the owners of Optimum Estate Sales. It went something like this:

We've been going to estate sales for longer than either of you two have been alive, and this is NOT how estate sales work. Stuff that isn't for sale is either clearly labeled NOT FOR SALE -- in the case of fixtures and large heavy objects -- or boxed and removed so it isn't on the premises. No one should have to look for something scribbled on a piece of tape that indicates certain things aren't for sale. We went out of our way to get here, got our Jeep splashed with mud on this gravel road, and ourselves splashed with mud getting in here. There isn't even a clean path to the door. All of this is INCONSIDERATE and DISRESPECTFUL of your customers. You two said you've been out here all weekend. Doing WHAT? Picking your noses? This isn't an estate sale. It's a warehouse. It's the accumulation of two pack rats set out as-is, and you're blaming us for not reading your minds to know that the stuff downstairs wasn't for sale? WE are the customers. WE ask the questions. At estate sales, the seller DOESN'T start arguments by asking the customer questions. You two lazy millennials are getting a commission from this sale.  I suggest you start earning it. 

Pete left with a bag of hardcover books, and tapes from boxes on the floor, that he had to get down on his hands and knees to look through, that the  snowflakes who'd spent the weekend there didn't bother to put on a card table, or something, with TABLE NOT FOR SALE on it, for the benefit of old people like us who still comprise the great majority of estate sale trade. Two bucks for the bag, just to get rid of him. Sensitive Madame refused to take his money. Her friend did.

But the last laugh is on them. We got all the Nazi books. The biography of Martin Borman, the book about Hitler, and the one about Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. All three came from the forbidden corner of the downstairs family room.

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