Estate Sale of Mind | Mildew Magazine Issue 2
Photo by Caitlin G. Dennis
“In this way, estate sales are never just about shopping. There’s also the magnetism of piecing together a puzzle, peering into an unfamiliar world with bewildering access. Access to a home, yes, but also to the life, rendered in the language of objects, of its likely deceased or otherwise omitted inhabitants. Like airports and waiting rooms, estate sales are liminal spaces. Neither here nor there, frozen yet increasingly decomposing worlds of startling intimacy and tenderness, dislodged and dangling free in their own orbit of space and time.”
A half-gallon of sherry, two twelve-ounce cans of pink lemonade, one cup of lemon juice, one cup of strong green tea. Mix together, and pour into glasses over ice. So reads the laminated index card scrawled with the unmistakable tilted cursive of a woman of the generation that served Party Punch. I held the square silver recipe box in my hands, blinking away stray tears. My boyfriend looked over at me concerned, mystified. Inside the box was a messy potpourri of time capsule-y recipes; handwritten, typed, yellowed newspaper clippings: Whipped Cream Pie, Angel Custard Royale, so-called Oriental BBQ Chicken, and enough casserole variants to last you several deaths in the family. Surely a daughter or grandchild might have wanted this collection? But here I was, a stranger, struck by the specialness of this personal effect. I bought it, along with a brass catchall dish, for five dollars.
I’m a frequenter of estate sales like this one. Like a ship captain under a siren’s spell, I see a sign on the side of the road and I will desert all previous commitments to sniff out its trail. Within a few short paces, you can usually tell “what kind of person” lived in these homes: a bachelor who loved a round of golf, a woman who fancied herself an apostle of Marilyn Monroe, a traveler, an aspiring artist, an ad executive.