RESTORE AUCTION
Susie was going to a doctor’s visit in Asheville and I went along for the ride. We had breakfast in Abejas, an expensive but wonderful Mexican restaurant on Hendersonville Road. Then on a whim we stopped at the Restore Store, the store selling people’s surplus things to raise money for Habitat which builds houses for low income people. I believe Jimmy Carter, former President, got Habitat going. They have beautiful things. In one section of the enormous store we discovered that a silent auction was about over. About fifty special items were being auctioned off to the highest bidder. On a sheet of paper for each item you bid on that item, always bidding $5 more than the previous person. The auction would end in an hour so our chances, we thought, were good until we noticed a man making very careful notes about what he wanted. I asked about his technique. He owned an antique store and was buying things to resell at far higher prices. At the very end of the auction period voice bidding was opened for each item. He didn’t write in any bids, he would bid on anything he wanted at the last moment and carry everything away in a truck. I later asked a salesperson and she said he was there for every silent auction and would leave every time with a huge number of things. Susie bid on a carved dragon, a three foot long model boat and an antique wheel chair. I bid on a beatiful homemade wooden ladder on which I was going to place Indian village embroidered clothing. We couldn’t stay until the auction and expected to be outbid by the man with the truck. But later in the day we learned that Susie had won the wheel chair, which was what she most wanted as the base for an installation she wanted to make by adding all kinds of things she has collected and I had won the ladder. The guy with the truck got the model boat and the carved dragon and much more. It was a fun day.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 