I see dead people (or at least ther stuff)

I'm sure most of you are aware that, if you buy secondhand long enough, eventually you are going to handle, peruse, browse through, or actually purchase items that belonged to someone who is now deceased.  Often, you're completely unaware of it.  Sometimes, you're acutely aware of it.

Nothing can prepare you, however, for finding stuff from a deceased person that you knew, especially in an unlikely place.

Last week, I was goofing off browsing around the Peddlers Mall when I started going through a stack of books.  We have a dealer there who is fairly big time.  He has close to a hundred booths and thousands of items in the mall.  Frequently, he buys out whole estate when the family is looking to liquidate in one fell swoop.

I found a missal in the stack and started to thumb through it.  I always buy vintage missals when I find them priced well.  I have learned over the years to give them a quick skim to see if there are any holy cards tucked between the pages.  I didn't find anything, until I got to the front of the book.  There was an inscription indicating that this missal had been given as a gift from some grandparents to other family members. 

The names were familiar to me.  The last name of the family was the same name as a former co-worker and friend who passed away suddenly in April.  She had been a supervisor of Keith's for several years, and they had remained close afterwards.  It seems like no one outside the family knew that she had even been sick, until the obituary appeared in the paper, and it was pretty bare bones.  There wasn't a service or a visitation, just a private family gathering.  When I realized that the last name of the grandparents was her maiden name, I started to get a little freaked out.

Then I found a framed certificate given to our friend in appreciation for her work and got goosebumps.  I immediately took a picture and texted it to Keith, who was as shocked as I was by the discovery.  After that, I walked around all day shaking my head.  You just never know what (or who) you're going to find.

Fast forward to last Friday night, when I am looking through the sale listings for the next day.  Lo and behold, there's a sale happening on our own street, right down the block from us.  I don't recognize the house number, so I decide to check it out in the morning, while I'm hitting up a new trash pile I saw the night before.

It seems to me that the house is awfully familiar.  Suddenly, it dawns on me that this is the house of an elderly gentleman who is known and loved by just about everybody around.  He's had several strokes over the years, but has taken daily walks around our block as long as we have known him.

We befriended him right after we moved into the house, when he realized that we both worked for local government.  He was having some trouble getting his disabled bus pass renewed, so Keith helped him and then got him connected with the local office for elderly/disabled services.  We had been wondering about him this year, as we had not seen him out and about in a while, not even after the weather got nice.

I get it in my head at that point that this must be his estate sale, which bums me (and Keith) out considerably.

Thankfully, I turned out to be completely wrong.  Keith says I have the wrong house, and he would know better than me, since he's been there more times than I have.  I also rechecked the listing and it was advertised as a moving (not estate) sale.  None of the items pictured for sale were the kind of things that someone this gentleman's age would have. 

We ended up missing the sale.  They closed early due to low turn out well before we got there.  I'm really glad that we didn't end up going through another friend's things.  I'm still bothered by the fact that we haven't seen him lately.

Up until this last week, the closest I had come to encountering a deceased friend's stuff was the time we went to a yard sale in front of a house that a friend had rented for years before she died.  We ended up telling the people having the sale all about her.   Now I've had a close call and a close encounter, right in the middle of the Peddlers Mall.

I really hope it doesn't happen again for a long while.

The Tale of Ezale

Easel fever seems to be sweeping the junking blogs.  First, Shara found the most awesome easel ever.  Then, Linda found a cute little easel.  During the mall closing, I found one too!  It's vintage, aluminum, and a table top model, which means it's also portable.

Isn't it cute?

My favorite part of the whole thing is the tag the vendor put on it:  Ezale.  Now, I'm not really one to make fun of the spelling issues of others.  I have enough of my own.  Hell, I had to look up whether the correct spelling is "easel" or "easle."  No, it wasn't the spelling that struck my fancy.  It was the word itself.

"Ezale" sounds to me like it should be the name of one of those older country ladies I went to church with when I was a kid.  Or one of those elderly aunts that you would only see at family reunions and such.  I'm almost positive that I knew someone named "Ezale" in those days.  If I didn't I should have.  It's such a good name.

That got me to thinking.  What if Ezale was an artist?  What if this was her easel?  What if that wasn't really a price tag, but her way of marking her easel so no one would take it?   What if Ezale was known for her paintings?  In a small town like I grew up in, everyone would know about Miss Ezale and her paintings.  I bet she could be found somewhere every day with her easel set up, making a new painting.  The story probably went like this:

Ezale took her easel wherever she'd go
From the warm summer beaches to the glorious snow

Ezale was an artist.  How she loved to paint!
She used to tell others:  "With no easel, I can't."

"The easel holds my canvas the way I like it.  Just so.
It helps me make paintings wherever I go."

I'm also thinking that Miss Ezale was a bit absent-minded, hence the need to add "for painting" to her tag, so she would not forget what she was supposed to do with her easel.  The whole town is still taking about the time she showed up in the park with her blender and tried to paint a picture with it.  There are even whispers about the little notes she has to herself all over her house, so she won't forget things.  ("Take your night gown off before you get in the shower" is a local favorite.)  Everyone knows that artists are a little quirky and eccentric, so nobody really questions it too much.  Miss Ezale is the town artistic genius and the local color all rolled up into one.  Everybody loves Miss Ezale.

Then I got to thinking a little bit more.  What if Ezale wasn't the painter, but the name the painter gave to the easel?  I name objects all the time.  Lots of other people do too.  That would certainly explain the price tag.  Ezale actually was for sale!  I think that the new story would go something like this:

Ezale is my easel.  She holds my canvas up for me.
She holds it nice and high, and I paint what I see.

She's my most faithful assistant, my dear Ezale.
Without her all my paintings would surely always fail.

I love my dear Ezale.  We shall never part.
If it weren't for sweet Ezale, I could not make my art.

Every item has a story.  Sometimes you know them.  Sometimes you have to make them up.  Don't tell me I'm the only one who does this.