How Cool is That?

Between her husband and herself they had 8 children.  Every child had been part of the packing, hauling, tossing, and moving process to get their parents out of the three-bedroom house into the two-bedroom apartment. And still there was a whole garage full of stuff to get rid of. 

That’s where we came in. We took a look at the garage and said “sure”.  The truth is we never know what we are saying “sure” to. Robert and I arrived wearing our I-don’t-care-if-they-get-trashed-clothes expecting lumber and paint. There was plenty of that.  But underneath that there was the box of Victorian paintings, the beautiful art books, the “Hitler Invades Poland” newspaper, the old license  plates, the silver spoons, many nice tools, and the beautiful old dresser.

We sat knee-to-knee eating our lunchtime sandwiches surveying the lumber and treasures and talked about finding the best outlet for all we had uncovered.  After lunch we made a series of calls.

By ten o’clock the next morning the garage was spick and span. The auctioneer had arrived and taken half the items, an old buddy of the owner took all the wood and all the paint. Habitat had come and gone; we made three visits to the dump and a final stop at Goodwill.

Everyone was happy. The friend was grateful. Habitat wrote a receipt with a smile.  The auctioneer shook our hands vigorously. We felt pride in our job. The owners were relieved and it is likely they will make enough from the auction to pay our fee. How cool is that?