Once every year or two, Jill and I hold a yard sale. It’s a big deal, and a little embarrassing, because we always have a lot of stuff — so much stuff that passersby think that our offering represents everything from the entire neighborhood. We do like to shop for antiques, Jill and I. And we do like to go to auctions, where, if you want a single item you may have to buy a bunch of other stuff that is being sold with it. And we keep upgrading things in our house, getting better lights, chairs, etc. So, yeah, the stuff we don’t need piles up.

The night before the yard sale, we argue about what things should sell for. I want higher prices so we can give deeper discounts. Jill starts low and goes lower. “You want to get rid of the stuff or not?” she asks. Pricing is an art, I’ve decided. No matter what the price, you have to cut a deal. Buyers want to feel that they’ve worked for the sale. In fact, most refuse an item if you offer to give it to them. People want a bargain, not a freebie. Demand five dollars for a couch and they’ll try to talk you down to a buck.

Mind you, you’re never going to make your money back on all the stuff you’re selling — you’re just trying to cut your loses. Be grateful somebody’s willing to take that battered straw basket or that listing plant stand or that unraveling hooked rug off your hands.

Since we’ve done this before, we know not to advertise our address in the ads. We just give the street corner. Otherwise, the dealers show up the day before. Antique dealers are an edgy, desperate bunch. Jill used to be in the consignment business, so she’s seen it all — like the dealer who shows up the day before and tells the clueless sellers that he’s got cancer and is going into the hospital tomorrow (the day of the sale) and could he just look around at the stuff they’re selling?

I started hauling stuff to the sidewalk at 6:30. By 7:00, there were four dealers pawing at the items as soon as I set them down. The sale didn’t start until 8:00. The dealer’s strategy is to make a “lot” buy, that is, buy a bunch of stuff at a bundled discount. They may try to double talk you: “You said fifty for the brass andirons, which you’re selling for eighty, and seventy-five for the set of chairs, which you’ve priced at ninety-five. I’m offering you a hundred-thirty if you throw in the painting, which you’ve priced at sixty but really I thought it was thirty.” Then they lay the bills in your hand and you’re thinking, Wow, sure a hundred-thirty bucks and it’s only seven o’clock! You forget that the total for those items should be $235. So you’re selling it all — before the sale even starts — for half price on an already low yard sale price. Whatever.

The dealers bought a lot of our stuff. By nine o’clock we saw crowds and had nearly sold off all the big stuff, except our behemoth brocade Victorian couch. The crowd thinned. Then there was nobody. Then another crowd showed up. Odd the way that works. You think you’re done. It’s eleven o’clock, not a soul on the sidewalk, and suddenly one person appears and then, within ten minutes, the sidewalk is packed. During one of the waves, three children from a family across the street sat on our couch and refused to leave unless their father bought it. He hemmed and hawed. Originally we bought the couch for $400. We were hoping to get $100. I gave it to the guy for $75 and was elated to see it walk away.

One thing for sure about a Baltimore yard sale: you get a colorful bunch of buyers. At one point we had a Hopkins University security guard noodling through on his Segue. Later, some colorfully dressed women who’d “just gotten off work” played with the jewelry. Our blind neighbor negotiated the sidewalk crowd without hesitation. No one seemed to notice him. The most popular dogs in attendance were pit bulls rescued from local shelters (we counted 5). By the day’s end, we had gotten rid of everything except boxes of books, four eight-foot columns, a router table, a cast iron sink, and a few boxes of miscellaneous. I took the books to the Book Thing, a neighborhood charity that gives away old books to anybody who wants them. It’s an amazing place. Every neighborhood should have one.

Despite our success, Jill says she’ll never do another yard sale again. “It’s too much damned work.” She insists that we have to stop accumulating so much stuff. We’re impulsive buyers, too willing to take a gamble on something that only might work in our house. Problem is, we always tell ourselves we can sell it if it turns out to be a mistake. I agree, selling stuff — whether online or on the sidewalk — is a lot of work. Nonetheless, I came home today to find Jill online, browsing through the local auction listings. “Look that,” she said, pointing to a picture on the screen. ˜Isn’t that a great rug?”

Related posts

• Throwing Out the Christmas Tree (0)
• Three Phone Calls in Twenty Minutes (2)
• Baltimore, Snow, and the End of the World (0)
• Antique Hunting & Hoarding (4)

A month ago, Simon, our fat gray tabby, got desperately thirsty. He’d jump into the bathtub for a sip from the faucet, dip his paw into glasses of water, drink so much he was overusing the litter box and we couldn’t keep up. Then we noticed he had lost weight. It wasn’t a summer diet. It was a lot of weight. “This can’t be good,” I announced. We feared the worst–kidney failure. Cats don’t recover from kidney failure. While we waited two days for his appointment with the vet, I started preparing myself, walking around the house and shaking my head dolefully and saying, “This is it, Jill. This is it,” though really there is no preparing yourself for the worst. The worst is always the worst.

Simon came to us five years ago through the antiques consignment shop that Jill used to work at occasionally. He belonged to an elderly woman who had to downsize before she went into a retirement home. Surrendering her cat along with her belongings was a sad situation, everyone agreed. She had thoroughly spoiled Simon, whom she’d named “Sir Sweetie.” She fed him three cans of gourmet food a day. Sir Sweetie—renamed Simon—became the consignment store cat. He was so relaxed, so trusting, so self-possessed, it didn’t occur to him that he should be wary or afraid of anybody or anything. He regularly stretched out on the floor anywhere he pleased. Jill worried that somebody would step on him.

He still pretty much does as he pleases. Strangers think Simon remarkable because he’ll approach anyone, then rear up and place his paws on the stranger’s legs, like a dog asking to be picked up. If you pick him up, he’ll then place one paw on each of your shoulders, as if to hug you. If you embrace him, he’ll nibble your ear lobe. Strangers find this flattering, though Simon is pretty indiscriminate about offering a nibble and a hug.

When we took him to the vet, we discovered that he’s lost six pounds, down to a lean 12 from his once-swaggering 18 (he’s a big cat). It turns out, he (Simon, not the vet) has diabetes. Our vet says it’s increasingly common, just as with humans. The culprit is high-carbohydrate cat kibble. High carbs means high sugar, which overworks then burns out the pancreas. We were using Iams, a big-name dry food, thinking we were doing the right thing. We’d heard that canned food is too rich and rots cats’ teeth. On the contrary, canned food is high in protein. That’s what cats need.

We asked about the high-end canned food our vet has on display in his waiting room. He waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t bother,” he said. “It’s all the same.” Our kind of vet. He showed us how to administer Simon’s daily insulin injection, then we went home happily and much relieved. Simon is more or less back to normal. Besides the daily injection, which isn’t nearly as complicated as you might think, the only other change is that we now feed him (and our other tabby) twice a day. This has its complications because a morning feeding always encourages cats to rise early (i.e., dawn) to announce eagerly and earnestly that they’re ready, really ready, for their meal. Really, we are, right now, we’re ready. Really.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Last week, Jill and I drove to New Jersey with our friend Scott to buy an old library ladder. The kind with wheels on the bottom and an attachment on the top so you can set it to a rail and roll it from book to book when you’re way up high. Finding an old library ladder is very difficult. Not many were made, apparently. It isn’t exactly an every day item. As a result, old or new, they’re expensive. Jill and I debated whether or not to buy one. I contemplated building a ladder, but the hardware for building one is nearly as expensive as the ladder itself. So why not go find an old ladder? Which we did.

The word “ladder” originates in the Greek word of “lean.”

“Ladder company” once referred to a company of firefighters, which was distinguished by its possession of a ladder. Not everybody owned a ladder, especially a tall one. Oh, yeah, there was a hook too. “Hook and Ladder Company” is the full designation for a company of firefighters. The hook (actually a pike pole) was for tearing into buildings and yanking burning things out. One day the fire alarm went off in our house and within ten minutes the firefighters were at our door—big, sweaty men wearing black slickers. They carried axes. They looked really eager to get inside and tear stuff up. But they couldn’t get inside because the iron gate over our front door kept they out. From my side of the gate I assured them that there was no fire and thanked them profusely for their prompt reply. They looked disappointed and not thoroughly convinced that I was telling the truth.

Baltimore charges its residents $25 a year to register an alarm system and $50 per false fire alarm.

We are happy with our old library ladder. It’s made of oak and has cool old-timey wheel covers. I had to cut the ladder down to make it fit. We ordered a brass rail for it and I modified the ladder’s rollers to make it work. Jill and I take turns climbing on the ladder and riding it.

When we first bought our old house ten years ago, we hired a budget roofing company to repair our roof, which is forty feet high. You don’t want to use a ladder for that kind of height; you need a lift. To appreciate the altitude of a forty-foot ladder, you’d have to imagine standing on a highway overpass and looking down. Now multiply that times two.

In addition to our huge flat roof, we also have a tower with a shingled roof. Shingling a pitched roof from the top of a forty foot ladder is like trying to make a club sandwich while walking a tight rope. At forty feet, the wind can be three times the intensity of street level. And a sudden move can make the ladder heave and buck, even with two strong men anchoring the bottom. The first morning of roof work, I stepped into the front yard to check out the job. Above me, I heard a “whoop!” then I saw a cardboard six-pack beer container whirly-gig from our roof. The roofers were have a Bud light breakfast to steel their nerves for their work the ladder.

For every four feet of ladder height, the bottom of the ladder should be one foot away from the wall or object it is leaning against. But you can’t do that for a forty-foot roof, so the ladder is really steep. We got so nervous about the roofers risking their lives on the ladder, we made them rent a “cherry-picker,” one of those trucks with a mechanical arm that lifts a bucket up high, which we paid for.

Ladder accidents send more than 200,000 people to the hospital every year. I’ve never fallen from a ladder, though I’ve spent a lot of time on them, especially when working on our three-story rear porch. My tallest ladder takes me about twenty feet. When I work at that height, I attach myself to a porch post with a mountain-climbing harness. If I fall, I might do myself some harm—I picture myself dangling upside-down, tethered in my harness and swinging in wide pendulous swings. But I wouldn’t die.

“Rolling ladder” is an investment strategy that recommends investing your money in equal amounts that come to maturity on a staggered basis. The idea is that every year some portion of your money has earned its keep and is back in your hands.

By design, rolling library ladders are elemental in construction and thoroughly practical, but because they are such specialized equipment and associated with the increasingly rarefied activity of fetching books, they may seem an extravagant indulgence. Still, most people I’ve talked to would take one if they had a place to put it.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Jill and I have a gas tank buried in our back yard. It’s been our secret for the ten years we’ve owned the house. Mind you, it’s not against the law to have a gas tank buried in your back yard. You could have ten gas tanks buried in your back yard if you wanted. Well, maybe not ten That is, I don’t know that you could go out tomorrow and bury ten gas tanks in your back yard. But, if the gas tank or tanks came with the house, you could have a hundred. Somebody else put them there. They have nothing to do with you. Except that they’re in your back yard. And, here’s the kicker: good luck selling your house.

Nobody’s going to buy your house if there’s a gas tank buried in the back yard. Jill and I aren’t selling our house. But someday we might. And so we’ve been thinking about that gas tank. Buried out there in the back yard. When we first bought the house, we marveled at the old gas pump in our garage. It’s actually more of a carriage house than a garage. It’s really big, with a twelve-foot ceiling. There used to be a sink and stove in there. There’s still an old work bench five inches thick, built in the days when you could get timber five inches thick. We figured the garage was built circa 1920, when the owners of this house decided to buy an automobile.

In those days, most of the roads—even here in the city—were dirt. And apparently gas stations were few and far between. So the owners of the house, the house that would some day be ours, installed a gas tank in the back yard. And a pump in the garage. The pump is really quaint and doesn’t look much different than a water pump. In fact, it operates the same way, except you don’t have to prime it. Because it pumps gasoline.

Some years ago I cut off the top of the fueling tube to the buried tank. To look at the yard, you’d never guess there was a gas tank down there. We didn’t know how big the tank was. It occurred to me that it might be as big as a hippopotamus and someday would collapse, especially if Jill and l replaced the gravel in our backyard with brick, which is the plan. Nicholas, a realtor friend, told us we’d have to divulge this “inherent defect” if we ever sold the house. Prospective buyers would want to know that there were no contaminants. They’d ask for paperwork. Certification. EPA clearance. The more he talked about it, the worse it sounded.

All I wanted to do was fill the tank with sand or gravel. Wouldn’t that be enough? I called my house-helper, Will, who’s recently out of rehab (we’re lighting candles for him) and, together, we dug down to the tank. It took the better part of a day. This was before the rains came. The dirt was like concrete. We hit the tank top about three feet down. I was surprised to discover that the tank top is no bigger across than an oil drum. But it’s four feet deep. So, it is about the size of water heater, dropped vertically into the yard. It holds 100-150 gallons.

I figured it’d take another two days to dig it out, tearing up a third of the yard in the process. Was this really necessary? Why not fill the tank with crushed rock and be done with it? I didn’t imagine anything was still in the tank but, just to be sure, I tried the pump in the garage. It took a while. I was startled and dismayed when gas spewed out and kept coming. I filled a five gallon bucket. Will and Jill said it was probably mostly water. I said, “It doesn’t smell like water.” I poured some into another bucket, then threw in a match. The bucket ignited like, well, gasoline. It burned big and long. Fifty-year-old gas.

So now we had a problem: I had to cut open the tank. But I couldn’t cut open the tank without creating sparks. A friend of a friend said he knew somebody who knew all about tanks. I called the tank expert. He agreed to come over and have a look. A big, silver-haired man, he’s a retired Baltimore city school teacher. “That’s a gas tank?” he asked doubtfully. “I don’t do gas tanks.” In an old city like this, there are thousands of aged oil tanks—once used to feed furnaces–sitting in back yards. Hauling them off keeps him busy. “You can’t get rid of gas,” he told me. “Nobody will take it.”

Although he couldn’t remove my gas tank, he did tell me the secret he learned from old gas tank experts: use dry ice to neutralize the gas fumes. I thanked him and told him to check the city paper over the next week to see if I’d blown myself up. The next day I brought home a ten pound bag of dry ice and poured it into the fueling tube. Then I stood back. A fog of white fumes geysered from the fueling tube—I could hear the ice hissing. I pictured a mongoose going after a cobra. OMG.

When the fumes cleared, I drilled into the tank top, inserted my saw blades and began cutting. Very carefully. Jill watched from the porch. I was thinking: if I’m going to blow up, I want to blow up big, don’t give me a blown off arm or leg—it’s got to be all or nothing. I unrolled the garden hose and kept a trickle on my saw blade. After a while, as I kept cutting and not blowing up, I got more brazen. This is what happens to people in high risk jobs. After a while, if nothing happens to you as you’re, say, welding girders fifty stories up, you get fatalistic about it. Tired too. I’m sure plenty of construction workers have blown themselves up thinking, This isn’t so bad. I’m almost done.

Two hours and eleven saw blades later, I had the top off. Our realtor friend gave us the number of an EPA-approved tank removal expert. He came out and said he’d fill the tank with sand, have an inspector certify that it was okay, then give us the paperwork to show that we had done the right thing. No need to take the tank out, he said. The rules don’t apply to tanks this small. We feel good for having decided to do the right thing, never mind that we could have done all of this ourselves. Certification will cost $1600. And still there will be a gas tank buried in our back yard. The good news is that we don’t have to remove the gas pump from the garage. We like the thought of that old pump lasting another hundred years, a reminder of how simple the world once seemed when people could willy-nilly plant something as outlandish as a gas tank amid the rose bushes in their back yard.

Related posts

• No related posts.