Auction Purchases, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I have spent the last few days wondering whether my dishwasher is dying. It has been a very loud dishwasher ever since I got it, but it appeared that it was no longer going through all its cycles and leaving me with partially cleaned dishes. As far as appliances go, I really cannot complain about the noise and considering that it was something that the hubby bought at an auction for five dollars two years ago, I can say I got my money’s worth.

Yes, I know. I’ve complained about his auction purchases for most of our 30 years together. I attended my first auction with the hubby just a month prior to our marriage and we bought the land on which we are still trying to conquer and establish our kingdom. In the throes of being a starry-eyed bride-to-be, I missed a few clues that auctions might be his weakness. The real eye opener came just a few months after I said I do when we attended a school surplus auction where I watched him purchase a couple dozen student desks, blackboards, obsolete electronic equipment and a one very old undriveable car that had a straight back chair in the place of the front seat.

I will admit though, after the shell shock of the first of my many verbal explosions wore off, the hubby altered his future auction purchases to include something for me. If he saw this as an offering to appease me and distract me from his other purchases, it didn’t work. Well, at least not all the time. OK, well, it works some of the time.

I used to think the hubby needed a keeper or maybe even handcuffs when he went off to an auction. It didn’t matter whether it was farm equipment, antique furniture, or trash headed to the landfill, it was his duty to bring it home. Forget we don’t have a horse or ox to pull most of the farm equipment he has bought and just ignore the pile of broken furniture that we will never get around to refinishing. I have come to the conclusion that he is a gatherer. Others may use the term hoarder, but I prefer the gentler term gatherer.

I’ve watched as we’ve moved beyond school desks to cars, buses, fire trucks and boats. He just cannot walk away from a dollar bid. If the current bid is $99, what’s one dollar more? Indeed. Imagine getting a phone call in the middle of the day and hearing that we just purchased a sail boat for $30. My first thought is, “How big is the hole in it?” My anxiety increases when I’m told that it has been bought sight unseen, so we don’t really know what condition it is in.  I begin to wonder how much this is going to cost us to have it hauled to the nearest junk yard. There are no “Auction-Anon” programs for friends and family of addicted gatherers. We suffer silently as we watch our loved ones give in to their addiction.

But to be fair, Hubby is a thrifty gatherer. He has a budget—more than I bargained and less than he wanted–and for the most part he has stayed well below budget. In the midst of the junk we have accumulated, there’s been some cool stuff, too. A multi-colored somewhat driveable car to replace the prior auction-purchased car that just died; a boat motor with just the right size carb or spark plug or something for another boat motor in inventory; a fully functional fly-fishing rod, even though he doesn’t fly-fish; a pickup truck with tires that have a month’s more tread on them than the set we currently have. I guess it’s his way of living in the moment.

Recently when I complained yet again about the accumulation of stuff dotting our kingdom, he asked, “Why is it that everyone complains about my stuff which they unkindly call junk, but I’m the first person they come to when they need something?” Point taken. How many folks do you know that will have a dipstick for a 1932 Ford pickup? Or the unbroken glass from a 1956 VW bug oval window? Or the wingnut for the top of an air filter on a 1942 Dodge Truck?

Nuts, bolts, ox carts, old lawn mower parts… Yep, it’s here and he knows exactly where as long as no one else moved it. Just don’t ask me to find it for you.