Autumn Auctions

Reader Contribution by Connie Moore
Published on September 21, 2015
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Here in southwest Ohio, cold autumn Saturdays are not just for the tailgating football fan. When auction sounds resonate through the crisp air and leaves rustle with the shuffling of hundreds of pairs of feet over yesterday’s ground, auction goers gather moments of times present and past, meld them together and wait for the auctioneer’s first gavel strike and cry to start the bidding.

I bid wildly, unabashed with an inner satisfaction that whatever I want I can have, that is, if the other bidders give up and do not want the box or china piece or tattered book as much as I do. But I wasn’t always like that.

The first auction I went to was local, for a long-time Medway, Ohio, family I went to school with. An antique cookbook listed was my reason for going. I was scared to think what might happen if I let my hand get above my elbow.

My auction mentor, Fran, whispered me through the first moments of realization that I could, in fact, be accountable for a mightily high sum if I wasn’t careful.

I came home that day with money in my pocket, the prized cookbook and a niggling feeling that there was more to this bidding thing than just a one-item sale. For the next couple of auctions I dove pell-mell into the proceedings with the same nervous freedom but slightly different results. Days after those auctions I could be found sitting on the tailgate, sorting through boxes, bagging up the discards and carrying in a few cherished items deemed important enough to keep. Auctioneers loved me for I could not pass up the jumbled-together “boxed lots.”

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