Barn Sale

It had been a hard winter for Ray Tate. In January his license was suspended for two years, so even when he could find work he had to get someone to drive him. The lawyer had cost him plenty, he even had to borrow. It was just his first DWI, but the judge was in a bad mood. So great, it was never easy to find work with wheels, now he had to make do without. There was work, but he’d have to be on time and if he drove himself his six-month jail sentence would get unsuspended or whatever the judge called it and he didn't want to find out first hand what jail was like, having heard enough from his cousin Skid.

His mother could drive him some days but not regularly. Ray sat in the kitchen confounded, nursing a beer at 9 in the morning just to take the edge off. If the weather was decent he’d bicycle the 7 miles to town, make that in a half hour, but Chenango County was in the coldest spell on record, going on six weeks of subzero temperatures, plus a lot of snow had left the roads a patchwork of ice and hardpack, no way to bicycle on that, even where the road were flat. Most of them were not. “Half as hilly as Switzerland” was what his father used to say, before his stroke. Their house was on the south end of Loomis Hollow Road off of Route 206, a steep half mile with three switchbacks.

That’s when he got the idea for the barn sale, sitting there sipping a Blue, half watching Oprah, some commercial about making money selling real estate. Wasn't much of a market for real estate in Chenango County but that was okay. It was the money that he needed, after all. He could sell some of the stuff they’d collected over the years. He’d never done a sale but everyone said you could make a lot of money that way. People loved garage sales and with the weather so bad there was no way to have one outdoors but he could use the barn, clear it out like and put all the stuff he wanted to sell in it.

All that flashed through his mind during that one commercial break. Ray pounded right fist into left palm, jumped to his feet, nearly spilling the Labatt's, and got a marker pen and some blank paper and made up a bunch of signs – BIG BARN SALE – SAT & SUN - FEB 26 & 27 – 9AM to 5PM, ANTIQUES & COLLECTABLES, TATES PLACE, LOOMIS HOLLOW ROAD. He bounded downstairs to show the signs to his mother, who frowned at the idea of a lot of people coming over when she had her husband to tend to. Some of them would bother her with sympathy, genuine or feigned, ask after him or worse yet want to pay their respects. She’d just keep out of sight in the house, let Ray tell them she didn’t want to be disturbed, she was asleep, or whatever he wanted to say, as long as she didn’t have to see anyone.

Wednesday she drove Ray to town so he could put the signs up. He had made 10, a gross underestimate. He put up 4 in the IGA, another 2 at the post office, 2 more in Hoots Diner, 1 at the fire house, and 1 at the sheriff's substation. He asked his mother if they could make another trip but she just glowered at him so he used some of his last $5.00 to buy some more paper and scrawled out another 10 signs on the counter of the CVS.

The next two days Ray worked nonstop getting the barn ready. He spent most of the first day clearing out a space about 20 feet square and set up some makeshift tables to display merchandise on, using cinder block and sawhorses topped with old doors, cast off sheets of warped exterior plywood, odd pieces of dry wall and concrete board. Some of it wobbled a bit but covered with tarp and burlap it didn’t look bad.

Then he hauled everything of his that he could carry from the attic and basement – tires, hubcaps, car parts, bicycle parts, chains, rope, concrete mix, fertilizer, cases of mason jars, some with lids and some without, a volleyball net (no posts), a dozen pair of Carhartt jeans all 40 inch waist which neither he nor his mother remembered acquiring, Ray was a 28 and his father 34. After that a couple of bird feeders, several fence posts, a lantern, a coleman stove, three sleeping bags, 20-30 screen windows in fair to middling shape – all that in the first two hours. Then it got into tools, toys, furniture, clothes, and dishes. The barn filled up faster than he expected. He spent the rest of the first day rearranging everything, moving some things outside, setting them down on cardboard and covering them with a tarp. He worked until midnight. By then it was about 5 below and his cough was coming back so he packed it in, treated himself to some of his mother’s Early Times before retiring.

On Friday he woke up at 10am feeling sore here and there. He lay on his back in bed, covers pulled up under his chin, wiggling the stiffness out of his fingers. During the night the the caulking had popped out of the crack in the window sash. He could feel the draft on his cheek as he lay there looking at the ceiling. He turned his head to look out that window into the front yard and the road. It had snowed 3 inches overnight. Shit. He pushed off the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed, jumped up, stretched, and lit the first cigarette of the day. Too much to do. He'd skip breakfast.

He started with plowing out the driveway with the pickup truck and putting down rock salt. An hour later the county truck came by to plow the road and pushed all the snow he'd plowed and more back into the base of the driveway so he had to do that part again, losing valuable time. That was what the Oprah commercial said, time was money. He still had a lot more of the basement to go through, and the shed, and the barn loft. He skipped lunch, worked straight through to dinnertime without a break. Hungry as we was from not eating all day he was too excited to eat much. After a quick few forkfuls of spaghetti he excused himself, ran out to the barn, wired up the lamps and inspected the setup. Everything looked good. There was enough space to walk around and everything was in plain sight, even under the shadowy light of the lamps.

By 9pm Ray was yawning despite himself. It was colder than Thursday night, but there was more to do, all the price tags for one thing. He checked that the space heater was working okay, wondering if it would throw enough heat. It was supposed to get up to 20 over the weekend, at least in the afternoon. He turned the heater up as high as it would go to test it against the subzero night. The heater was effective for a radius of 5 or 6 feet. It would have to do.

He worked on prices as long as he could. He was good with numbers. Math was the only subject he had done well in. He also had an instinct for figuring the right price for most of the items. Still there were so many items, and it was hard to write with gloves on and too cold to write without them. At 11pm he went to bed, skipping the whiskey.

Ray was out of bed at 5 with an all over achey body and stuffy head cold. He took a hot shower, drank 2 tablespoons of Tylenol Cold, went downsairs and fixed a pot of coffee, put on the new Alan Jackson cd that Skid had copied for him, sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes, contemplating his big day. He needed to finish up the pricing and make a last tour of the attic and basement for overlooked merchandise. At 6, still dark, he put on his coat and headed outside. It had only snowed a trace so he didn’t have to plow. He scattered rock salt on the driveway, then checked the barn. Everything was good to go. He fired up the space heater. It was already about 10 degrees out, maybe 15 in the barn. Once the heater kicked in the barn would be comfortable enough for people to browse around in.

He went back to the house to grab a quick breakfast, writing up the rest of the price tags while he ate. His mother appeared in the kitchen door with a look that spelled trouble. Evidently she had been out to the barn. It took some time to placate her and come to an agreement about certain of the items for sale. Some of these his mother had taken back to the house. Some, like her wedding photo, were just out of the question but she eventually relented on most of the others, as long as they got the tag price and she got two thirds of the proceeds. Finally she allowed that maybe they’d get half the asking price for some of the stuff.

It was nearly 8 before Ray and his mother settled up, and not a minute later the first car pulled in. Ray looked at his watch, not really surprised that people were showing up an hour early. These would be the deep bargain hunters, who’d go through everything, looking for underpriced stuff. That’s what Ray did when he went to sales. His mom had taught him that. Ray took off his watch and put a $20 tag on it. He was pretty sure he had gotten it for $7 at an estate sale.

By 9 there were 14 cars in the driveway and another 2 out on the road. Ray’s mother was up in the parlor, sitting away from the window so she could watch the action without being seen. She was spooning out breakfast for her husband. She had set him up so he could see too. She asked him if he could see okay, told him the names of the people she recognized, looking at him to see if he understood. His eyes fluttered in response. She wasn’t sure if he was saying something and, if he was, whether it was yes or no.

By 9:30 Ray was flustered. The price tags still weren’t done and, wouldn’t you know, it was those items that people were asking about. Ray had to think of a price off the top of his head and whatever he came up with the people would immediately offer half of, or less. And then there were people who just wanted to let Ray know silly shit like when they were young how they had a rake like that, just wasting his time and throwing off his concentration. Plus he had to keep an eye on everyone, make sure they didn’t walk off with anything. There were a lot of strangers and a couple of people he knew couldn’t be trusted.

He made quite a few sales but the only major one fell through – Bill O’Toole wanting the snow plow for $100. It was too new to go less than $150 on. Ray offered to sell him his other snow plow for $50 but Bill got huffy about that and said that he already had a rundown snow plow what did he need another one for. That was fair enough but then Bill got personal, saying what did Ray need any snow plow for since his DWI and all. That got Ray’s goat and he mocked Bill, pretending to stutter like Bill sometimes did – D-D-D-D-W-I and A-a-a-all. Bill stormed off and a couple of people gave Ray dirty looks.

It got better after that. A couple of SUNY students, Chinese or Japanese, happily paid the $25 asking price for the volleyball net. Jane Thom came over in her flatbed truck and took all the fence posts, concrete posts, and some other construction stuff. Jane was a bit short so they agreed on $10 and 25 pounds of venison. Bill O’Toole came back. Ray apologized to Bill and Bill to Ray and Bill took the snow plow after all, the $50 one.

Then things got really sweet. Everyone seemed to be in a buying mood. The barn was so crowded that Ray broke a sweat trying to get from one deal to another. Some of them fell through but mostly people had their money out, ready to pay asking price. Ray’s pockets got so stuffed with money that he had to run to the house and stash some of it in his dresser. He nearly tripped and fell down the stairs in his hurry to get back to the business at hand. A whiff of baking came to him and he sidetracked to the kitchen to investigate. His mother had several pies already baked and covered with plastic wrap, some more in the oven, and was working on some more dough. Ray unwrapped one pie, cut out a wedge and gobbled it over his mother’s halfhearted protests, washed it down with a good pour of Early Times, which his mother protested more vigorously. Ray wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve and told his mother that he’d clear a place for her in the barn so that she could sell the pies - $6 each on a 50-50 split.

Hoot Daviess from the Penny Saver showed up around then with his digital camera and took lots of pictures, three of which made in to the following day’s edition – one of the barn taken from the road, with all the people and cars. That ran on page one, Hoot liked to lead with a local item. It took him most of Sunday evening to get the inspiration for the headline – “Big Sale At The Tates.” The other two photos were on page 4, one of his smiling mother offering up a slice of pie to the camera, the other a candid close up of Ray who would have smiled if he known Hoot was taking his picture. Hoot gave Ray a couple of prints of each photo. Apart from school and the sheriff’s substation Ray had never had his picture taken. His mother liked Ray’s photo so much that she framed it and put it on the mantel next to her wedding photo. It was only then she noticed how alike the men in the photos were.

Sunday, the second day of the sale, Ray was operating on adrenalin. He woke up at 7am with the chills, a headache and a lot of congestion, just drank down whatever was left in the Tylenol cold bottle and took three ibuprofen. He looked out the window and saw that a couple more inches of powder had fallen, checked the thermometer, relived to see it was 12 degrees already. His mother had already fixed breakfast. She was certainly in a cheerful mood. Ray grabbed his coat and rushed out, mumbled that he had to plow before the people came, thinking if they came at 8 on Saturday they could start coming any time.

But his rush was uncalled for. He had until well past 8 to eat pancakes, drink coffee, and smoke cigarettes. His mother lectured him about smoking with a cold but his mind was all on how the sale would go that day. The barn was not as full as Saturday. Ray had replenished it a bit on Saturday night. He went through the household again, but there just wasn’t much at all left in the attic or basement. His mother had gone through her own clothes, even thought about putting her sewing machine up for sale since she wanted a new one. Ray and her looked at all their furniture and tools, too, decided to put up for sale one of the living room lamps, the good garden hose, and some of the dishes, just to flesh out the inventory.

The people started to trickle in just before 9. Then suddenly, about half past, it got super busy. Ray had paid his cousin Skid $10 to supervise the parking. Skid made about 100 on the side by charging 2, sometimes 3 dollars to anyone wanting to park in the driveway. Ray was far too busy in the barn to notice but Herb Noles told him about it and Ray demanded a 25 dollar cut from Skid.

The weather turned pleasant on Sunday afternoon, the temperature reaching 20 for the first time in over 2 weeks. In the bright sun it felt like 40, and there was snow melting off the roof. Although it had snowed a bit Saturday night the roads were clear. People drove from as far away as Norwich and Binghamton. After 6 weeks of subzero weather everybody wanted to get out and do something.

One man told Ray he drove down from Watertown, said he got an email about it. Ray wasn’t sure what email was. They had computers in high school but he had never used them. A couple of years earlier a college girl he met in town had asked him for his email address and he didn’t know what to say.

The guy from Watertown bought the good snow plow. Ray didn’t want to sell it so he jacked the price up to an unreasonable $275 and the guy just said "OK" and paid cash so there was nothing Ray could do.

By 4pm there wasn’t much left to sell. The prime items remaining were the garden hose and the easy chair with the wobbly legs. Ray considered marking the chair down from 20 to 15. The hose he just as soon would keep. Otherwise there were some clothes and kitchen items, a few of the mason jars. The tires were all gone, which really surprised Ray.

There were nearly as many cars as before but the people were quicker about it, most of them walking in, around, and out in less than a minute. Then around 4:30 things got quiet. Daylight was fading, the wind was picking up, and the temperature had dropped back to 10 degrees. Ten minutes later there were only two cars left in the driveway. His mother was still in the barn. She had kept baking pies and still had several to sell. Skid was sitting in the easy chair working on one of the pies. Ray shooed him because the sale wasn’t over and there were still the couple of prospective buyers left.

One of these prospects, however, was just sitting in his car in the driveway, had been for some minutes. Ray thought maybe the guy was on his cell phone or something but it didn’t look that way. The guy seemed to be just staring straight ahead. He wasn’t with anyone else, that was for sure, because the only other people were a couple who came in the other car. Then that couple left, without buying anything and there was just the guy sitting there in his car.

Ray looked at his wrist to check the time but he had sold his watch, $13 if he remembered right. His mother told him it was 5:10. They decided to shut it down, closed up the barn. The guy was still there in his car. Ray started to walk over to see what was up when Sheriff Thom’s car pulled in. Sheriff Thom got out and put on his hat. Ray, his mother, and the sheriff exchanged greetings but the sheriff did not look pleased, having been pulled from the dinner table and an overtime basketball game on TV. The guy got out of his car and started up the driveway towards them. The sheriff walked down and met him halfway. Ray and his mother stood watching, wondering. They heard the sheriff address the stranger as Mr. Greer. It didn’t sound good, whatever it was but what could it have to do with them? His mother looked at Ray. Ray shrugged.

Sheriff came over and asked if they knew anything about a snow plow that belonged to Mr. Greer. The man down the driveway overheard, became excited, yelled out “It was in there”, pointing at the barn. Ray said sure there was a snow plow in there, two in fact, sold both of them, an old beat up one and a newer one he’d just bought.

The sheriff requested to have a look in the barn and Ray opened the door for him. Sheriff Thom swept the barn with his flashlight. He had never seen a barn that clean, pretty odd, especially for the Tates. Kind of suspicious but he didn’t know why. He had only vaguely heard about the sale, pictured it as the Tates just selling a couple of odds and ends. He’d never had trouble with the Tates, except some vandalism of Ray’s doing when he has in school.

“Just recently bought it, did you? Got a receipt?”

“Well no. Bought it from Skid. What’s the big deal about a snow plow? They all look about the same.”

“Yeah but this one had an identikit number on it and the Mr. Greer says it was the same as his.”

“Well, I sold it.”

“Do you remember who you sold it to?”

“No, well, the guy said he was from Watertown.”

Sheriff Thom frowned.

“How much did you sell it for?”

Ray thought quickly but carefully: “$75”

“You sold a nearly new snow plow for $75”

“It got twisted up a little bit” Ray fibbed.

Allen Greer had been watching intently, got excited again at Ray’s claim. “It wasn’t twisted up!”
Ray thought for a moment, wondering if he should offer to pay back the $75 to Mr. Greer, and then collect the same back from Skid. He decided it was the right thing to do.
“Well what’s the big deal about a snow plow anyway?” he asked.

Sheriff Thom looked at him steadily. “It’s not so much the snow plow as the truck it was attached to.”

Skid emerged from the house about them. All the pie he’d been eating had caught up with him and he had spent the whole time in the bathroom, unaware. Sheriff looked at Skid and saw his cold dinner and the buzzer beating winning shot that he would have to watch on the late news.

Ray and his mother watched them drive off, Skid in the sheriff’s car followed by Mr. Greer. That spoiled the mood some, Skid getting arrested. Night had fallen and it was starting to snow again. They went inside to fix dinner. Ray practically fell asleep at the table before he even finished.

Monday morning they piled all the money on the dining table, separated it by denomination and counted the bills twice - $4108 the first time and $3883 the second. Close enough. There was a coffee can half full with coins too that they didn’t bother to count.

That afternoon they took the truck down to WalMart and spent nearly three hours there and just barely got everything in the truck – nine shopping carts loaded with stuff plus stuff that didn’t fit in a cart. The bill was $718 and they paid it with singles, which the manager had to come out to count. The next day they would go through another $400 between Agway and Home Depot but that still left about 3000 in mad money.

On the way home they passed Skid, out in front of the substation with the public defender. The charges had been dismissed for lack of evidence. Sheriff Thom had duly called Watertown and reported the identikit number on the snow plow, assured Mr. Greer that if it turned up he would pursue the investigation.

Next chapter
Back to table of contents