Aquileo | Halloween | Breezy Books

I mentioned this tree back in October, so there may be a bit of familiarity here, but this is the entire story …

I’m not proud of it, but I was a bit of an auctionzilla (like a bridezilla) when it came time to auction the contents of the house after Rich passed.

The auction house I hired backed out at the last minute, and I had to use one through my realtor. They squeezed me in and rushed to get everything catalogued.

I had steam coming out of my ears when I first saw the listings – already live – many with bids.

There were collectible items with no mention of the brand. Such as a listing showing knives in a wooden block, but they were Warther knives. Two “popcorn” bowls, but they were Texas Ware bowls. Two fishing pole sleeves with no mention of the expensive poles inside. A backgammon game that didn’t note it was vintage with Bakelite pieces.

I felt like I had already thrown so much of Rich’s life away when cleaning out the house, I wasn’t going to give it away, too.

The money for Rich’s items (over 200 lots) wasn’t coming to me or our son. It was going to Medicaid to help repay Rich’s medical expenses for the past ten years. I still wanted the sale to be fair.

My son and I did have some things left at the house that we didn’t have room for here (like my books and canning supplies). Those few things were allowed to be in the auction. We were able to keep the money from those sales.

Everything in the house that was Christmas belonged to our son, Mike. This included the four-foot Christmas tree his grandmother gave to him. When he was a little guy, he loved snowmen. Over the years, he amassed quite a snowman collection. Many of the items came from specialty catalogs. Some items were collectible.

The listing for the Christmas items was just that – everything in one auction. There was only one picture. It was of one large box (there were three) and this description: Christmas Tree. Plush Bears. $1.00.

Bears! The few items that were shown were snowmen, not bears. Knuckleheads. There was no way I was going to let that expensive snowman collection go sight unseen for $1.00 or even $10.00.

Another set of items was a huge lot of items we had at our house for our granddaughter. The money from the sale of these items would also go to Mike. I specifically asked them not to include the PlayStation with the preschool items, and please don’t include the Nintendo Switch games with the PlayStation. I pointed out a few items that were rare or collectible and should be sold individually.

Nope. All one big lot. A flea marketer’s dream for reselling.

I couldn’t get on the phone fast enough. I pulled the Christmas auction and the auction of my granddaughter’s things. I told my realtor how unhappy I was with some of the listings, and sweet woman that she is, she came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and made changes to every auction I wanted changed.

I should have just let it all go, but I couldn’t. It felt so wrong. Like the auction house didn’t care what something was worth. Let someone get home and realize they paid $1.00 for an empty fishing rod sleeve only to find a $300 fishing pole inside. “Yay for me! I love XYZ Auctions. I got a steal. Gotta keep bidding on their auctions!”

Cynical? I don’t know. I just wanted fair. The head auctioneer was surprised and impressed when at the end, the auction exceeded his expectations by over $5,000! No kidding, mister – those knives jumped from $12 to $160 almost immediately after the description was changed.

So … about the Christmas tree in the living room.

I brought my granddaughter’s things home first. My son picked out several things that his daughter loved most as well as the rare items. I put the PlayStation away for a spare in case mine dies someday. The rest we donated to our local thrift shop.

Next came the boxes of snowmen. I made my son look at each one and choose – keep or donate. He ended up keeping half of them.

The last thing to come to the apartment was the tree. There was nowhere to store it. Even if I took it apart, there was no room for it anywhere – not even in the garage.

That doggone tree was on the floor in the living room for two weeks before I’d had enough. It was October 24, so I slapped it up.

Thanksgiving? Sure, why not? And try harder this time.

Christmas? Of course. And put some snowmen on it.

Oh look, we’re approaching Valentine’s Day.

You do know what’s going to happen, don’t you? That blasted tree is going to be up all year long. I’ll show you when it’s ready for St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and then The Fourth of July.

Someday we’ll tire of it, and the Christmas tree in the living room will be donated. I’m taking bets now on how long that might be.

I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween.

When I was a child, I loved Halloween. A costume consisted of a plastic mask with an elastic band that tugged at your hair. The mask made your face hot, sweaty, and it was hard to see. If you were small enough, there might be a plastic one-piece outfit to wear. The masks were never frightening – a princess, a policeman, a cowboy, a wolf, a gorilla, a nurse, etc.

Everything about trick-or-treat night was simple. All five of us kids were usually bundled in coats (some of our Halloweens had snow). We wore our plastic masks, carried brown grocery sacks, and turned loose into our neighborhood with no adult supervision.

We generally stuck together, and moms and dads were happy to see us and exclaim over our costumes as we gathered our stash. There were never “tricks” other than an occasional turning on of the outside water hose of a house that was dark (my older brother).

Our parents never checked our candy, and they let us eat it until we were sick.

My teen years were a bit different. They involved running around with my older brother and friends in his old 40’s-something Ford pickup truck. The back was loaded with toilet paper and eggs. Oh, yes, we were juvenile delinquents.

Fast forward to about 1990, married, and our son being old enough to sit with me to hand out candy. It didn’t take long before he was crying, and I was horrified by the costumes the kids were wearing. They were frightening even for me. The number of teenagers trick-or-treating surprised me, and their costumes were the worst. We ended the treat giving and went back into the house.

On future trick-or-treat nights, we went to the video store and rented movies, bought an excessive amount of candy at the Dollar Store, and spent the evening with the lights out in front of the television. Our son never knew what he was missing, and, frankly, I didn’t care. We had fun on our own.

I also have to mention that here in NE Ohio, we grew up with Ghoulardi and later The Ghoul. On Friday nights, Mom and Dad would be in bed by 11:00, and the television was ours at 11:30. These two hosts showed low-budget science fiction and horror shows with comedy skits during commercial breaks. All five of us kids were glued to the television, but not everyone could stay awake until one o’clock in the morning.

The movies were crazy scary to me – The Blob, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price, It Came from Outer Space, The Killer Shrews, etc.

My younger brother and I. Look at the hair and his moustache. This had to be circa early 70’s.

As an adult, I can’t do horror flicks. I read several Stephen King books before The Stand had me sleeping with the lights on. I swore off reading books that scared me. You couldn’t pay me to watch The Exorcist.

Today, I’m still sensitive to things I watch and read. I look away from the television when commercials for horror flicks come on, because I don’t want the images in my “stream.” They’ll show up later in my dreams.

The bottom line is … I kind of love Halloween and hate it at the same time.

When I was cleaning out our house, I dragged all the Christmas items up to my apartment and made my son go through it all. Everything Christmas in our house belonged to him. He loves Christmas and has a huge snowman collection. Even the tree was his as his grandmother gave it to him. I made him go through everything and pick out only the things that were sentimental to him. We found room in a closet for the items he wanted and donated the rest to a local thrift shop. But there was that doggone tree and no space for it. It was in my way on the living room floor for about two weeks before I decided I couldn’t wait for Christmas.

I put it up.