If you don't enjoy auctions, you should probably skip this long entry.

Another auction yesterday. Wife stopped by on Friday to look the goods over, and reported we should go.

So we did.

Nothing like sitting on hard metal chairs on a concrete floor, with doughnuts and coffee for breakfast, hotdogs and chips for lunch.

Actually, we do enjoy that. Especially when you arrive a little late and find out all the chairs are taken.

Standing for hours on concrete is less fun. Then you really appreciate the small things in life, like uncomfortable metal chairs.

But we managed a couple chairs together about an hour into the sales (even though some friends of the wife, who were sitting behind those chairs and using them for foot rests, tried to hit us for $10 per chair).

The auctioneer crew was having a good time today. The roads were open and dry, so they had professional antique buyers from Denver, Salt Lake, Alaska (yes, Alaska! the wife went out to check their license plates) and other points in between. So, of course the auctioneers were happy. And the prices high.

The grandfather and father of the clan, who rotate the calling, could not agree on anything...

"These are solid oak chairs."

"No they're not. These are maple. Or something."

One of the spotters eventually mediated by "guaranteeing they were solid wood."

The same routine for the set of shelves. And the antique Bissell carpet sweep (which was oak).

By the time they got done with the furniture, the grandpa was so rattled he was "selling all three chairs for the money," while holding up four fingers. After that, whenever three of anything came up, the spotters held out four fingers.

One of the spotters, the college-aged son, bought an empty Coors beer keg.

"Thought you were going to do better this semester," came from his grandpa.

An older man attached to an oxygen tank was sitting at the left end of the row in front of us. Wasn't too long before we realized the woman two seats to our right was his wife, and she had the bidder's card. Whenever #94 won an item, the spotters would take it over and stack it next to the old man. And he would glare at them, "we don't need that!" About the third or fourth time the spotter came over apologizing as he went, stating he didn't want to get in the "middle of this war."

Have you ever seen a kerosene powered iron? I hadn't, but there once was such a thing. An old, 1950s style clothing iron, but with a little metal gas tank sticking out the back for the kerosene. Reportedly unsafe (no doubt).

The regular antiques-dealing spotter wasn't there, but another tried to snarf up all the jars of old marbles. Could tell he really wanted one set, so I kept bidding just to piss him off and make him pay. Cost him an extra twenty bucks just from spite.

According to the registrar when we came in, most of the folks (there were over 140 registered) were there for the school buses. Six school buses from a neighboring district. All functional. Didn't go out for that part of the auction, but the wife said the first one went for $800. Yep, that and $35,000 will buy you 40 acres of desert to set your new mobile home on.

Our lovely desert is littered with the decomposing carcasses of old abandoned school buses that people tried to use as homes. Now we'll have six more.

But before they got to the real school buses, they auctioned an old toy one. When they couldn't get $5 for their first "school bus", the caller announced that they were in trouble, 'cause they had six more to go. "'Course this Metro District bus doesn't have the capacity of our rural ones."

If you want cast iron cookware, you apparently want "Griswold," because their prices were about four times the other brands.

The wife commented on the horrid olive green/pastel pink paint job on a wicker bathroom cabinet. "Imagine the bathroom that it matched," was my response.

Anybody know what a "rabbit plane" is? Other than something Bugs Bunny flies? It's some sort of wood-working tool, which reportedly costs $500 new. This barely used one went for $130. A lot of expensive carpentry tools, and these naturally went relatively cheap (if $475 is cheap for a band saw...$1225 for a 10" table saw). Auctioneer complained these near-new things were just "flying away." The wife commented we were apparently looking at the possessions of someone who planned on working with wood when he retired, and then died shortly after stocking his workshop.

Had the usual haphazard mix of items in the boxes. One with a picture of Christ and also nun-chuks. Do these go together?

Good ole #94 bought another item. Her husband had been dozing off, but his eyes lit up when he heard that #94, and he threw her such a glare I was scared to be in the middle. We both broke out laughing, and the man's wife didn't buy much more after that.

They auctioned off two antique cream cans. The dead mouse in the second one was thrown in for free.

Upon checking the contents of an old old trunk, the auctioneer stated there was an "afghan." But grandpa pointed out, derisively, that it was a sweater.

"At least I know it's not oak" was the response.

When the ski boots came up, they couldn't tell anyone what size they were. But they were sure they weren't oak.

While auctioning off a box of old 1970s mirrored tiles, the auctioneer threw in a box of legos "because we want to do that."

When one of the out-of-town buyers finished running up the prices on several items, the response was "we like that Salt Lake money, appreciate it very much." In contrast, they kept knocking down their starting bids for five suitcases, with no takers. When one fool finally bid one dollar, the auctioneer immediately called "sold!" and moved on.

Do auctions in your country ever have adult-sized turquoise and white leather chaps show up? Ours did.

The auctioneer's daughter was doing the recording, behind the auction stand. At least three times she had to stand up and shout to get them to take her bids. Missed her completely once.

Another bozo stood in the middle of the wares, behind the auctioneers. A real pain and annoyance to get bids from. But justice does arrive. Bids on 15 silver dollars finally got up to $18. He looked up from his nosing through the items to take advantage of such a good buy.

And then found out his winning bid was for choice, i.e. per silver dollar. Was really fun to see his face when they explained he was paying $19 for one silver dollar, not all 15. No sympathy from the rest of the buyers, either. After that he moved to the side and paid attention.

One of the older hands, whose job it is to move merchandise to the front, got caught peeking at the girlie calendars in one box.

Ever been at an auction where they sell an antique, green bedpan? Or seen an auctioneer's son use it as a hat? This one had two.

But the best item of all? A can of "Fish Assholes."

Really. That's what the label said.

Forgot to pay attention to the final bid, but it was over $10.

What the wife really wanted was a box of miscellaneous ceramics, which just happened to include two matched sets of sugar and cream bowls. Nothing special about them, except the previous owner, whose estate this was, was a member of their church. These were sugar and cream bowls from the old sets the church used to have for their banquets and breakfasts when the boys were young.

Things were looking good until they threw in an ugly "Hull" ceramic vase to make the box more interesting. This knocked the bids up over $20 for what would have been a near-nothing two and a half bucks buy.

Anybody want an ugly yellow and green "Hull" vase with a chip on one side?