While coming home from a dump run, K and I saw a sign for an estate
sale. Curious, and without anyplace pressing to be, we figured
we'd check it out. Turning off the main road onto a gravel one,
we started to see cars lined up along the road. Many of them.
"This is a big deal" I thought to myself. We walked past a modest
house and into a barn that was a good bit bigger. Inside was a
crowd of people. Walking around, first saw a table of knives, from
swiss army to what looked like trench knives. Interesting, I
supposed. Then I really started to look around. Mad River Canoe
stickers and banners everywhere. Small (12" long) fiberglass model
canoes. Holy shit, this must be the guy who founded Mad River Canoe!
Upstairs we went, and into the treasure trove. It seemed to be his
hangout space, with a nice beige pool table in the corner. A pile of
incredible books, mostly canoes, birding, and canoe travel books.
My eyes went straight for stereo equipment, and there was a Marantz
CD carousel and double tape deck. Unfortunately the tape deck was
spoken for, but the CD player was as of yet unclaimed. $20 later
and it was mine. Found a double CD of Kintaro, appears to be his
greatest hits. Listening to it later, K really dug it. She pulled
a dozen books to take and asked me to trim down her haul. I
removed one. There was a "poster" section, but those weren't
posters, they were canoe design drawings from the Adirondack Museum,
USGS topographic maps, and a site plan of his house and septic
system (yeah, not gonna pay $5 for that). In the corner was an Akai
reel-to-reel tape deck, but at $225 was a bit expensive for my
tastes. Also, even though I may be able to convert that into a tape
echo machine, do I really need another project like that? K and I
are working on her next roaster's choice extra, and that has inspired
me to review my old recordings and pull together 60 minutes of music
that could be offered as an album.
It was the best haul we had at a garage/estate sale in a long long
time, if not ever. Was able to get some real pieces of history,
and replaced my malfunctioning CD player in the process.
