ESTATE

TWENTY YEARS AGO, I quit college and got a job on a daily paper. It was a long jump for a young punk, but I was restless in school, felt useless, and had romantic ideas about newspapering, and also I was broke. They gave me a seat at the city desk—a horseshoe table where the city editor sat at the apex, the assistant city editor sat at his right, and I sat at the foot of the left leg and wrote what they gave me to write, which was mostly obits. Mortuaries phoned in the names, and I called the next of kin to get the facts.

The big obits for prominent people went to other reporters. Mine were all standard obits for people we’d never heard of, and were as formal as the sonnet. Services will be held on Day for Whom of Address who died When. Second graph: An employee of Which for Number of Years, he was a member of This, That, and The Other. Third: He is survived by Her, Them, Them, and Them. And though I got the idea from other reporters that this was lowly work, not meant for a person of talent, I enjoyed it. I felt useful. Someone had died, and the family wanted the world to pay some attention. They were glad to talk to me, the fellow from the paper, and, unlike the blowhards other reporters had to endure, my people were modest and had small expectations. “I don’t know if you can get this in, but one thing Dad did was swim across White Bear Lake and back every summer until he was eighty-two,” one man told me. “It’s nothing important, but it’d be nice if you could get it in.”

I did get it in. I tried to get a lot of stuff in, some of which the city editor took exception to. “Zinnias?” he wrote at the top of one obit. “For Christ’s sake!!” But I managed to convince him that large beds of beautiful zinnias were one of the deceased’s accomplishments in life and should be noted in her obituary. He wouldn’t let me mention another woman’s rhubarb cake. “Recipes don’t belong in an obit. Too disrespectful,” he said. But he did once let me say, “An employee of the Northern Pacific for thirty-seven years, Mr. Johnson was well known for his skill as an electrician and for taking good care of his tools.”

I thought of my obit-writing days the other evening, after I’d spent the afternoon going around to estate sales. Like the obit trade, they might have been depressing—the homes of the deceased opened up for the sale of stuff the survivors didn’t want, and hundreds of us strangers tramping through the rooms looking for bargains—but they were not. Not to me, anyway. I found them very satisfying. I went to three houses, all small and jammed with stuff. Though people of modest means, the deceased all had terrific dining-room tables, monumental solid oak or walnut dressers and bedsteads, and they had all been pack rats and kept impressive collections of knickknacks, souvenirs, bric-a-brac, and what the want ads call “collectibles.”

I’m a saver myself, and to my considerable collection I added a little bit of each of theirs: a white plastic radio, circa 1950 ($5), a black serving tray with a map of North Dakota on it ($1), a glass pitcher with cheerful red roses on it that is similar to one my mother had ($2.50), a small “I WANT ROOSEVELT AGAIN” button (50 cents), four chauffeurs’ badges ($5), a copy of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four inscribed “Happy Birthday, Fred—Mar. 1950—Hazel” ($1), a Tag-olene Motor Oil folding yardstick (10¢), and some other stuff I thought I’d enjoy owning. I was a discriminating buyer. I passed up a busted Victrola ($95) and a crate of National Geographics circa 1940 ($10 for the lot).

Going to estate sales, a person is struck by the fact that possessions survive us. The chair I’m sitting in should be good for another fifty years, at least. This typewriter should clatter on into the twenty-first century. This solid-glass paperweight could be darned near eternal. I’ll hang on to them, they are so dear, but when I’m dead they should be sold to strangers at rock-bottom prices. People who may not be born yet should come by my house and snatch them up as the wonderful bargains they will be. That’s why I took good care of them—to extend their usefulness beyond the unimaginable day when I’m no longer here. The big obits of prominent people referred to “a legacy of public service” they left behind, and maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. I am definitely going to leave a black Underwood upright in very good condition, cheap, and who knows what that could lead to?