Mary and the Newborn Jesus

The nativity characters were huddled next to a pile of truck tires. Directly in front of them lay some steel fencing on the ground. Looming high was a plastic bed-liner, the kind of thing you put in the back of a pickup truck to protect the metal floor of the cargo area. Mary and the wise men had electrical cords extending from behind. The sheep and camel and other animals also had cords, the better to illuminate and see them at night. The contrast was striking—one of the many unlikely scenarios played out at my beloved machinery sale. The poor, huddled group, with their main focus the baby Jesus, looked to be seeking refuge from the masses of junk and machinery that surrounded them. Their dim and faded colors were putting up a brave front. Maybe bring home the camel, decide on a whim to plug him in, watch in surprise as he actually lights up. Most likely, be content with the expected outcome of a dark and silent camel, showing no signs of life. God, I love this sale.

I didn’t buy anything, this go-‘round. This always gives me an inexplicable feeling of satisfaction, the sensation that I got away with something, didn’t succumb as I so often do. To keep things going, I bid on exactly one item. One bid, that’s it. It was—of course—a riding mower, and it eventually sold for way more than I would have paid, even if I’d needed it. So there’s that. And then I saw the twin to my old compressor in the basement, the ancient service-station relic dating from the 1920s. This one appeared mostly complete, had the parts necessary to maybe get mine going again—or at least use it as a reference. I lingered, talked about an old Maytag washing machine with two oldsters idling away the time. One of them recounted how an acquaintance from some time back was doing the wash with one of these antique machines. The top part, near where you put the clothes in, has a wringer where you run garments through one at a time. It is powered by the machine itself, not hand-cranked like some very old models. As this woman of his acquaintance leaned over, her breast got caught in the rollers, was squeezed terribly. I’m just saying what I heard. After that, I got in my car out in the grassy field and drove off. If I can’t actually pinpoint the pleasure I get from not buying anything, the opposite is true for the feeling I have when I purchase something at one of these sales: I feel cheapened, abused, as if I’d been violated in a very public and humiliating way. No rhyme nor reason, just the way I feel. Probably not as bad as the woman felt with the washing machine, however. That really hurt.

So today I loaded the sticks of bread into the little car, drove over to the elderly couple and sat and talked for a while. A television show came on their more-than-large tv, and—as luck would have it—it dealt with the Burgundy region of France. So we watched that. The narration was of course in English, so every now and then I would try to translate, in my limited French, what the narrator was saying. One monastery—not Cluny—had ten thousand monks at one time around the thirteenth century. They would all go off to bed in their dormitories, lie down to sleep fully clothed.
“Ils dormaient tout habilles,” I said, explaining how they slept with their clothes on. We all found this detail unpleasant, but not as unpleasant as that incident with….well, you know. This monastery, the one that was not Cluny, was world renowned for its efficiency of operations. It succeeded in preventing people from pillaging the church; then it went about a colossal fund-raising campaign that reaped huge financial rewards. When nobles were dead and departed, the priests from the monastery that was not Cluny benefited from being named as heirs in the huge estates. They arranged for this in life, explaining that the nobles would be prayed for regularly, giving them a better chance at entering heaven. Many of them signed up for the plan. Better to be safe than sorry, they said. Actually, it was most likely the institution, and not the priests themselves, that were named as the recipients of posthumous benefits.

Later, I drove home and worked on the deck area over at the other house. This involved digging the post holes very deep, owing to the plan I have for a patio under the deck. It will be a sunken patio, accessed by two small steps from the yard beyond the far edge of the deck. There is actually a very good reason for doing this: Right now, the entrance to the basement is difficult at best. There is a door, to be sure, but knocking your head on low-lying obstacles is a constant menace at this entrance. If I lower the level of the lawn where the deck is, everything will be at the proper level for walking straight into the basement. No stepping down, no stepping up. No one will knock their heads this way, unless they are VERY tall. So the holes for the deck’s upright supports must be extra deep, to account for the dirt I will be removing in that area. I plan to hire a couple of casual laborers for this project, get the area dug out and maybe install a drainpipe leading to the lower part of the yard. This will keep my sunken patio from flooding and washing into the house via the basement.

With the day getting late and chilly, I took a few photos, put the grizzled cat in the house, as she was spending way too much time playing in the dirt, and drove down to get some groceries. This put the day past nightfall, nothing more to do but chronicle the events and eat. Pictured are two antique beer bottles the Bobcat men dug up—intact—from their backyard excavation.