"Going Around in Circas"
"How I Found Myself in the Auction Business"
(An excerpt from the book "Acres and Pains")

Is anybody looking for a bargain in an Early Pennsylvania washstand in mint condition, circa 1825? It's genuine pumpkin pine, with ball-and-claw feet, the original brasses, and a small smear of blood where I tripped over it last night in the dark. I'm holding it at $16, but not so tightly that I wouldn't let it go to the right party for circa ten cents.

I also have an authentic trestle table which collapses into a small space when you rest your elbows on it, and a patchwork quilt I bought from a very old lady who remembered seeing Lincoln. In fact I'm disposing of my entire collection of antiques to the lowest bidder, and if he doesn't want it I intend to set fire to it as soon as I am able to find an Early American match.

When we left a cozy New York flat to exile ourselves in a primitive farmhouse, back in the mid-30's, we broke clean with the 20th century. We were ready to dip candles and card our own flax. We installed a spinning wheel in every room, in case anyone should need some quick homespun, and replaced our luxurious inner-spring bed with a period four-poster. (Our neighbor hesitated to relinquish it, as it had been serving as a roost for his chickens, but finally exchanged it for five acres of prime bottom land.) We even discarded the electric stove and returned to cooking in the fireplace.

In spite of all our efforts, however, the house still seemed bourgeois and prosaic. The lamps gave off too much light and the bureau drawers worked too easily. We lusted for lamps make out of old seltzer bottles or apothecaries' jars, and Victorian dressers that nobody could open.

Then one day on a back-country road we stumbled into a web run by a spider named Jake Meserve. Outwardly Jake was a farmer. He had a long linen duster, steel-bowed spectacles, and a field of papier-mache corn in front of his place as a blind. In his hayloft, however, he kept a few choice heirlooms you could persuade him to sell by dropping your hat. We immediately fell in love with a rare old cobbler's bench, as fine a piece as you would find outside the Metropolitan Shoe Repair Shop. After a brisk tussle Jake stowed away my $39 and hauled out a rickety sofa.

"You folks ever seen a real old-time Victorian courtin chair?" he inquired, stroking the plush. "My Uncle Zeb proposed to Aunt Mildew in that chair. I wouldn't part with it if I was starvin." Suddenly he choked back a sob and turned away. "Take it," he muttered brokenly. "Ninety-three dollars. It's like sellin my own flesh and blood."

I whittled him down to $60, and drying his eyes he disgorged three more family mementos-- a dough tray, a glass bell containing his mother's baby hair, and a little chest of drawers lettered, "Willimantic Spool & Thread Co." He stripped my wallet of everything but the social security card. and we embarked. As I threw the car into gear, he staggered up bearing a table.

"Just ran acrost this in my feed bin," he panted "My grandpa bought it off Nancy Hanks. You can scrape off the paint with a stiff brush."

I threw him my watch and chain, and we whizzed away. I spent the next week hacking at the table with a blowtorch, steel wool, and sandpaper. It had six coats of paint, including one like porcelain that had been baked on. When I had finished I overturned it accidentally and discovered a sticker reading, "R. H. Macy & Co. Reduced to $3.98." And that, children is how daddy met his first psychiatrist.

Copyright 1947 S.J Perelman, and published by Reynal & Hitchcock