Around the East Bay, CA

In the East Bay last weekend, we stopped by a few estate sales — my first encounter with these post-mortem blowouts in recent memory. You can’t help trying to piece together the former occupant’s life from the bits and scraps left over… and feeling like a vulture. A 1943 hardcover book about women’s physical and mental health, cooking pamphlets from the 1970s, Christ-related metal knickknacks, porcelain tchotckes commemorating the 100th anniversary of Virginia City? Morbid, yet fascinating.

At the first house, the adult children of the deceased were standing guard and rattling off prices to those who inquired. Two old women in the living room complained to each other about the fact that items themselves were not priced, the better for the sellers to rip them off. They shook their heads. I wanted to shout, Someone died, people! And we’re going through her stuff, in her own house! This is so horrible!

I didn’t. Obviously, estate sale-hunting is a serious avocation for a number of subsegments of the population: resellers, hipsters, and, shall we say, the generational peers — the elderly, of whom we noticed the most. (I also noticed more than two handicapped toilet seat-type setups for sale. I guess the gear for the oldest is as short term as that for the youngest.)

At the second place, high up in the hills of Piedmont with a view of the bay, a professional estate sale service had been handed the reins, and several “representatives” stood at the ready with credit card machines and receipts in triplicate. They had some higher ticket items: porcelain dolls, sets of fine china, polished armoires.

Both houses felt like time capsules. Both made me think about end-of-life care, hoarding objects, and petty capitalism. Is this what my house will feel like one day? Will my heirs invite strangers to rifle through the remnants of my life, to extract whatever remaining cash might be locked up in a vase or a bedspread?

But would I even have this much crap by the time I’m ready to pass? I hope not. As we were leaving the first house, the son was telling a visitor how they’d been carrying on with the sale for several weeks now, and that they’d be open for business again next weekend. How much more can they take?

P.S. Speaking of longevity, we also tried to visit some high architecture in Orinda (other other people’s houses). First, a disappointingly obscured Richard Neutra; second, a Frank Lloyd Wright under some seemingly intensive renovation.