I’m a treasure hunter. Not the swashbuckling sort seeking a pot of gold, but the ephemera (i.e. junk) of estate sales. Like any collector or researcher knows, the hunt is almost as much a pleasure as the find. For me there is also the time travel component (probably why “Back to the Future” is my all-time favorite movie.)
As I wander through a house and its heaps, I wonder about the people who lived there, what kind of life they led, what they saw and what they did. I love rescuing an item that seems worthless and either repurposing it (I recently made keychains using sewing scraps) or recognizing its value (the hand-sewn Laura Ingalls bonnet comes to mind).
One recent sale surpassed all others. As I drove over the 8th Ave. viaduct, I was a few blocks south of my grandfather’s childhood home. He grew up on Paul Court in a neighborhood that has since been razed — except, as I learned on that magical Sunday morning, for a single house.
I had assumed the estate sale would be in one of the small industrial buildings that pepper the area, but as I approached the address, my heart rate shot up. A white clapboard building was ahead. And as I entered its doorway, I felt the strongest sense of déjà vu.
For the first time ever in my entire life, I felt I was seeing my grandfather’s childhood. Not only did he die before I was born, but his home was gone, too, by then. But I had heard so much about the small white clapboard Paul Court home, where my grandfather and my eight great-aunts and uncles lived with their parents. Their home was far more modest than the one I visited on Dale Court, but it was the same era and style. Suddenly, amid the industrial buildings and parking lots, I could see the immigrant neighborhood of my grandfather’s youth. Where he cut his teeth. Where he was forced to grow up too soon, after the death of his father during the 1918 flu pandemic, when my grandfather was seven years old.
I ambled through the house, up and down the flights of stairs, into the attic and into the cellar, spellbound. For an hour on a Sunday morning I visited my grandfather and his brothers and sisters whom I miss so dearly.
I know nothing about quantum mechanics, but step into an estate sale and, if you’re lucky, instead of a mere entrance, you may enter into a time-altering portal.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com
© IJN 2024
