Five Dollars

It was a five dollar day with five dollars being good value.
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Five Dollars


We drove south out of Dodson, up onto the plateau and out toward the mountains. We passed the turn off at the long dirt road to the place where I used to live, a life-time ago. I recognized the same barbed-wire gate. Sun dappled the hills. A slight breeze teased the grasses. A perfect day.

Signs marked “Auction” pointed us in the right direction. Oak pallets, each heaped with an assortment of goods, snaked across the field. Beyond the pallets, lined out like an old-soldiers honor guard at a funeral, slumped dozens of derelict cars and pick-ups, trucks, tractors and machinery. Stacks of lumber, tools, wire, boxes and bins of parts and nails and bolts flanked scattered outbuildings.

I signed in and received the number 100. A good omen. I wandered over to the row of pallets where the auctioneer hawked trash and treasures. I didn’t spot anything I wanted, but, feeling mischievous, I started a bid at two and a half. I was certain somebody else would pick it up from there. Three. Then four. The bid went to five. Why not? Okay. Seven-fifty? Going once. Twice. Sold for five dollars. Gulp! I had just bought a pallet. I had not intended to buy it. I had no idea what was on the pallet other than a large brown boxy thing and an old pressure cooker minus the petcock and handles.

While the auctioneer proceeded along the row, I stopped to paw through my acquisitions. Within moments, I sold a box of dishes and a box of assorted car parts. That paid for my pallet. Soon I had sold or gifted everything but the cooker and a box of canning jars.

An hour passed before I bought another pallet; again, for five dollars. It was heaped with odd dresser drawers, minus the dressers. Some old wood. A mix of cabinet doors. A sturdy box with dividers for storing all manner of things. It could have lived in a tool shed, a kitchen or an office. But what did I really buy? The dresser drawers will be raw material for art projects. Wait till you see what I can do with a dresser drawer.

I set a limit to my bids based on what I could spot in the jumble on the pallet. And no matter how much I desired a particular treasure, I recognized when someone else wanted it more.

An auction is a bitter-sweet place to spend the day. It is a book of somebody’s life, easily deciphered but just as easily misunderstood. This ranch was probably homesteaded, in the last wave of homesteaders, if I read the pages right.

I looked out over the hills. Something within me yearns for this life, isolated as it is, out here on the flat with the snow-covered Little Rockies directly south and the Bear Paws a notch over to the west. I lived out here during the sixties, snowed in every winter. We farmed with horses and an obsolete tractor. We had no running water though we had a good deep well. We had no bathroom facilities. We had no money but we were rich in living.

My friends dragged me away to take a break from my heavy spending. We sauntered over to the cook wagon. Replenished with a generous bowl of hearty beef stew, we marched back into the fray.

We watched buyers haggle over the old car bodies. Much as I might covet an antique auto to restore, if I hauled a junker home I could do no more than watch it continue to rust. The auctioneer, like a mother hen with chicks, herded his brood around some large sheds. We ended up by the ruins where a fire had burned down the main house.

Oh. That answered a lot of questions. A woman I had noticed before, hanging on the fringes of the auction, told me that her uncle had died in the house fire. He was ninety-three. She grew up on this farm. The pain of her loss was reflected in her eyes.

Around the edges of the debris surrounding the burn stood several old stools. Some had three legs. Some had four. Some had legs each a different length. Some legs faced different directions on the same stool. This was not the work of a craftsman. But I recognize treasure when I see it. I piled up six of the stools and bid on them. I’ll paint them each a different color and plant them in my back yard. I’ll surround them with pots of petunias. Five dollars well spent.

Sondra Ashton
Havre Daily News: Home Again
April 22, 2010
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My Tuna Casserole Day

My Tuna Casserole Day
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My two Montana cousins and I had just returned from a trip to my old family home in southern Indiana , where aunts and uncles and mobs of other cousins gathered in celebration of my Aunt Mary’s ninety-fifth birthday. For six days we basked in our historical culture, with love, hugs, abundant food, and family stories with everyone talking at once. It was a good trip. On the way back to the Cincinnati airport we only got lost once. We made every connection, complete with our luggage. It was a trip to treasure.

I got home at midnight. I slept well. So why, next morning, did I feel punky, lethargic, and just plain blue? I had just spent the past week surrounded by loving friends and relatives. I should be walking on clouds. Instead, I was dragging my face along the floor. I knew there was only one thing that would dig me out of this pit. I needed a Tuna Casserole Day.

Now to experience a true Tuna Casserole Day, one must feel downright depressed. Self-pity is essential. Loneliness is a must. An ability to wallow in misery is vital.

Here are the rules for a Tuna Casserole Day. You must don a shabby bathrobe. Well, but not just shabby. It must be old, shapeless, stained, unwashed, smelling of sweaty nights and days in bed, colored with evidence of melted chocolate wiped from your fingers, coffee dribbled from blubbering lips and sleeves used to wipe your runny nose. Get the picture? It is against the rules to wash this rag, ever. (I recommend you have a hidey hole where the thing can be stored when not in use.) Health and Safety Warning: This item is to be worn sparingly, in emergency situations only.

Shut the blinds. Lock the doors. Disconnect the phones. Tune the radio to tear-jerking country music. Limit your television watching to soaps. Junk food is taboo. It is too entertaining. Limit your food intake to something that matches your mood. For you it might be chicken noodle soup from the can or maybe cream of wheat. For me it has to be tuna casserole.

Wallow. Yes, wallow. Really wallow. Get down and dirty. Of course the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. Feel it. Of course your life is worthless. Know it. Of course the future of humanity is hopeless. Of course you are broke and dying. Wallow in it. Oh, did I mention, it’s critical you set a timer? You don’t want to be stranded here forever.

So I crawled out of bed trying to remember where I had hidden The Bathrobe when I heard a knock on the door. It was Jerry, a long-time friend from Washington . He said, “Remember when we used to make those gratitude lists? I decided to take a road trip to see you and talk about gratitude.”

Gratitude. My Tuna Casserole Day was doomed. As I watched my day of wallowing slink out the door, I noticed the sun was shining. “Let’s go,” I said.

I had heard there are some spectacular badlands north of Hinsdale on Rock Creek. We decided to try to find them. And find them we did, a miniature Grand Canyon . We made several stops during our journey. We picked up a truly huge snake skin of the lethal variety of snake. At the edge of a field of spring wheat, we found a fist-size agate, a treasure. To our surprise, we spotted a pond full of pelicans. At the high water mark of the creek where we stopped to fish, we found some farmer’s long lost favorite screwdriver with the handle missing. Along the way we talked about old times, mutual friends and plans for the future. We ended the day in Malta with a meal fit for the gods.

So now my Indiana trip is memory. Jerry is headed back to Washington . The rain has stopped. The sun is out. I went out my back door, clippers in hand and returned with a fist full of poppies, a couple sprigs of mock orange, blue bachelor buttons, a late peony, chive blossoms and milk weed blooms. I arranged them in the antique blue glass bowl, a gift from Aunt Mary, and set it on my dining table.

The world is filled with beauty. Life is wonderful. The future is today and I am rich. Who needs a tuna casserole!

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