Estate Sales & Turkeys

We're off to the farm until Sunday evening! YEA! Hope it doesn't rain, we have a lot of work to do! it's supposed to be 81 degrees tomorrow and muggy. WOW - December and Texas weather. We'll come in for church Sunday morning of course, and then back out for the afternoon.

I went to an estate sale Thursday a.m. for a little old great grandmother who'd recently died at the ripe old age of 98. Her granddaughter was doing the sale and she had some really great prices. Usually, around here the estate sales are held by estate sales handlers and they have things marked up so high that most of us can't afford to buy anything. But this was a nice lady who wanted to sell everything at a fair price and so I didn't even feel the need to dicker with her - sort of felt like she was short-changing herself. I didn't get there until mid-morning, so I'm sure I missed some good stuff. But I did find a few bargains.

My husband loves old metal yard chairs and we have 6 and a glider. I have paid anywhere from $25 to $45 for good chairs. At this estate sale I was able to get one chair for $15 and one for $20 which I thought was great. My hubby sands them and repaints them - he's repainted them all a different bright color (my daughter thinks it looks "gay" to not have them all the same color - do I care? NO). Both our grandparents had these old chairs and it just brings back such great memories. .......... I can still remember my granddad and my daddy and my uncles all sitting under the big mimosa tree before and after mamaw and all the women cooked dinner and they'd all be leaning back in those metal chairs a little with full bellies and with their boots all propped up on the tree trunk. Like as not, they'd all be spittin' tobacco and solvin' the problems of the world - you didn't wanna walk around barefooted by the mimosa tree while they were sittin' out there! (hey-maybe that was a way to keep us kids away while they were jawing and chawing!) All the men got to eat first, then the women and us kids. Mamaw didn't have air-conditioning either, just an old water cooler in the living room. All the womenfolk would be in the kitchen cooking and sweating, but boy - could Mamaw cook! She & Papaw always raised all their own food and we had fresh vegetables and homemade everything at her house. She is my reason for doing the whole farm thing! It's in my blood.

I will pause here and go off on a tangent because I thought of a funny story about being at Mamaw's - Mamaw and Pappaw raised big white turkeys among other things. When I was about 12, my younger sister and cousin and I got into the turkey pen. It seemed to be so funny to us that if you squawked, it made all the turkeys gobble. So we were sqawking away and they were gobbling, and one thing led to another, and pretty soon we were trying to catch us a turkey. Well, then it became a game to see who could catch one first. We were all chasing and laughing and squawking and the turkeys were gobbling and freaking out and running around crazy and stirring up dirt and we were all having a ball. We had one turkey singled out like a calf and we all began chasing it. After only what seemed like a few minutes we cornered the turkey in the shed. It was flapping its wings and then, all of a sudden, it heaved and gave up the ghost and it's big ole knobby head fell over on the ground and then its body followed. IT WAS DEAD!!! We had scared the poor turkey absolutely to death! We all looked at each other and started screaming and crying. Then we ran into Mamaw's house and told her what happened. She was livid. But she never said a word. Instead, she went over to the turkey pen, and got the turkey out. Then she sat us down outside with a washtub, and told us to git busy plucking it. She finally said, "ya'll did this, and ya'll are going to get it ready to cook or put in the freezer. I'm not going to let it spoil." We were totally grossed out of course, we had to do everything to that turkey, even pull the pinfeathers out after she poured boiling water on it, and clean all the guts out. She stood over us all afternoon until we got it all done, but she never once hollered at us. Well, we never bothered the turkeys again, as you might can guess....
Anyway, back to the estate sale. I bought a vintage real wicker clothes hamper with wooden bottom and top for $5 (this thing was sturdy - you can sit on it), a nice hooked rug for $5, a piece of stained glass from an old church window (I think), and some other small items. Nothing much over $2. I felt it was money well spent. I'm getting to be rather good at looking for bargains - I've learned alot about antiques, glassware, etc., after spending this last year going to sales every single weekend. I have bought alot of "just Junk" before I knew any better (which will go into my moving/garage sale probably after Christmas) but it's been fun searching!

Gotta run - I'm through with work and if anyone reads this I hope you have an especially fun weekend getting ready for Christmas! I plan to - Vickie