Lot #1106: Vintage Toy Tops

I hear roosters crowing and birds chirping. The sounds of a Hilo morning. I overslept. I roll over and grab my phone and type in dakotahdiamondauctions. The second day of Mom and Dad's sale started an hour ago. I hope I didn't miss the radios.

They're selling the antique toy tops. Bidder #1115 from Aberdeen, South Dakota has the bid to $55.00. Maybe bidder #1115 remembers these from when they were a kid. The bigger top is red, yellow, and blue. I never noticed the picture. It's little cartoon girls in dresses riding white horses. The smaller top is also red, yellow, and blue. It has a cartoon boy and a bird.

How many places have these tops been in the house? Once they were a pop color in the display with Dad's Native American maul/hammerheads. We'd walk by and say, "The tops." Another day they'd end up part of the centerpiece of the dining room table flanked by a bouquet of tulips and surrounded by blue dishes. The year Mom did the sixteen Christmas trees, they were under the vintage tree. The past few years, since Mom stopped going to sales, they've been resting in a Redwing crock beside the couch in the big room. Now they're up for auction again.

Mom originally bought them for Dad at an auction. Dad had the same tops as a kid, but Lauretta threw away all his childhood toys. She did not want any clutter.

The tops sold and now they're onto Antique Egg Scale. The opening is $22.50 from an online bidder in Watertown, South Dakota. This online auction is amazing, but it goes so fast, and I can't tell who bought the tops or what they sold for. I could scroll down and look, but I don't want to miss the bidding on the egg scale.

The Colorado Uncles text me and Christine. They're watching the sale too, and they're impressed. Tears roll down my cheeks. They get it. They know what this feels like. They saw our house through the years. They have been surrounded by all of those beautiful, unique items each one selected by my parents and brought back to life. The items that now sit immaculately cleaned, tagged with yellow item numbers and lined up on six-foot folding tables in the Miller Legion Hall.

The bids come in from Watertown, Oacoma, and Highmore, South Dakota. These small towns so much more familiar than the place I am now. Dad's dog moved to Oacoma. Is her new owner the Oacoma bidder? Is Uncle John the bidder from Highmore?

There's a bidder from New Braunfels, Texas, where Christine and I tubed the Guadalupe. We rented three tubes: one for each of us and one for our cooler. I wrapped my cigarettes and lighter in a ziplock bag. I spent the entire float worrying about snakes and losing our car keys.

There's a bidder from West Point, Nebraska, and my Nebraska years play on the movie screen behind my eye lids. So many memories of my life converge in this one moment and tears come again. Dad would say, "Don't cry, Mandy. Be happy, be happy. It's just junk. Your Mom can't bring it across the ocean. Mom will be there soon."

It's not just junk, Dad, it's you. All the hours of joy you had going to sales and coming home with a treasured bargain. The hours spent in the shed cleaning, polishing, and refinishing until it was done and put on display. Then you were on to the next thing.

There's a thirty minute break in the online auction. I click around the website to see what I missed during the first hour of the sale. They already sold Dad's radios.