The Weber City Auction

The first auction I remember attending was when I was a little boy. It was in Weber City, Virginia and the building is still there almost fifty years later; in fact, I drove by there earlier today. When I go toward Gate City I almost always take mental note of the old auction house, but I never notice it on the way back.

The auctioneer blaring his voice into a microphone that he seemed to have swallowed, there were escalating bids here, there and everywhere for whatever it was he was selling. Going once, going twice…Sold! Then it all would start over again with the next item. Quite the entertainment to a small boy who lived by the river on a rural road; attending the Weber City auction was better than going to town on Saturday morning.

The only rule dad imposed on me was to not scratch my nose or ear or anything else while inside the auction house. He didn’t want to have to pay for whatever I might have bid on by scratching something. He and Mom bought a piece or two of furniture during one of our few visits there, but mostly we went to have something to do.

The best day was when Dad bought for me a medium sized cardboard box full of cast off toys, including a mechanical robot man with gears and gears and gears of different colors behind a clear plastic exterior. That was a great day. But it only lasted a little while, that best day.

The worst day was about a week later when I didn’t stop playing with the noisy mechanical robot toy after Dad’s third or fourth warning and in a quick moment he picked up the amazing robot man thing and threw it with some force into the cardboard box and busted it. It landed with a ringing clatter and never worked again. Right away he was sorry; but he could never apologize for anything so he let me feel like it was me that broke it—my fault. Of course, I should have stopped playing with it when he told me to stop. But I was a kid with a new toy, after all.

Anytime I remember the Weber City auction, I recall that mechanical robot toy and dad breaking it in the cardboard box as I sat on the floor in the doorway of the hall closet.

If there is a lesson here it might be this: all dads need to remember that their kids may very well remember things long after they’re gone. If dads mess up and in an angry fit break their kid’s amazing mechanical robot toy that came in a cardboard box of junk, they should apologize for losing control and doing something they really shouldn’t have—a little like the excited, engrossed kid who wouldn’t stop playing with the mechanical robotic toy thing when he should have.

Dads are sometimes overgrown, misbehaving boys. Take a breath and think. Your kids are watching all the time. And sometimes the woman who gave them birth is watching, too; it never hurts to impress her any time you can. –TSA