VOICE FROM THE DARK
(Revisiting Gordon Ball’s auction)
alan skeoch
Nov. 2018
This stone house was built long ago. Long before Gordon Bell moved here in 1960.
But Gordon loved it. He was a loner in many ways…kept to himself and a few friends
who were also in the antique business. Then Gordon got killed in a car accident and his
farm fell into neglect.
The auction had a little bit of everything. Wrong term. The auction had a lot of everything
imaginable. A lot of the really good things were stolen. And the remainder…piles and piles of
things…were a little the worse for wear. If you read my first article on the auction you
would know what I mean.
alan skeoch
nov. 2019
ANDREW AND I went back to Gordon Ball’s farm two days after the auction sale.
We had things to gather. Andrew bought a truckload of white pine planks as shiny new
as if they came from the sawmill a week ago. But they were ancient. Dead flat…clean
as a whistle…
below the raccoon dung.
I wandered back to the farm house. Noticed that Gordon’s kitchen
was now empty. The day of the sale there were piles of things in
every corner. Thrown there by the vandals who had trashed the farm
on many midnight visits. Today it was spanking clean. Sort of!
Memories of this kitchen on a winter night with that stove belching
out heat with the family gathered round pushed the ruined site
to the background of my mind.
In the woodshed, I made a discovery.
Outside the house there is a woodshed. Dishevelled woodshed that is. Chunks
of cordwood thrown around. And at the far end there is a STAIRCASE.
Never noticed it the day of the sale. Seems that Bob Severn and Jim McCartney
missed it too.
These stairs were dark. Lit up by my flash camera.
Downstairs was as black as the worst night imaginable.
Then I pushed the flash button again.
And the basement was full of kerosene lamps and lamp parts. No Good Housekeeping
awards though.
Sort of looks like boxes full of gold. Right?
Then out of the dark in another basement room came a voice
“Be careful down here…lots of broken glass.”
I couldn’t see anyone…so I pressed the flash and
presto this image appeared…a man wearing some kind
of ventilator.
“Probably best you not come down here.”
“Are you the new owner?”, (I did not say this as
bold as it sounds.)
“I will leave…take a couple of pictures on my way.”
Was he the new owner?
Why was he wearing a ventilator…mask…?”
“What was he looking for?”
“How could he see in the dark?
“He had a small penlight…see the smudges of light?”
So I left. Now here are a couple of questions for you.
1)Scan the things. What seems to have value to you.?
2)Who do you think the man in the black coat might be?
3) Would you run out as fast as you could?
4) Would you have climbed down those stairs in
the first place. (I was not trespassing…purchasers of goods
have time to get their goods.)
My exit was different from my entrance.
I could only see the No Trespassing sign on my way out.
ELSEWHERE ON THE FARM BIG THINGS
WERE HAPPENING…CAREFUL DEMOLITIONS
SLOW IN CONTRAST TO A VANDALS DEVIL
MAY CARE TREATMENT.
THESE BUILDINGS ARE WONDERFUL … EACH HEADING
TO A GOOD HOME.
I wish I had bought this old wrecked car. It has character…too nice to be melted down…don’t you think?
The guy with the crayon is going to rebuild the log cabin into a blacksmith shop on his farm. He is full of joy
as you can see.
A FINAL WORD FROM BOB SEVERN, CHIEF AUCTIONEER
“Thought you would be here, Alan. This was not an easy auction.”
“Why?”
“No one living here…a dead end road…and great piles of antiques.”
“Vandals got here first it seems?”
“Came many times in dead of night.”
(Somewhere in this tree is a motion camera watching me. Cannot see it.)
“We would notice things gone with each visit as we got
things arranged.”
“Could’nt you do something.”
“We did. We put hidden cameras in the laneway but that
did not work…they were found.”
“And?”
“So we put a camera high up in that big willow.”
“See anyone?”
“We did. We watched a man casually walking around loading up
at his leisure. He did not know where the camera was but he did not
really care.”
“Why not?”
“What could we do? We did not see his face very well and if we had seen him
even then there was little we could do.”
“Sad.”
“There was one thing we could do though.”
“We rented that big steel container, the kind that cross the ocean, and filled it with
the antiques that had not been stolen…lots of them…locked it up. To get it open
would require a blow torch.”
“I thought the container come from Scottish estates…looked that way.”
“There was one other thing we could do.
“What?:
“Have this auction as fast as we could…turned out
to be an auction in a snowstorm. But the half ton trucks
just kept coming. Turned out to be a good auction. Even
sold the three log cabins and both of the big barns.”
(I am paraphrasing Bob’s comments….)
alan skeoch
Nov. 2019
Was this the Gordon Ball I used to go & purchase from in the 60’s in southern Ontario close to Brampton? He used to bring back containers from Scotland back then & did it with father