A Quirky Auction

            In writing the weekly Auctions and Antiques column in the Philadelphia Daily News I became familiar with numerous auctions throughout the Region.  I never encountered Brown Brothers of Buckingham, PA until I recently perused AuctionZip, an online service which previews area auctions each week. 

            I found the Brown Brothers listing for their January 21^st sale particularly intriguing for several reasons.  The listing read: Who are we? Where did we come from? Have we developed linearly from cave man to contemporary man, as we have been taught, each generation building on the next? Or are we part of vast millenial cycles, advanced civilizations rising and falling beneath tectonic plates, fire and brimstone, forcing us back into caves until our metaphorical rebirth. The circle repeating itself over and over, as cyclical as the Great Precessional Year itself.

Scholarship has yielded many clues holding us in fascination. Hieroglyphic tombs from Egypt, cuneiform tablets from Babylon, the Old Testament, Vedic Sanskrit, Homer, Herodotus, Orion, Stonehenge, Giza, Machu Picchu, Minoa, Atlantis, all tidbits, jigsaw pieces in a vast game of discovery. Perhaps we should add one more - maps. From these ancient sources much knowledge can be deciphered. This week we touch cartography, although not from antiquity, most certainly in a world most familiar to us...

continued at Brown Bros.

            This philosophical approach to promoting an auction was unusual to say the least. I thought it was at least worth investing a phone call to learn more.  Alas I can’t tell you more because when I called to speak to “Mr. Brown” (I don’t know how many Brown Brothers there are) he relayed through a subordinate that he was too busy to come to the phone to discuss his auction.

            In my experience most auctioneers are accommodating, hospitable and eager to be informative about their sales.  Then there are those who are just plain quirky and apparently comfortable dwelling in caves. Brown Brothers Auction is not one I’d care to attend anytime soon.

Random Thoughts

            Random thoughts.  We are inundated daily with commercial messages from all sorts of media. Some I really admire for their tenacity and ingenuity and wish I had thought to create and implement them.

My TV viewing one recent evening consisted of watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, American Pickers and some of the All-State college football championship game which featured several field goals which in turn necessitated the raising of a net behind the goal posts to catch the ball and it was only after the third or fourth field goal that I realized someone had come up with a brilliant marketing ploy which I envied…the net had been commercially branded as the All-State Insurance Net. As a marketing, advertising and public relations veteran I have helped clients brand lots of places and things and have diligently observed the work of other professionals in the ever expanding quest to display company names in prominent positions but branding the goal post net was new territory for me. I think it was only because the game was lousy and featured so many field goals that I noticed the net but I applaud the marketer who dreamed that up.

            I am an avid viewer of cable TV cooking shows, travel shows, antiques shows, hog hunter shows and storage locker auction shows among others.  One successful show seems to spawn a copycat overnight.  A new show debuting at the end of the month, for the moment in a category of its own, will be devoted to jousting. I can’t wait to see how many other such competitive combat programs will follow.

            We’ve all likely heard about it, perhaps experienced it ourselves.  You do a load of laundry, put it in the clothes dryer and when the load is done a sock is missing.  Where did it go?  What happened to it?  It’s a mystery.

            In an attempt to make my blog more interactive I seek your support in solving this and other “mysteries.”  What happened to that sock? 

What’s with the way toilet paper is dispensed?  Some people dispense it from over-the-top and some from under the roll.  Each seems dedicated and committed to their approach, but what does it mean? It’s a mystery.

Unlike some I’ve never had a problem pulling myself up by my boot straps.  My problem is with my work boot laces.  They start out even but somehow over time one lace becomes longer than the other.  How does this happen?  Why does this happen?  I apply pressure evenly when I tighten them and yet over time one lace becomes longer than the other making tying them a challenge.  Any ideas readers as to why this mysteriously occurs?

I’m pretty much a creature of routine.  I set my shower head in a particular position and yet when taking subsequent showers I find that the head has moved. How did that happen?  It’s a mystery.

On Who Wants to be a Millionaire contestants are able to reach out to a friend or colleague for assistance in answering a question. While mine are not million-dollar questions they are perplexing all the same.  Help solve them for me and earn not a million dollars but my ever-lasting thanks.