Against All Oddities: The Fool’s Errand

For those following along this column, Against All Oddities, I bought a 13,000-square-foot century-old foundry. I mostly did it to store my awful cars and maybe make some new friends who wanted to store theirs. The space exists, so I feel compelled to fill it with useful stuff, or at least stuff that I’ve always wanted to have. My wife, knowing exactly how to enable my adventures, recently sent me a link to a local warehouse auction containing a variety of treasures. The online page showed gym lockers and a forklift, which was enough for me to clear out my schedule and check the place out.

And wouldn’t you know it, one of my foundry renters (storing a few tons of walnut next to the defunct smelter) also happened to be a tenant at the warehouse hosting the auction. Naturally, yours truly got an early-access sneak peek.

The place was mostly junk, but the rows of brand-new pallet racking caught my eye. That could make a nice loft. The warehouse was formerly used for cotton storage, so sturdy sleds adorned the racks. They’d look nice stained, I thought.

In the middle of the clutter was something else of potentially great usefulness: a 1952 Towmaster forklift with a tiny 62-cubic-inch flathead. A must-have if the price was right. Upon inspection, I noticed new hose clamps, a new radiator cap, and no rust on the hydraulic cylinder. Hmm, promising.

The initial clean-out, ahead of the auction, started with a Saturday tag sale at which everything was up for negotiation. I went in with a few prices in mind. But I got distracted when more and more temptations started popping up out of the woodwork. The dollar amount per item that I could afford to spend was rapidly crashing, so I had to be bold with my offers.

I managed to secure the forklift, three rows of pallet racking, a Tenant floor scrubber, six cotton sleds, two rolling carts, a pallet jack, a 1930s tanker desk (!), and some other odds and ends. Grand total: $925.

A very sleepy older gentleman in a skid steer loader, who had flattened a sizable percentage of the inventory, helped me with preparing this stuff for future transport to the foundry. The skid steer didn’t have any mirrors, and I don’t think he could turn his neck anymore. He relied on tactile feedback and sounds in the same way that bats navigate at night, albeit with more bumping into things. I got what I could as quickly as possible, and for the rest, I had until the end of the month to drag my treasure from the bottom of the sea.

The forklift was the main pain-in-the-butt to haul home. To be fair, “home” was some six-tenths of a mile away—within potential driving (or dragging) distance. My friend Thomas volunteered his services.

Things went sideways. The scrappers who were there to drag out the unclaimed inventory from the auction agreed to pull the Towmaster out onto the street. Thomas and a different Matt Anderson (really!) went out to the very sketchy industrial row at midnight and tried to pilot it home. Though they made tremendous progress, the forklift, uh, exploded. In the process, it burned off a sizable chunk of Thomas’ hair. Our friend Parker (another renter) was on his way with a fire extinguisher, before which point the cops showed up to the boys swatting the flames with a wet towel.

After a very brief interrogation, it was mutually agreed that the fire be put out as quickly as possible. One of the officers offered up a blue raspberry slushy and handed it over to be thrown on the blaze. The fire, miraculously, was no match for the frozen treat.

Around 2:00 a.m., a second round of officers responded to what I am certain looked like a suspicious gathering of two guys, scattered tools, and a charred forklift. After briefly explaining the goings-on of the past two hours—slushy included—the suspects’ story jibed with the dispatch gossip. They were pronounced free to go. Hooray! The Towmaster, however, was rightfully abandoned.

A few days later, my buddy Jon and my father-in-law were in town for our baby shower. I was relieved from party-planning duties until gift-opening time, so the three of us quickly rebuilt the forklift’s carb using cereal box snippings and got it running for long enough to get the forks up… but not long enough to drive it home. Again, the Towmaster was left behind, but I’d come back to it again later.

With the forklift still decorating the entrance to the other warehouse after more than two weeks, I headed back in for the official auction. I went in not really wanting to spend any more money, having already blown nearly a grand on trinkets and a lot of effort trying to move that damn forklift. Really, I attended more to monitor the goods that I had already purchased at the tag sale to make sure they weren’t re-auctioned.

The Studebaker broke down on the way, as if to warn me. Ignoring the sign, I walked the remaining distance. As soon as I strolled in, I was informed that my tanker desk was crushed by the not-so-careful skid steer driver. If I hadn’t already witnessed so many unopened packages and pieces of patio furniture succumb to the rubber tracks and blind spots, I would’ve suspected theft. Not in this case.

My commitment to not spending money didn’t last long. I was assigned card #11, and from then on couldn’t keep my hands in my pockets.

A brand new, bright blue service desk: $20 on 11!

A pallet of mystery chemicals and 28 pounds of taco seasoning: Just get it out of here, no charge.

A beautiful rolling cart with a solid oak deck: To the guy in the gum boots, $15!

A huge Lista cabinet with a missing key: $13 to the gentleman who won’t stop sulking about his crushed office furniture!

A large wall mount cabinet built and painted like a battleship: $5 and I hope you’ve got friends to help you!

A bright yellow fire cabinet: $10 to the fellow with the flammables and taco seasoning!

A seemingly armored letterbox: Sold for a ten-dollar bill!

Three more pallet racking sections: $30 each. A new 10-foot whiteboard: a mere dollar per foot. A welding table, 8’ x 4’ workbench, a whole-house fan, a new rolling staircase, a hand truck that could lift a real truck. All for $90!

I couldn’t stop, and why should I? Truckloads upon truckloads of items continued to bless bidder number 11. Quite pleased with myself, I walked up to Ziggy’s Closeouts and bought a further $13 worth of tools and a fuel filter (plus some snacks) to get the Stude back home. From there I snagged Fuggles, the foundry shop Dodge truck.

The real loading day approached pretty quickly, as all of my winnings had to be out of the warehouse by the following Monday.

To further complicate things, I scheduled pressure washers to start cleaning up the muck in four of the foundry bays that same morning. That meant that everything had to be shuffled and tessellated in an ever-increasing mound of crap, Tetris-style.

The pressure washers were late to arrive, so I had Thomas go out and make the first run. I kept myself busy by mounting wheels, which Thomas had earlier seated with brake cleaner and fire, back on the Simca. He returned with a load of cabinets and an assortment of other junk (that I nearly forgot I purchased) right as the cleaners arrived. As a footnote, the GT Hawk managed to break down in the exact same spot, so the tools from last time—still in the same plastic bag—saved the day again. Subsequent runs had us taking down pallet racks together while steering clear of the hazardous skid steer loader. By about 4 o’clock, everything that could be cleared out was back in the shop.

That left just the poor, maimed forklift.

Leaning on the error of driving over my desk earlier, the driver agreed to drop off the forklift at the foundry free of charge. Thomas and I set the forks in position just to see if the skid steer could even lift the 4200-pound Towmaster, which it did fabulously. As it stands now, there’s a questionable forklift sitting in the driveway of the foundry with, thankfully, no damage to surrounding property. The grand total for everything came out to $1178 for practically a shopload of stuff.

And by the way, thanks for many of your comments congratulating me on my impending fatherhood. I’ve been helping my wife, Dana, with a lot of errands lately, but I guess I’ll ask her to send me on more since this one was so fruitful.