Power of Sale

We purchased our house under Power of Sale, so it was pretty much dead when we found it. No heat at all in the middle of November, and the power was off. The stove was gone, the cable cut, and someone had dumped the entire contents of the fridge before hauling that away too: a pound of butter in the kitchen sink, vodka bottles over the basement stairs, bits of their last Christmas still hanging, scraps of a life left behind. There’d been a divorce. Mary met the wife. “Why are you selling my house?” she screamed at our agent.

That said, it was all the stuff they’d left behind that ultimately tipped me into home ownership, specifically that Lego spaceship on the second floor. If I buy this house, I thought, all that Lego could be mine . . . a basement full of tools and toys, a treasure trove of hardware, and an upright piano in the dining room! The house was ours in a matter of weeks, but it was some time before I realized all that junk was more of a curse than a coup. Take what you want, I’d tell my friends . . . but who wants a busted piano?

Photo by another victim of the Internet