The Auction King Midas

Hick just entered my basement lair in stealth mode. Normally, I can hear his work boots clomping down the steps. Tonight, he tricked me. He tromped to his safe room, a steel-doored, concrete-walled, basement nook that supports the upstairs kitchen nook, and spent a half-hour King Midasizing. That means he pulled his rolly chair up to his particle-board roll-top desk and dipped his arms into buckets of auction jewelry. Arms that were blackened and gasoline-smelling due to this evening's battle with a tractor belt.

Just when I thought it was safe to concentrate on ruminating on a most scathingly brilliant post to please my handful of faithful readers...I was scared out of my skin by the booming voice of Hick. He was standing right behind me. He's like The Sidler, that dude in Elaine's office who appeared out of nowhere, prompting her to give him a box of Tic Tacs so she could hear him coming. You might not remember that side story, since elsewhere in the episode, Kramer was busy hosting his own apartment Merv Griffin Show with scavenged furniture, Jerry was trying to knock out his girlfriend with a box of wine so he could play with her retro toys, and George was paying for surgery and rehab for a squirrel he ran over.

Hick blathered that he couldn't believe his good fortune. He held out two fists and wrists full of watches. Ladies tarnished fancy watches, men's scratched-up dress watches, and journeyman watches for both sexes. "I paid three dollars for all these watches at the auction, and five of them run!"

Hick's glass is always three-quarters full.