I have most of Willie’s Dickens’ Village houses temporarily stored in my garage.
They’ve been there for two years.
This is a Dickens’ Village house. It’s a porcelain imagining of any architecture featured in a Charles Dickens story. You can also buy porcelain people and fir trees to, um, spruce up the houses.
Willie, I think, owns the entire collection. She had a secret plan to use them to pay for college, which is itself a bit Dickensian.
She used to set them out at Christmas. My brother and I would play with them, dropping fake snow on the horses and people.
That’s probably no way to treat your future.
When Willie and Indy moved, it became clear they did not have the space to store all of the Dickens’ Village houses. Not even when Willie had Indy throw away everything but his clothes.
At first, Willie’s plan was to get rid of the entire collection. But she can’t let go of the idea these houses hold great financial worth. So she asked me to contact an auction house. Because once collectors are through bidding on Rockefeller’s furniture and Guggenheim’s art collection, they’re going to be looking for hand-me-down Christmas decorations from a retired nurse.
The auction house told me sure, they could auction off the houses. For a fee. This fee would come out of whatever money was made on the auction. Indy and Willie would be on the hook for the balance likely to remain.
Which I took to mean that nobody wants your Christmas junk so you’re going to pay money for those houses to not be bought.
It didn’t matter. By the time I’d looked into the auction, Willie had changed her mind.
Now, she decided, she’d keep the whole lot. The houses could summer in my garage, along with her Christmas tree and Indy’s tools, which I’d saved from donation because Indy without his tools is like the real Indy without his whip.
You might be surprised to know that having an entire wall of boxed Dickens’ Village houses, a five-foot faux Christmas tree, and a box of tools in your garage endears you to exactly no one. Don is irritated. Indy and Willie’s stuff is occupying valuable space. Don could use that space for the sneakers he never wears. The empty cardboard cases of beer that for some reason cannot be put in a trash can. The garden weasel I tried to throw away but he felt the need to rescue, then never use.
I’m probably going to get in trouble for that.
Willie is annoyed because I rescued Indy’s tools, which is bad enough. But my storing them in the garage poses a great burden. Calling me in the middle of the night, sending Indy for lab work without an appointment during a pandemic, taking Indy to the hospital for no reason – these are not burdens.
Just the tools.
Indy is annoyed too, but I’m not sure what about. I have offered to move one of Willie’s nineteen boxes of Christmas decorations out of the basement storage in their facility. I’ve told Indy I can store the decorations at my house. Then I can move his tools from the garage and into the newly opened space. Willie will never know. She doesn’t go into the storage room.
She has people for that.
Me and her 83-year old Parkinsonian husband. We’re her people for that.
Actually, one day she and Indy went into the storage room together. It’s communal. No one realized they were in there. Another couple inadvertently locked them in with the lights out.
Sometimes, I feel like I have so many Willie and Indy stories I’ll never get them all out.
Anyway, each time I ask, Indy locks his jaw and says, “No.” Indy doesn’t explain things unless he wants to, and that set jaw means he’s done talking. There’s no point in asking.
So I don’t know why Indy is annoyed. But I know it’s not at me because Indy is never annoyed with me.
Willie tried to fulfill her plan of decorating the apartment with all of her Dickens’ Village houses the first Christmas she and Indy lived there. She quickly discovered not only was the apartment too small for all eighty or so houses but it was also too small for the faux Christmas tree.
In a very Sophie’s Choice kind of way, Willie decided to keep about ten of her houses. The rest could be sold.
That first Christmas, I helped Willie put out her houses. I suggested the large bookcases to display them on, which she loved. We cleared out the books and bric-a brac, then laid out the houses.
“They’re not noticeable,” Willie complained, “but where else could they go?”
Willie was right. Flush against the wall, the houses didn’t catch the eye. Pip didn’t pop. Oliver didn’t twist. Tim was too tiny.
So I bought battery-operated fairy lights – I try not to plug in more things at Willie’s than absolutely necessary – set the timer, then coiled the lights inside the houses.
They lit up, the glow ephemeral, the gleam radiating from the shiny wood bookcases.
Willie loved it.
So much so, she decided to keep more of the houses. She just wasn’t sure which ones.
She had cataloged them of course, a beautifully curated list of the houses she owns. It’s completely inaccurate, but it’s still a great list.
Willie wanted to go through her list, to decide which houses would make the second round of draft picks. Before we knew it, their second Christmas in the apartment arrived.
Willie decided she liked the houses she chose in the first round. In January, she told me I could sell everything in my garage.
So I joined a Facebook group for the purchase, sale, or trade of Dickens’ Village houses.
“Don’t trade them!” Willie admonished me. As if I couldn’t figure out that more Dickens’ Village houses would not improve the rift in my marriage.
“I’ll sell them, “ I promised, mentally hatching a plan. I’d have to re-curate the houses, of course. Then look up what they’re going for on eBay. Staged pictures of the houses are a must. Then I can post the houses to the Facebook group, which is run with slightly less vigor than a Marine Corps unit.
The trick to getting the best price, I’ve learned, is in the packaging. Dickens’ Village houses are sold in a Styrofoam case held together by a cardboard sleeve. The cardboard sleeve displays a picture of the contents.
Possession of both the Styrofoam and sleeve is a bit like finding a good DC Comics movie – not unusual, but certainly not commonplace either. And just like people are willing to pay for HBO Max to see the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League, so too will people pay for that Styrofoam and sleeve.
But one house is not going up on Facebook. I’ve asked to keep it, which I think is justifiable. After all, I didn’t keep Captain Jean-Duck Picard of the Starship Enterprise, Pete only peed on the faux Christmas tree once, and not all of the skinks live in the Dickens’ Village houses. Some still live on the lawn.
I’ve earned a reward.
I’m keeping Old Fezziwig’s. it’s the best part of A Christmas Carol.
Also, I might need somewhere to live after Don reads my complaints about the garage.
Good thing Old Fezziwig couldn’t pay for college.