Every autumn, I take a couple weeks to myself, fill the backseat of my Ford with assorted mismatched clothing, books, dried and canned foods and drive. Just pick a direction and drive in search of yard sales, estate sales, pawn shops, wherever garbage accumulates. Where the treasure lives. Every year save one yielded a rare, and to me, indispensable artifact. In 2008 I bought a Duke Snider rookie card from an old man named Abraham Hostler for $15 and a conversation. He offered it to me with a wizened hand, the skin gone translucent, just brittle bone and blue vein. He told he hadn’t seen a game since the Giants beat the Cardinals one day in May 1968. “It just ain’t the same on television. And my heart can’t take the city anymore.” I replied that I understood, shook his hand and escaped with my prize.
