Bidding Farewell to One's Livelihood

"Onto the spear gun," Ike Swart said, as the people who plopped into the metal folding chairs let out an "ooooh."

"I had one of them up in the Yukon, huntin' caribou," cracked Bo Cox, the other rat-a-tat-tat auctioneer with whom Swart shared the podium.

"CanIgetthirtyfive? Thirty-five now. CanIget40? Now 40. CanIget50? Fif-Now 60. CanIget70? SixtykinIget70? SixtykinIget70? Sixt-Sold!"

Each receipt confirmed the purchase came from Taylor's estate sale, apparently authenticating that it indeed came from No. 21's home.

Tom works for his wife, Joyce, who said Friday was one of the larger crowds in her 11 years of owning the facility. The couple used a velvet rope to cordon off space for expected media, but the only reporters who showed were one television station and three local newspapers, including a feature writer from the Culpeper Star-Exponent whose friend asked her to purchase something if she had the chance "because my sons cried when he died."

Small vestiges from Taylor's playing career could be found here and there. Taylor's pool table featured a rack of Cowboys/Redskins billiard balls, which sat in a display case across the room from matching burgundy and gold sofas.

Unless the "Miami Touchdown Club" nameplate that apparently fell off a trophy counts, there was no Taylor memorabilia to bid upon. It was just Taylor's stuff, and observing people sift through it as if they were at Target or Wal-Mart could at times be unsettling.

A man held up Taylor's red and black Nike mesh shirt and Rocawear faded jean shorts to see if they fit, envisioning himself in the same summer get-up Taylor might have worn to a cookout about this time a year ago. Then there was the not-so-subtle marketing of little Jackie's car seat and high chair. "You don't have to have a baby to own this."

It's probably true that buying a dead man's belongings has to have an impersonal nature to it, the rationale that someone might as well get some use out of those 30- and 40-pound dumbbells or a Shop-Vac.

But for some, it doesn't change the grief from last November. "I was tore up," Cook said, when he learned of Taylor's death. "I'm getting goose bumps talking about it now."

He was outbid for the Shop-Vac, but managed to finagle one of Taylor's bedroom dressers for $70. "It'll go down in the basement where I got my sports room," he said. "It's not going to look like it belongs, but I know where it came from."

At the end of "Citizen Kane," Orson Welles's 1941 classic film, a few minor characters gawk at the belongings of late millionaire Charles Foster Kane's estate. Snippy, judgmental, they try to distill who the man was by what he owned. But they fail to notice the simple object tucked away in a cardboard box, the thing that brought him the most happiness in life.

When people bidding for and auctioning off the last remnants of Taylor's Washington life were asked what items might have made him smile most, a few mentioned the panther table. But Jim Nichols could not think of a single material thing in the auction house.

"I'm sure it wasn't none of this stuff," Nichols said. He fussed with the American flag bandana covering his gray-matted hair as his wife, Sherry, nodded. "His daughter made him happiest," Jim added. "Probably his wife. Life."

It was past midnight Friday when Joyce cashed out. After everything was totaled, she said $7,375.50 was raised for little Jackie's fund. Their commission take for selling the items, she said, was somewhere between 30 and 50 percent. Much of Taylor's bedroom suite -- easily a $15,000 buy in a showroom -- was purchased for $2,100. His 9mm with the laser scope went to a gentleman who bid $1,500.

Autumn's mom never got to compete for the car seat. Kathryn Drake was too busy helping Tom and Joyce set up when Edward Don Johnson from nearby Stafford fetched the high chair, the car seat and the potty trainer for $35.

D.J., as the tattoo on his left forearm reads, rents space at a flea market on the Fredericksburg Fairgrounds, where he plans to resell for profit the things Sean Taylor bought for his daughter.

Pushing a protruding cigarette pack back in his T-shirt pocket, Johnson turned to a friend and said, proudly, "That high chair there belonged to that football player."