unexpected

She has always loved old things. She loves a lot of different kinds of old things; her driveway and garage are bursting with beautiful pieces of furniture, kitchenware and dishes, clothes, classic VHS tapes, jewelry, games, toys and trinkets. She has even more items in storage, and never stops buying. She can easily judge the worth of different pieces and she can really drive a bargain!

She sidles up to me and whispers that if I think anything is unfairly priced, we can “talk” about it. While we look around marveling at all her offerings, she mentions that she wanted to start an antique shop, but that this was what came of it. As I watch her man the aptly-named Treasure Sale, I suddenly understand that this is far more than an overpriced garage sale. There is more to this than a tired old woman clearing out the leftovers of her life dream. The significance of this venture suddenly seems much greater than it did at first. Everything looks much shinier, like dreams come to life. I turn back to ask for an interview, and she seems hesitant at first. But as she writes down her contact information, her husband appears from the back room and says, “That would be great. I’ve always said she could sell the Brooklyn Bridge without cracking a smile!”

She hands me her phone number, with a twinkle in her eye, and says, “He’s always told me I could sell snow to an Eskimo.”

***

She grew up in Manly, Iowa, in a home where they didn’t have much. She was inspired by the spirit and energy of her mother, a childhood victim of polio, and in high school she started working for a restaurant in town for 35 cents an hour – a 10-cent increase from her babysitting job. She worked through her lunch hour and between school and basketball practice, until close every day. One day she came home in a huff, vowing to quit. Her mother told her, “Sharon, you’re going to take a lot in life – you’re going back to work.” So she did. She became friends with her boss, building the first in a long series of positive work relationships and the root of a dependable, hard-working reputation.

That restaurant closed a few months before graduation and the Coffee Cup Restaurant lured her with a 50-cent-per-hour cooking position. Sharon, who graduated high school with plans to be a masseuse or a beauty operator, stayed on as the sole cook, working in the kitchen from the early morning until close, seven days a week, at 65 cents per hour. The Coffee Cup manager called her “the best help I ever had.”

She told me she always planned to open an antique shop someday. She started out selling antique dolls, picking up good specimens at flea markets in Mason City. Her focus quickly expanded, though, as she bought furniture, collectibles, and glassware. She did not buy pieces because she liked them, but because she knew they would sell, and over time she developed the ability to judge the value of a piece just by picking it up and looking at it. She knows the big names and she knows how to find her way in an unfamiliar city full of garage sales – full of treasures someone else mistook for outdated kitchenware.

In between flea markets, she got a job in sales with the Fuller Brush Company and eventually became branch manager. Her boss found her so indispensable that, when headquarters eliminated all branch managers, he paid her out of pocket. She was offered a position selling insurance, and eventually took the offer. She passed her license test on the first try and ended up joining the Million Dollar Club for selling over $1 million in insurance.

In 1976 she studied for and passed her real estate license and moved to Storm Lake to sell real estate. She eventually quit, because of shady business practices and frustration with the inefficiency of the company. She decided to get her broker’s license and opened her own real estate business in Sioux Rapids.

Throughout her job history, she held onto her principles of integrity, took her work seriously and built long-lasting trust in relationships with both bosses and customers. In the 1970s she and her husband bought a brand-new $3000 car, the envy of the street and a marker of great success for a woman who grew up with “lump soup” lunch breaks.

She sold real estate in her own business until 1984, when she became very ill. A long series of doctors eventually diagnosed her with a genetically-based autoimmune disease of the liver, and told her she had two years to live.

By this time she had accumulated about 100 boxes of glassware, among other items. It was only a matter of time before she moved from real estate to antiques. But she no longer had time. “When you’re terminal,” she said, “that [possibility] goes out the window.”

So, not wanting to leave her husband with the daunting task of selling her collection, she hired an auctioneer. In one day the products of her lifelong collecting were all sold. She calls that day “the hardest day of my whole life.”

Through a series of miracles and a good bit of asserting her will to doctors, Sharon secured a prescription for a brand-new test drug that brought her back from the brink of death. “It’s hard to kill a bohemian!” her mother used to say. “You’re just too stubborn!”

Over the next 25 years, as she regained her strength and continues to struggle with the disease, she has refurbished her collection. With characteristic persistence, she still gets up at the crack of dawn some days to drive up to the Twin Cities and go treasure-hunting. She says she is probably too old and tired to go on, but she loves it too much to stop.

In the beginning, when the Treasure Sale was still a garage sale on neighborhood signs, she held sales all summer long. When some neighbors got upset and complained to city officials, they instated an ordinance prohibiting more than three sales a year by the same person. Sharon changed her signs and started her three annual holiday-weekend Treasure Sales: Memorial Day weekend, Fourth of July weekend, and Labor Day weekend or Defeat of Jesse James Days. She puts up big signs from her real estate business on Highway 3, Highway 19, and on the interstate near the Elko flea market. She also sells year-round on eBay and Craig’s List, meeting clients in the Twin Cities or in Northfield to make transactions. Some buyers, like her, buy to sell. Others ask her to find specific items for their purposes, and still others think that her Treasure Sale is just a garage sale, not fully understanding the value of the collection they are looking at.

She tells me she will probably continue holding Treasure Sales until she dies, at which point she will leave her treasures to her son, who will hire an auctioneer to evaluate prices and sell everything at once. Until then, she vows not to slow down or move into a retirement home, because “whatever you do in your life, I think you become your surroundings.” She sees no reason to give up her passion or become complacent – she is “not ready to die! Too many sales to go to… There are a lot of miles left in these legs!”

***

When evaluating owners of other shops, she says it is important to control what comes into the store and make sure it is of high quality. A business owner must also know how to present herself to the public, with appropriate, professional dress and behavior. One shop owner now going out of business had her “hands in too many pots.” Coming from such a multi-skilled woman, this evaluation holds particular weight. Sharon herself, although she has done many things throughout the course of her life, has put a lot of effort into completing one task at a time, while constantly working toward her ultimate dream. While she never officially opened her antique shop, she overcame substantial obstacles to sell her beloved old things in a creative and resourceful way.

This creative expression of her unrelenting drive, her determination to achieve her goals, is the spark that first attracted me to her and her seemingly small-scale venture. I am amazed at her application in studying for her various licenses and her resounding success on every test. I am amazed that she had the confidence and assuredness to tell her doctors what she wanted and how she wanted to be treated as a patient. I am amazed at her full-scale immersion into the working world at a time in history when women were just beginning to populate the workforce and rarely entered the business arena. I am amazed at how much she knows about antiques, how she will drop names and models of glassware and speak of their value, both monetary and intangible. She pinpoints herself as a type-A personality, a controller, and a doer. “Usually in a family there is one doer,” she says, proudly. She is most likely an implementer, and certainly believes that her aspirations are within her reach. Her delight in her work is inspiring and is no doubt the source of much of her strength and success.

Sharon’s story provides an unsettling example of the reality of unforeseen circumstances. Such an active, ambitious young woman would never expect to be stopped short by a terminal illness in her early forties, but she was. Although she was very proud and passionate about the track she was taking, earning one license after another, she might have missed out completely on selling antiques if her passion for life had not made her fight to keep it. That same passion led her to start buying antiques again in spite of the vividly precarious nature of her life. Her lifelong investment in her love of old things in the end has had worthwhile returns economically but, more importantly, in her quality of life.

I wanted to talk to her because of the tangible passion with which she conducted her business over the course of that hour. I could tell, although I did not know at the time what she had gone through, that the Treasure Sale was the result of long years of planning, some setbacks or complications, and an incredible set of dreams. The entrepreneurial spirit emerged distinctly from the collection and arrangement of items and her thorough knowledge about them, and was clarified through my conversation with her. I came away from our meeting somewhat overwhelmed, but also inspired and deeply touched by the possibilities that are available to someone who is determined to move forward, to use her gifts to their fullest capacity and approach the end of life with a sense of pride, satisfaction, and a life well-lived.