Sean and his brothers grew up digging for buried treasure, not precious metals but bygone garbage, old bottles, mainly: soda, milk, medicine, bitters; cobalt, aqua, amber, jade. He still knows where to look, and if the tide is low, he might come home from sailing with a bottle extracted from the muck near our mooring.
That woodstove is another genre of Sean Score. These days he does most of his combing on Craigslist. He always unearths incredible deals, usually more practical than the spoils of my PBS (push-button syndrome, a condition characterized by acquisitiveness and resulting in accumulated Amazon boxes), and while his finds might involve extra work, he is nothing if not handy.
Setting up the ping-pong table, for example, involved only a modicum of cussing, and only one person stomped off, and no (audible) threats of divorce were issued.
But the angels sang when he found us a gently used dishwasher, for sale by very kind kitchen-renovating owner in Greenwich, CT, who, after cash and appliance had changed hands, directed us to a breakfast place called Aux Délices, where we enjoyed an egg sandwich that would have been exotically scrumptious even if it hadn't featured prosciutto and arugula. We drove in a downpour that lasted the whole way there and back, and Reed got a little grumpy because we refused to take him to Dunkin' Donuts, but that was a fleeting cloud. It was really a very fine adventure.
And the dishwasher? Is more precious than gold.