Nathan

Hurwitz

THE THRILL OF THE HUNT

I am by nature a treasure hunter – I think most of us are. I don’t understand;

I’m a reasonable person. I am not materialistic any more than the next guy. I don’t

spend beyond my means, certainly less than average. I am not acquisitive, not a

collector or a pack rat. There is nothing I really need, and beyond a truly fabulous

job and a wonderful single woman with whom I click, nothing I really want. So how

come I cannot se a “Tag Sale” sign without dropping my appointed rounds in order

to browse through the gewgaws of other peoples lives that I would never consider

looking at in a store? How many times can I browse through the same Ed Ames and

“Best of Bread” 8-track tapes, incomplete Time-Life Book sets, torn Twister games

and Scrabble sets that are missing two tiles? It’s not like there’s anything I’m

actually looing for. If I were keeping my eye out for the perfect end table for a

corner of my house it would almost make sense. But no. And I rarely buy anything.

My usual routine is to root through the boxes, bags, and piles, finding an electric

carrot peeler or something I wouldn’t mind having sit on a shelf, I decide to come

back and pick it up on the way home. But I invariably find that it’s gone, or I’ve

taken a different route home, or I don’t have time to stop. In any case, I rationalize

that I didn’t want or need the thing in the first place and praise myself for my

restraint. I enact this ritual on an average of once a weekend, every week between

May and October.

 Nathan Hurwitz

It’s pointless, a waste of time and energy. If I took all the time that I waste

this way and used it to do anything productive- mow the lawn, clean the gutters,

clean the house, work on my dissertation, give the dog a bath, bake a loaf of bread,

or even just take a walk on the beach or sit down and read a decent novel – I would

be years ahead of the game. And yet I persist.

There is something hopeful in performing this ritual of treasure hunting. I

don’t really want to be surrounded by the detritus of other people’s lives; and yet I

have on occasion discovered treasure, hit pay dirt. How many wonderful books

have taken me to exciting places and introduced me to amazing people because I

found them for 25 or 50 cents ($1.00 for hardbacks)? How many extra copies of

books that I have loved have I picked up to give to friends and family?

Among the books on my shelves sits a piece of pottery. This particular piece

is green and brown, roughly the size of a 20-ounce Coke bottle.

It is ragged at the top making it unfit to drink from, the sides and bottom are

vaguely uneven – it is not a beautifully sculpted piece of art. And yet it pleases me. I

remember driving north on a beautiful country road on a perfect summer day

almost 40 years ago with my parents. I don’t remember which of us saw the tag sale

sign, but there was no argument about stopping. The piece caught my eye as being

vaguely attractive and my mother probably talked them down from $1.00 to 75

cents and bought it for me. And to this day, every time my eye catches that piece as
 Nathan Hurwitz

I’m passing by or looking for a particular book it gives me pleasure. I am pleased by

it aesthetically, but more than that I can’t pass it without thinking about sharing that

day with my parents, my mother’s desire for me to have something I liked, her

ability to negotiate a “deal.” If my parents had gone to a gallery and spent hundreds

of dollars on a signed piece of art it would not mean as much to me – wouldn’t be

such a constant source of pleasure.

And therein lays the value of the treasure hunt. The term “sentimental value”

is overused, but the truth is we endow objects with spiritual value because of their

lives and how they come into our lives. Reopening a favorite book of poetry and

seeing an inscription from someone I don’t know gives the book a greater

spirituality – I am part of a continuum of people who have been fed by this book.

There is something nice about buying something clean and crisp and new, but there

is power in sharing things that have passed through others’ lives. And that, I

suppose it why I will continue to pull over and rummage through the boxes of

mismatched train tracks and the beanbag chairs and dog-eared copies of old Life

and National Geographic magazine.