Craphound Read Online Free PDF

into the coach-house and threw a tarp over the load and
    went inside and cracked a beer and sat on the sofa, watching a nature show on a
    desert reclamation project in Arizona, where the state legislature had traded a
    derelict mega-mall and a custom-built habitat to an alien for a local-area
    weather control machine.
The following Thursday, I went to the little crap-auction house on King Street.
    I'd put my finds from the weekend in the sale: lower minimum bid, and they took
    a smaller commission than Sotheby's. Fine for moving the small stuff.
    Craphound was there, of course. I knew he'd be. It was where we met, when he bid
    on a case of Lincoln Logs I'd found at a fire-sale.
    I'd known him for a kindred spirit when he bought them, and we'd talked
    afterwards, at his place, a sprawling, two-storey warehouse amid a cluster of
    auto-wrecking yards where the junkyard dogs barked, barked, barked.
    Inside was paradise. His taste ran to shrines -- a collection of fifties bar
    kitsch that was a shrine to liquor; a circular waterbed on a raised podium that
    was nearly buried under seventies bachelor pad-inalia; a kitchen that was nearly
    unusable, so packed it was with old barn-board furniture and rural memorabilia;
    a leather-appointed library straight out of a Victorian gentlemen's club; a
    solarium dressed in wicker and bamboo and tiki-idols. It was a hell of a place.
    Craphound had known all about the Goodwills and the Sally Anns, and the auction
    houses, and the kitsch boutiques on Queen Street, but he still hadn't figured
    out where it all came from.
    "Yard sales, rummage sales, garage sales," I said, reclining in a vibrating
    naughahyde easy-chair, drinking a glass of his pricey single-malt that he'd
    bought for the beautiful bottle it came in.
    "But where are these? Who is allowed to make them?" Craphound hunched opposite
    me, his exoskeleton locked into a coiled, semi-seated position.
    "Who? Well, anyone. You just one day decide that you need to clean out the
    basement, you put an ad in the
Star
, tape up a few signs, and voila, yard
    sale. Sometimes, a school or a church will get donations of old junk and sell it
    all at one time, as a fundraiser."
    "And how do you locate these?" he asked, bobbing up and down slightly with
    excitement.
    "Well, there're amateurs who just read the ads in the weekend papers, or just
    pick a neighbourhood and wander around, but that's no way to go about it. What I
    do is, I get in a truck, and I sniff the air, catch the scent of crap and
    vroom!
, I'm off like a bloodhound on a trail. You learn things over time: like
    stay away from Yuppie yard sales, they never have anything worth buying, just
    the same crap you can buy in any mall."
    "Do you think I might accompany you some day?"
    "Hell, sure. Next Saturday? We'll head over to Cabbagetown -- those old coach
    houses, you'd be amazed what people get rid of. It's practically criminal."
    "I would like to go with you on next Saturday very much Mr Jerry Abington." He
    used to talk like that, without commas or question marks. Later, he got better,
    but then, it was all one big sentence.
    "Call me Jerry. It's a date, then. Tell you what, though: there's a Code you got
    to learn before we go out. The Craphound's Code."
    "What is a craphound?"
    "You're lookin' at one. You're one, too, unless I miss my guess. You'll get to
    know some of the local craphounds, you hang around with me long enough. They're
    the competition, but they're also your buddies, and there're certain rules we
    have."
    And then I explained to him all about how you never bid against a craphound at a
    yard-sale, how you get to know the other fellows' tastes, and when you see
    something they might like, you haul it out for them, and they'll do the same for
    you, and how you never buy something that another craphound might be looking
    for, if all you're buying it for is to sell it back to him. Just good form and
    common sense, really, but you'd be surprised how many amateurs just fail