Object No. 91 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Meghan O'Rourke, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $62. ]

After my mother died, a stranger emailed me. He told me that my mother had been the most important person in his life. They went to Catholic school together. He was unpopular, she was popular; he was a bad student, she was a good student; he was a football player; she was a cheerleader. Though he wasn’t in her clique, one night at a dance, she came up to him while “Hey Jude” was playing and asked him to dance. Something clicked.

They told each other everything, walking home from school carrying books, talking on the phone for hours at night, to the annoyance of siblings and parents. (This was before call waiting.) One day after school they went to the beach club and swam in the ocean for hours, talking, sitting on the rope buoys. Her lips got blue. He told her they should go in, but sitting on the furthest buoy, she said, let’s just stay out here a while longer. The two of them sat together under the big sky, listening to the cries of the birds, as if they were made for water.

The other boys in her clique got annoyed that my mother was spending so much time with this guy. One of them tackled him hard during football practice and broke his wrist. So this guy decided, with regret, it was time for him to leave my mother alone. First, though, he made her Mario, the baker mouse. It took him three days of work after school. Mario is made of soft felt, string, and paper. If his feet are not really there, that is because this young man was not much of an artist.

When I was a child, my mother used to keep Mario on a shelf near the oven. Sometimes I would play with him. She told me that Mario was magic; in the night, he made muffins light as manna and delicate as silver. If you happened to sleepwalk into the kitchen, you could eat the muffins, but they disappeared by morning. I always hoped I might sleepwalk, because the muffins, my mother said, cast a spell on you. If you ate one, your dreams would be vivid. You would feel light and airy when you wake, not tired. You would finally remember that feeling which always seemed like a secret you couldn’t name, and carry it around with you.

Soon after the man gave Mario to my mother, she met my father.  She married my father a year later, when she was 17. There was nothing more between my mother and this man. Then one day last year, he Googled my mother. He saw her death notice. And he contacted me to tell me about Mario.

For these reasons, I believe Mario is good luck. He is made out of feelings as much as he is made of felt. And his favorite thing to bake is red velvet cupcakes.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Adam Davies, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $14.50.]

Authentic

MR. YODELS

Love Totem

The “Sylvia St. Etienne” edition

This is the only witness to — or, some say, the cause of — the tragic death of
legendary chanteuse and muse to famous Ecuadorian footballer

Francisco Chavarria

NOT AN IMITATION!

Condition

The artifact is in good condition.  Some slight damage, consistent with the violence of the wreckage, on the Tres Marias rabbit headpiece and on the hand-painted ovoid eyes.  Otherwise the piece is exquisitely preserved, including (as required by the folk magic tradition) Mr. Chavarria’s “plasma donation.”

The Mr. Yodels Tradition:

Jacob Tauxe, the notorious “Swiss Voodoo Houngan” from Bern, designed the original line of ceramic Mr. Yodels figurines employed by frustrated suitors as love totems.  By a feat of acoustic engineering yet to be explained satisfactorily, all custom-made Mr. Yodels figurines produce a distinctive upper-and-lower register song — the “love yodel” — when placed at an open window by which the loved one walks, provoking powerful spontaneous feelings of pair-bonding, veneration, and leghumpery.

Dangerous and unsanctioned Do-It-Yourself models — those made without knowledge of the proper techniques or precautions — are rumored to be responsible for the unions of Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett, Woody Allen and relatives, Elizabeth Taylor et al., Chrysler and Daimler, and others.

The “Sylvia St. Etienne” Mr. Yodels:

Caracas, 1956.  The fiery Ecuadorian striker Francisco Chavarria meets the legendary Hollywood songstress Sylvia St. Etienne, best known for her sultry interpretations of “Ashes in my D-Cup,” “Cabana in Urbana,” and “That Was It?”

For seven glorious, champagne-drenched, strawberry-inserting, mogul-free weeks the couple was inseparable — until Ms. St. Etienne met the mogul Sven “Big Krona” Uggla.  Then they separated.

Heartbroken, and publicly humiliated, Mr. Chavarria vowed to get her back, but Ms. St. Etienne was — as they say in Monte Carlo — “avec mogul.”  With no other recourse to intercourse, the jilted footballer traveled to Switzerland and implored Mr. Tauxe to fashion for him the most powerful of all Mr. Yodelses. But the Swiss Voodoo priest, bitter over Mr. Chavarria’s last-second game-winning header over the Swiss, refused.

Desperate, Mr. Chavarria fashioned his own Mr. Yodels, ignorant of the necessary protocols, and tied it underneath the passenger seat of Big Krona’s BMW 507 roadster, thinking, you know: The windows will be down. Gotta work.

Only ten hours later, after Sylvia St. Etienne gave the last performance of her life, singing the hits from “Hurry Up, These Sheets Itch and I’m Sweating,” “Waiter! There’s a Jackass in my Demitasse!” and “Side-Saddle Won’t Work,” she drove off into the night with Big Krona and plunged to her death in a mountain gorge.

All that remains of the great singer are her treasured recordings—and, now, available for the first time to the public, from the estate of Mr. Abernathy Hastings of Newport, this gloriously preserved Mr. Yodels.

Look at the eyes:  you can almost see what Francisco Chavarria saw.

Witness the ears:  you can almost hear what Francisco Chavarria heard.

Observe the mouth:  you can fit a Bud Kinger in that thing.

Reserve set low by request of the estate, this auction represents a rare opportunity to own the last remaining vestige of one of the 20th century’s most tragic love stories.

It may also possibly crack walnuts.