Old Santa Fe Trading Co. - Editorials by Forrest Fenn

Well, What Would You Have Done?
Last installment
by Forrest Fenn

In the last issue of this magazine I wrote about a $15,000 Victor Higgins landscape I sold for my friend and while preparing it for shipment, discovered a $50,000 Higgins painting that was on the same stretcher bars but under the landscape. The dilemma I had was trying to decide who owned the hidden painting. So I asked you ART TALK readers to tell me what you thought I should have done before I reveal what I actually did. The question was:

Did the second painting belong to the consigner who had lived with it for all of those years and didn’t know there were two paintings in the frame? He was being divorced and sure needed a sympathetic surprise.

Or did it belong to the high octane, New Jersey Jerk in the big red Cadillac who bought the thing but chiseled me way down on the price? He was so rich his cleaning lady probably had a cleaning lady. He didn’t know the second painting was there so did he deserve two for the half price of one? Please think no!

Or could I somehow claim that beautiful little painting for my very own? After all, no one knew it was there but me and I could promise myself never to tell. And besides, I was so broke I had allergies.

So when the article appeared in ART TALK lots of readers started throwing emails at me, especially women. One little old lady in Toledo said if I was her husband she’d trade me for a dog and then shoot the dog, for even thinking what I thought. Oh my!

A widow woman in Waco felt sorry for me. She said she had won a blue ribbon at the county fair with her potato dumplings and asked if I was married all in the same sentence. She said “You should keep that little painting for your own precious little self,” and mentioned I was sexy by innuendo. Her number is evidently unlisted.

Three guys said I was a fraud, one decried my subliminal motive as un Mormon, and a nun in San Francisco said she would light candles for me.

There were other complementary suggestions that shot-gunned around the question but nothing was conclusive so in a singular flash of self scrutiny I called for my cute assistant, Hannie. She would know what to do and could be impartial because she was not on the short list of possible recipients.

As she skipped into my office she was waving her hands above her head. “Look boss, I’ve lost five pounds.” I told her, “Turn around, I think I found them.”

Well, that was a terrible mistake and it cost me forty bucks for a pair of turquoise stud earrings with gold plated posts, before she would speak to me again. I don’t know how I get myself into those things.

Then, our brief discussion went something like this: The Jersey guy wasn’t going to get that painting no matter what and unfortunately he would never learn the character building advantages of that defeat. And when I blushed a whisper that maybe I could put that cute little thing in my own tiny painting collection, Hannie’s look told me to just shut up and call my friend who consigned it. When I said I’d never been able to trust any form of good luck, she turned and walked right out of my office, leaving me just standing there holding my hankie.

My friend and I agreed that I would give him 25,000 bucks for the number two painting and his tongue lollied as I was writing the check. “Since you’re not divorced yet is your wife gonna get her fair share of this money?” “She sure is,” he said, “I’m gonna buy her a cute little pair of turquoise earrings with gold plated posts.”