It Still Takes a CenturyLink

I wonder about old Ma Bell.  You know. The old telephone company? I think CenturyLink is still using Bell Telephone's billing system. Or maybe when they broke up Bell Telephone (anyone remember the anti-trust laws?), the phone companies took it so seriously that they adopted the left-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-right-hand-is-doing style of management.

The last time I wrote about It-Takes-A-CenturyLink, it was with the hope of getting higher speed internet connections. They advertise 20 Mbytes/sec but they don't let you know the upload speed. That's 0.8 Mbytes/sec … on a good day. Our weekly garbage pick-up is faster than that. Things got intolerable when I couldn't send out emails of 1 Mbyte or more. Servers timed out waiting for my connection. From about nine in the morning to late afternoon, couldn't send out emails.

I thought it was a problem with my new computer, but the tech guys who support our office network blamed CenturyLink and suggested that I switch to Comcast, a/k/a Xfinity. I tried using my old computers to see if I could send out emails faster. Nothing doing. I did ping tests and telephoned the tech guys at CenturyLink. Two or three different guys (I've learned not to trust any one person) assured me that 0.8 Mbytes/sec was the operational "max" for upload speeds.

Meanwhile, I had to run up to the neighborhood Starbucks to send out loan documents for a closing. Twice. In my frustration and panic to get a rush closing done, I left my mouse at home. There I was sitting in Starbucks with no mouse. Okay. I figured I could use the blithering MacBook touch pad. Oh no I couldn't. It was inoperable. (Still doesn't work. Neither does the disk drive. It has also become mind-bogglingly slow. My next rant will be directed against Apple.) I had to drive home, pick up the mouse, return to Starbucks, buy one of their wretched cups of bitter, scalding hot coffee, then send out loan documents to escrow. Meanwhile, I was surrounded by chatty, happy kids from the nearby high school. I figured Brave New World.

Okay. Comcast 5 Mbytes/sec upload speed sounded better and better. Leave aside the trauma of Comcast. We have two neighbor friends who relentlessly complain about their poor Comcast service. Leave aside the trauma of unbundling our DirectTV because we don't want cable TV. Leave aside the idea of a cable company providing me with phone service. (Comcast needs to bundle its internet service with something.) I am too old fashioned. I like telephone companies providing me with telephone service. And not wireless either. I like those skinny little telephone wires because they don't need electricity to operate. Comcast's cables do.

Even with all that, I was still anxious because I had no idea whether the old Comcast cable from the previous owners was still good.  I had torn off the orange cable that went up the side of the house and lay in coils on the roof. I feared I had torn too much out. I had images of having to dig up the asphalt driveway plus dig a ditch several hundred yards long through desert landscaping. The alternative was the visual blight of Comcast's orange cable draped over my agaves.

I took up a few paver bricks and unearthed the stub of the old Comcast cable. The Comcast guy came out, tested the connection to the Comcast box in the street, and it was still good.

Shari and I decided to make the switch, even though we had a sickening feeling that we were trading Godzilla for Gargantuan.

It turns out they use black cable now, not orange. We "ported" (that's the telephone-lingo) our existing telephone number from It-Takes-a-CenturyLink to Comcast/Xfinity, and my upload problems vanished. Emails disappeared into the worldwide web with astonishing speed.

All we had left to do was unbundle and get our final bill from It-Takes-a-CenturyLink. Which is the subject of this post.

We made several phone calls to It-Takes-a-CenturyLink to make sure DirectTV and our clamshell phone with Verizon were being unbundled and paid. Twice I was told matter-of-factly that I would have to return It-Takes-a-CenturyLink's modem. Twice I explained that I had already returned their modem the year before, on the same day I got it.

If you've read my previous It-Takes-a-CenturyLink post, you may remember they couldn't upgrade my internet service without sending me a modem to rent. I complained that I already had purchased the identical modem from Best Buy, but to no avail. They had to send me one to rent. But no problem.  I could send it back and there would be no monthly rental fee.

So I shared this bizarre It-Takes-a-CenturyLink modem-mailing story, but it was a waste of time. Sure enough, about the same time we got our final bill, we also got a letter with instructions how to return It-Takes-a-CenturyLink's "high-speed" VDSL modem.

I had to make more telephone calls to India and/or the Philippines. Exasperated, I learned that It-Takes-a-CenturyLink had been billing me a lease fee of  $6.99 a month.

Have you ever read your It-Takes-a-CenturyLink invoice? It's completely undecipherable, like Chinese characters to a click-speaking Bantu. I just counted the number of line entries on our typical CenturyLink monthly invoice. Ninety-four.

Thank God Shari is fastidious about record-keeping. We found the UPS receipt that I got when I returned CenturyLink's hi-speed modem on August 1, 2014. We went over a year's worth of CenturyLink invoices. Sure enough, no lease fee in August or September of last year. No wonder we were lulled into complacency. Then in October, a $6.99 monthly lease charge appeared. The charges continued each month. By February, they'd increased the lease fee to $7.99 a month. (I guess the price of modems went up, kinda like pork-belly futures.)

Armed with my UPS receipt and our $58.06 calculation for the overcharge, I began the cheery task of telephoning, listening to CenturyLink advertising of high speed internet interspersed with announcements of the estimated wait times (irony unintended), and sharing the last four digits of my Social Security Number with half the population of Boise, Manila and Bangalore. At one time, I was so excited when a human voice finally answered, I accidentally disconnected myself.

I had to complain that CenturyLink was stealing because (a) I returned their miserable modem the day I got it, and (b) they've made me pay rent for a modem I own. I told my story and provided the relevant UPS shipping number. The fellow checked the UPS number and confirmed receipt. Then I was transferred to another department where I had to start all over again.

Left-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-right-hand-is-doing.

My third go around was with Finance. I admit I was pretty testy when I repeated my story about corporate theft. Then the lady told me she had to put me on hold. I'd been disconnected often enough and feared having to start all over again. Several minutes passed. Finally she came on the line and brusquely but pleasantly said, "You have a $106.09 credit on your account." I was shocked. I immediately became the most compliant and grateful customer she could have imagined.

Of course, I didn't mention that by our calculation, the overcharge was only $58.06.

"So the records are corrected and you don't need me to mail you a modem?"

"Yes, sir.  That's all taken care of."

"Should we pay the $6.93 balance now or wait for a corrected final bill?"  She assured me it would better to wait for a corrected bill.

Okay. Today Shari returned from the post office with a delinquent payment notice from CenturyLink. We owed $113.02. No credit.

I cannot explain how the original $113.22 final bill lost twenty cents, but then I can't explain the $106.09 credit amount either. And, as I have suggested, I doubt if anyone alive can explain a CenturyLink invoice. Ninety-four line items.

I made a direct phone call to Finance armed with my confirmation number for the credit. Those direct numbers you get are precious. Although you still get the oprime el nueve recordings and have to recite the last four digits, the wait times are less and the people you reach are more knowledgeable. My question was simple. I'm supposed to get a corrected final bill showing a $106.09 credit. Why do I get a delinquent payment notice dunning me for $113.02?

"Our records show the $106.09 credit and only $6.93 is due."  Why the wrong bill? "Our records show the $106.09 credit and only $6.93 is due. Just send a check for $6.93." My complaints that I should get a written invoice for the correct amount fell on deaf ears. "This is Finance. That's a Billing problem. I'll forward you to Billing."

Left-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-right-hand-is-doing.

The fellow in Billing told me, "Our records show the $106.09 credit and only $6.93 is due. Just send a check for $6.93." I complained.  I should be able to get a corrected invoice for the correct amount. We went around and around, but all I could get out of him is that the accounting/billing system that It-Takes-A-CenturyLink uses is incapable of printing out a bill that shows the credit.

I hung up before he asked the inevitable question, "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

I called the telephone number on the back of the delinquent payment notice. After navigating through the computer-generated obstacle course, the pleasant computer-generated voice said that the amount owing was $6.93. Somewhat assured ("Third time is a charm.") I wrote out a check for that amount with the hope that it would be the end of it.

I made the mistake of going online to see what It-Takes-a-CenturyLink says is owing on my old account, the one under the telephone number that was "ported" to Comcast. When the phone number moved, I was assigned a new number for the purposes of CenturyLink's final billing. I found my old number on the CenturyLink website. They showed about a hundred and twenty dollars were past due.

Which is why I think CenturyLink is still using Bell Telephone's billing system.

Actually, that's a slight on Bell Telephone. I have very fond memories of the regulated phone company, its pleasingly short invoices, less than $20 a month for phone service, and a black phone so weighty that you could use the hand-set to knock out a giraffe.

Salt River Weekend

We took a Friday off, left Nazar the wonder-dog at home (with a sitter), and drove north down the San Pedro valley, past Globe (Copper Country) and the Salt River Canyon to the White Mountains, then to Payson (Rim Country) where we spent a night. The next morning we headed southwest to Scottsdale where we spent the day and our second night. Sunday we headed east, up Highway 88 and the Salt River to the Salado cliff dwelling ruins that are the Tonto National Monument, then back home.

There is something about the vast country of the Southwest and its ancient history of peoples, cultures and civilizations that made what we saw and experienced profound.

View of the Tonto Basin of the
Salt River (Lake Roosevelt) from
the cliff dwellings.

We were in a different space by the time we got home. We saw our little acre of the Sonoran Desert in the light of a new appreciation.

Salado cliff dwellings, Tonto
National Monument.

The most lasting memories are of the Salado cliff dwellings and their view of the Tonto Basin of the Salt River (now Lake Roosevelt). We stood in the homes of a culture that had farmed that area for three or four centuries until their way of life was abandoned mysteriously. Just like the Hohokam who had farmed the Tucson and Phoenix basins for over a millennium, the Salado disappeared from history in the early 1400's.

Salt River Gorge north of Globe. The river is no more
salty than the other rivers of Arizona. It got its name
from some ancient salt deposits near its source in
the White Mountains.

We begin on a cold and rainy Friday, unusual weather for June; the remnants of a tropical storm that had hit Mexico. But the clouds and drizzle could not diminish the drama of the Salt River Canyon in the San Carlos Apache and Fort Apache Reservations just north of Globe.

We took lots of photos, but it's impossible to capture such scale in a snapshot.

We continued north through ponderosa pine forests until we reached the town of Show Low. No, Show Low isn't an adaptation of an Indian name. It's a card game. In a real life version of the stock cowboy movie dialogue ("This town ain't big enough for the two of us"), a marathon card game ended with a winning deuce of clubs in a show-low game and the loser agreed to quit the settlement. The name stuck.

Salt River gorge.

Show Low is in an area now frequented by the well heeled who build cabins in the White Mountains to escape from the summer heat in the Phoenix and Tucson basins. It was cold and rainy when we were there, so we left the upscale shopping malls and drive west to a much more rustic town.

Payson, outside our Indian (as in India,
not Native American) motel.

Payson boasts the world's oldest continuous annual rodeo. We didn't see any cowboys, per se, but the clientele having dinner with us at the Buffalo Bar & Grill was plenty colorful enough. The rain continued overnight and into Saturday. As we ate our breakfast eggs at the Beeline Cafe, we gazed at the downpour that flooded the street outside. Occasionally, as if someone were taking flash photos, our faces lit up from nearby lighting strikes.

We didn't stay for the Mogollan Monster Mudder that was scheduled for that same morning. It's an annual 5k race through mud and obstacles that is part of Payson's Mountain High Days. The local newspaper, the Payson Roundup, wrote about running and wallowing in mud to cool off in the summer heat. There was no summer heat that day, and I suspect many contestants forfeited their $70 entrance fee rather than show up.

Shari and her new Scottsdale hat (Tony Bahamas) in Old Town.

We drove west to another erstwhile cowboy town. Scottsdale, especially its Old Town, boasts of its cowboy heritage. Heck, in Arizona, even Democrats pack guns and ride horses. But it's also Scottsdale, which is really synonymous with wealth.

In years bygone, Shari scoffed at the idea of Scottsdale, so it was a bit of a surprise that she finally wanted to for there, spend a night and do some Sunday exploring and shopping. We liked the place.

The Arizona Canal brings water from the Salt River through Scottsdale. The Indian Bend Wash is the occasion for a lush and beautifully manicured park that stretches for miles. Our hotel was next to Chaparral Park. The flowing water, man-made lakes, trees and grass watered daily made me jealous and inspired. Heck, if an old and giant Mexican palo verde is happy growing in grass as wet as a golf course, I need not worry about overwatering the stressed Mexican palo verde by my shed.

We drove by the state capital building in Phoenix so we could disparage the nutter Republican legislators, then we visited Pueblo Grande which I had seen once before. (See Underlying Phoenix.) It's a very small remnant of Hohokam culture, but an eye-opening reminder of the ancient history of the Southwest.

This fellow had a half a dozen vehicles
waiting in the ditch of a steep, one-lane
precipice as he inched his wide trailer
slowly past. We backed up a few
hundred yards where there was more
room to pass.

Sunday morning, instead of driving straight home, we decided to head east past places named Lost Dutchman and Superstition Mountains. Arizona Highway 88 is a short stretch on the map between Apache Junction and the Tonto National Monument.  What we didn't notice was the dashed lines along the second half of Highway 88. They mean a dirt road.

Not only was it dirt — hard packed, washboard rutted dirt — the road was steep, switchbacked and often one lane. Plus there was no shortage of pick-up trucks hauling speed boats on wide trailers. There was even an oversized motor home whose driver probably regretted not reading his map more carefully.

A roadrunner crossed the dirt road in front of our car. A few miles later we saw a rattlesnake slowly making its way across the road. We slowed down each time to marvel.

Century plants blooming by Hwy 88.

That country is spectacular, made even more stunning by numerous century plant stalks in full bloom, each a cluster of deep gold-colored flowers. They dotted a countryside so harsh that other Apaches named the local Apaches fools (Spanish, "tonto") for living there. But their predecessors, the people we now call the Salado, had scores of farming settlements along the Salt River.

Now the Salt River is dammed in three places, creating three lakes in the desert that are popular with the speed boat crowd. The largest is Lake Roosevelt in the Tonto Basin, just below the Salado cliff dwellings that were discovered by workers building the Theodore Roosevelt Dam. The dwellings were quite intact, preserved by the dry climate. But treasure hunters in the 1920's and 1930's demolished much of the structures. What's left is preserved as the Tonoto National Monument.

The ancient Salado, Hohokam and Anasazi cultures all mysteriously collapsed around the same time, which was a few generations before Columbus "discovered" the New World. I wonder if on some cosmic level, they knew what was about to happen and decided to check-out and reincarnate in a different culture.

Assaying the Cauldron

Imagine people bringing items to a garage sale where other, more nicely dressed people sit at tables and render opinions on the items' values before television cameras. Of course, you have the Antiques Road Show.

The AR Show came to Tucson last Saturday. Weeks before, Shari had gotten an email from PBS and she applied for tickets. We were surprised to get them. Shari felt quite fortunate and privileged. She planned to take her copper cooking cauldron from Wellington's Peninsular Campaign, some Georgian period earrings, a solid gold cigarette lighter, and some old Korean and Chinese pottery. I didn't want to take the cauldron. It is big and bulky and weighs seventeen pounds, but it's historical and Shari wanted to learn more about it.

The Show was at the Tucson Convention Center and our appointment was at two o'clock in the afternoon. We got two tickets and instructions that each of us could bring two items. It also came with the suggestion to bring some portable seats. Wise. They knew what was involved.

The Cauldron

The Convention Center is a big facility. We didn't realize just how big, nor did we realize how many people had received tickets for the AR Show. The $10 parking lots were jammed, cars cruised the streets looking for space, and all sorts of people were streaming back and forth from the Center carrying odd packages. The downtown area was so congested, Shari decided to give up and return home.

I had not really wanted to go in the first place, and I don't like crowds, but I also like the challenge of finding a free parking place on the street. I knew that Shari had really been looking forward to the Show. Fortunately, we had taken our nimble Agamemnon (our bronze-colored Honda Fit) and we found a place to park only four blocks away.

I don't like being conspicuous, but I certainly was carrying the cauldron. Shari carried a bag and two folding camp stools she purchased from Big-5 the day before. We approached a couple of older people on the street carrying packages and walking away from the Center. Shari asked them about the crowd. They said it was really bad. There had been an electrical fire at the Center earlier that morning, so everything was running late.

We trudged on in the heat of the day, me carrying the cauldron across the street, down a sidewalk, through one entrance, out another, down some steps, and into the grand entrance, a really large area crowded with people and packages loosely organized into serpentine lines according to their appointment time. We almost turned around and left. Somehow, we just kept going.

The scene reminded me of photographs of Polish refugees carrying a few possessions as they fled the German invasion, or a horrendous line at an airport TSA security check. But the odd packages that people were carrying, pulling, and carting looked more chaotic-refugee than carry-on luggage. People carried large paintings, some brown paper wrapped, others just plucked off the walls. Garden carts, kids' Flyer vehicles, grocery store carts, and furniture dollies were used to drag heavier items. There were shopping bags, rifle bags, gun boxes, and rolled up carpets. I carried the cauldron, which drew quite a few comments.

The people were even more interesting. They were heavily weighted towards the elderly, some in wheelchairs, others carrying oxygen bottles. Those carrying the gun bags tended to be younger. Despite the crowds and the long wait, the entire scene was quite subdued. The AR Show folks had the system down. Scores and scores of docents wearing "AR" T-shirts herded and guided the crowd into organized lines.

The lines inched slowly — too slow to really move, too fast to really sit on our collapsable stools. There was a serpentine line in the grand entrance hall that switch-backed into another, even larger hall where we got a chance to sit and wait. Then we snaked out that hall, down some escalators, and into the really big hall that was laid out with crowd-control streamers (like those crime scene tapes that police use) that segregated the area and the people into about twenty or thirty alternating switchback queues.

One advantage of spending some five hours in crowded lines is the chance to meet people you otherwise wouldn't. It's a variation of the stagecoach phenomenon.

In the entrance hall, the first fellow we talked with was in his fifties and had been in the Air Force stationed in Turkey. At first, comparing notes about travel in Eastern Turkey and Spain was interesting. He proceeded to describe flying munitions and bales of US currency into Iraq, searching for artifacts in the Sonoran Desert, then hangings and Mexican military on the border, working with juvenile offenders, and pretty much anything else to keep going. He wasn't a Democrat or a Republican, he assured us. He was a tea-party guy who had plenty of first-hand experience not to trust the government. He just kept going, even as our portion of the line headed west and his went east. It became awkward.

The person in front of us was a young woman dressed in Gothic black lace with colorful tattoos on her arms, shoulders and neck. She wasn't the type of person with whom I'd ordinarily strike up a conversation, but Shari did. Lisa was delightful, intelligent, and generous in spirit. She was from Wisconsin, presently lived in Portland, Oregon, was staying in Phoenix, and had just arrived the day before from a month trip to Scotland including the island of Iona. She told us about spending six months in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, helping set up a "hippie camp" that brought fresh, organic food donated from Wisconsin and served hundreds of free meals every day. She told us about what the press didn't cover: the families and police who have run the parishes with greed and graft for decades if not centuries.

As if Lisa's and the Air Force fellow's experiences of government were not enough, our third conversation of any length was with a woman who talked about gun-toting survivalists in California. But I'm getting ahead of myself because that took place just before we entered the sanctum sanctorum.

A partition divided the main hall of the Convention Center into two. The first half was set up for the main serpentine line that kept moving slowly and giving little opportunity to sit and rest. A really large screen TV showed scenes from the Antiques Road Show, a "Big Brother" type distraction to help placate and animate the crowd at the same time.

After some four hours of lines, yours truly lugging the cauldron, shifting its weight from one arm to the other, our tickets were punched and we were allowed to enter the other side where a bank of tables were set up. This was the preliminary screening.

People unpacked and revealed their treasures and the nicely dressed screeners handed out tickets identifying whether the item was to be appraised was categorized as Militaria, Jewelry, Collectables (the longest line, we were told), Fabrics, Paintings, Furniture, Photographs, Books, Dolls —you get the idea. The young man was curious about the cauldron. Among all the thousands and thousands of stuff people dragged in, it was unusual. We chose Militaria for the cauldron, but took a Metalwork ticket just in case. Shari got two Asian Arts tickets and one Jewelry.

Inside that other half of the Convention Center was a circular arrangement of portable walls some twenty feet tall, like wagons drawn in a circle or a corral, with multiple entry points labeled with the various item categories. Bright lines taped on the floor marked where people waited to enter for the corresponding category of appraisers. Huge lights peered over the walls facing inside the circular corral. The AR T-shirted docents were even more numerous here.

We opted for the Militaria category line first. That was a mistake which earned us the one-way conversation about survivalists in California. I should have known better. I don't like guns or the gun mentality and it was a cooking pot that we wanted assayed, not something that serves to kill. I began to notice that there were more smiles on the people waiting to go in than on the people coming out.

We finally got inside the corral, the sanctum sanctorum. We had reached nirvana, the portable stage-set for the Antiques Road Show. Appraisers sat behind tables all around in front of signs advertising the item category. In the middle of this large area was the main stage where a lucky few waited (in chairs!) to be interviewed on camera. There were lights, cameras, and technicians everywhere, and the entire area was flooded with an unnatural, evenly bright white light.

The Militaria tables were being presented with revolvers, rifles, bayonets, swords and even something that looked like an old fireman's helmet. I felt awkward hanging onto the cauldron. Our Air Force buddy, who had been in the two o'clock line ahead of us, was in a trance by the side of the Militaria table. He was eavesdropping on everything, unable to take himself away. When we got to the front of the line, we overheard him ask one chap how much his revolver had been appraised for. "A hundred bucks." Our Air Force buddy replied with the air of an expert, "Yeah, that's what I would have said. One or maybe a couple of hundred."

Of course, our cauldron stumped the Militaria appraiser. We got his referral card to go to the Metalwork category. The referral card meant that instead of having to go to the back of the line outside the stage-corral, we could go directly to the line in front of the Metalwork tables inside the stage-corral. Honestly, we were grateful.

Some ten or fifteen minutes later, the Metalworks appraiser was almost as stumped. Shari explained that her Aunt Helene and Uncle Jack had lived in Burgos in the 1970's and purchased the cauldron somewhere in Northern Spain. They were told that it had been used to cook food like horse meat and rabbits for Wellington's army in the Peninsular Campaign — the one against Napoleon, 1807-1812.  The appraiser couldn't confirm horse meat or rabbits, or even its use as a cooking pot for the English army. The cauldron has no identifying marks on it. But she did say that its construction and age were consistent with the story. She said it was worth maybe $800.

Shari replied with something like, "Yes. That's about right. $800 is what I saw one going for on the web."

So we had stood and ambled in line for hours, me dragging the heavy, bulky, copper cauldron for several miles at an agonizingly slow pace, only to find out something we already knew? But we did get confirmation that its metalwork was consistent with the history we already knew.

We decided to take the earrings to the Jewelry table lines. We went to the appropriate queue outside the stage-corral, then realized we had had enough and the odds were that the appraisers would be unable to tell us much. What you see on the show is stuff they recognize from an identification stamp. They never show an appraiser being stumped. Our stuff was way obscure. We left, lugging out treasures back to the car.

What you see on the television program is maybe a half or whole dozen appraisals of items brought by people who are shocked when they learn that their odd treasure is, well, a treasure (for insurance purposes). What you don't see are thousands and thousands of other people who, that same day, had dragged their garage sale treasures through hours of lines only to be told their stuff was of minimal value.

What you do not get from the TV show are the appraiser's junk jokes. Can you imagine the variety of stuff that's presented to them? For example, one woman was carrying a huge, plain and ghastly painting of the crucifixion. We saw no appraiser bursting out with uncontrollable laughter. Each appraiser and each AR T-shirt wearing docent was impeccably polite and upbeat. Well, the Metalworks appraiser did joke a bit sarcastically, "Oh, is that what they told you?" But given their long day, their aplomb was remarkable.  Oh but the stories they could tell!

What the television program does elicit is the viewer's philosophical observation on human nature. We value something in dollars more than its aesthetics or history. It's true that Antiques Road Show is interesting because of the history the appraisers reveal about an item, but the punchline is its value (for insurance purposes). What motivated thousands of people was less the aesthetic history of their stuff and more the hope of a substantial dollar validation of its value to others.

Certainly, money motivates the appraisers to spend all day looking at questionable junk. The Show rules prevent them from entering into any business through the program, but serving as an appraiser on the Show does wonders on their resume so they can attract other business. The commissions they earn from finding buyers for valuable items can be enormous.

When we actually saw the onslaught of people with their hoped-for treasures, philosophical observations about people and money were inescapable. Even so, we and hopefully many others left the Show with a better appreciation of what we had. Every item, regardless of its monetary value (for insurance purposes), represents a history, a story made up of not only of the people who had made the item and the times in which they lived, but also of the people who had acquired and passed on the items.

What is most amazing about the crowded tumult that is the Antiques Road Show are all the stories that each person brings with them.