Sales By The Yard
THIS PAST SATURDAY there was a neighborhood-wide “Yard Sale” in our part of town. In other areas of the country events like this are called, “Sidewalk Sales,” “Garage Sales,” or “This crap is going into the trash if nobody buys it.”
I don’t know how many people were involved in the sale. All I do know is that our street was clogged with poorly parked cars, pickup trucks, and vans. It did require me to visit the closest “sale” and ask for the shopper who just parked their car across our driveway to move it.
I’ve done events like this myself to help get rid of unwanted stuff. I never made any thing above lunch money from it and ended up hauling the bulk of the leftovers to Goodwill anyway.
Most “Yard Sales,” or whatever, tend to offer great prices on old clothes, mismatched flatware, Paperback books, and baby clothes – lots of baby clothes – a sure sign that Daddy is getting “fixed.”
I’d hit these sales if I was in the market for CDs from the 1970s or DVDs of movies that should have gone straight to landfill.
At just about every Yard Sale that I’ve ever been to there is a table displaying old boots and shoes. I mean really old boots and shoes. Where have they been storing these things all these years and what do they think are the odds that someone will walk up and say, “Just what I’ve been hunting for – old boots that look like they survived the D-Day Invasion?” Perhaps they are planning some “re-gifting” revenge.
“Aunt Euthanasia gave us her used George Foreman Grill for Christmas – wait ‘til she sees what she gets for her birthday. And since she has only one leg we’re covered for next year too.”
I really do believe that these sales serve as an inexpensive way to buy gifts for people you despise. Christmas is a mere 3 ½ months away so now is the time to be out there looking for those “Wham!” CDs and DVDs of Molly Ringwald films.
I’m familiar with “Progressive Dinners” where you go from place to place for each course of a meal and I see similarities in Yard Sales. This time the shoppers, instead of diners, go from backyard to backyard looking to find those long lost personal treasures. There is hope that they might complete that set of Melmac dinnerware that they lost when the double-wide got blown away in that tornado back in ’97. A piece here – a piece there and pretty soon you have something that everyone else is selling for twenty-five cents apiece.
OK, I have to admit that this particular Yard Sale Extravaganza started off badly for me. I don’t begrudge people for wanting to sell all the stuff that has been gathering dust. And I don’t hold anything against those people who wander about looking through the piles of not so precious personal belongings of strangers. It’s just that it gets under my skin when someone parks their car across the driveway when I need to get out.
When I asked the car owner to move their vehicle I was polite, although I did mumble something about getting it towed. I was not rude, by my standards, at all. Charles Manson would have handled it differently, but then, so would have Mother Teresa. No blood was shed, no curses hurled, no Melmac lost.
I hope that everyone on the selling end made money galore and I hope everyone on the buying end found just the perfect pair of boots for Aunt Euthanasia.
