An Extraordinary Yard Sale Adventure

Shame on me for disappearing from my own blog. It's just that stuff seems to happen to eat up one's time, even if one is a retiree.

Take this weekend.

My husband-who-happens-to-have-cancer and I decided to offer our treasured junk during this weekend's two-day neighborhood yard sale. The event occurs each spring and fall, and involves families in our subdivision toting all their dust collectors, broken stuff, and faded clothing out to their garage or driveway. Then other neighbors drive around for two days rummaging through all the stuff and haggling over the difference between 25 or 50 cents for a 1960's picture frame that's missing the glass.

The sale began today, but we've been preparing for what seems like, well, the torturous eternity that constitutes a presidential campaign. Slowly wading our way through our three-story home, one room and closet at a time, we transferred forklifts full of discards to the garage over the past months. Then we spent this week blowing the spider webs and dog hair off everything that had sat in the garage. Oh we had covered and carefully bagged everything when we took it out. But garages have their own unique atmospheric conditions. Sort of like the dusty conditions of Mars, exacerbated by solar tides.


Anyway, we spent last night setting up as well as we could displays of our treasured junk. Hard to do without long tables and colorful tablecloths, but we did our best. We spread raggedy sheets on the garage floor and set out our wares, leaving ample room for hoards of buyers to walk throughout the displays. It wasn't Macy's, but it worked.

As we set up last night, the early birds arrived. Mostly men in pickup trucks looking for tools and electronics. They were greatly disappointed with my offerings, so started checking out the lawn equipment and other items in our garage that were not for sale. And they did their best to make us feel guilty for not selling stuff like our very own, very needed lawnmower for two dollars. Or finding fault with our not-for-sale tools and telling us how foolish we were for not letting us take items like the dented and dusty yard blower off our hands.

Today brought similar bargaining techniques:

"How much you want for that rug?"

"You mean the handmade oriental wool rug I bought for $300?  It's priced at $10.

"I'm not sure about the color. I'll give you $5."

"Go to Macy's, and good luck."

Here is my favorite exchange of the day:

"What's the price on this shirt"

"You mean the brand new Ralph Lauren polo shirt that still has the $98 price tag on it and has never been worn? $3."

"Will you take $2?"

"No."

And the fool actually walked away.

Tomorrow should bring more fun. My big ticket item is the tanning bed, that I will bring out in the morning. The first goober who tries to low ball me may be treated to a demo. I'll set the dial for the equivalent of Martian solar tides.