Garage Sale season is here.
Let me begin by stating quite clearly that I do not particularly appreciate garage sales. I know they serve a certain useful purpose, namely, to get rid of junk, excess baggage, and so forth, and to make a little profit on the side.
Still, something inside me is rather hesitant to set out on tables for all to see the various and sundry things I have been living with for too many years. Then of course, there is always the danger of putting up for sale something that some dear relative or friend gave you. Suppose they should stop by and see it and the paltry price you put upon it? I have heard stories of such things happening, and it makes me shudder.
I rarely go to garage sales. If I am compelled to stop, it is because a) the house looks interesting or b) I see some item from the street that looks like something I’ve been looking for or should have been looking for. I must admit, I have found a few wonderful treasures in garage sales. An antique sewing machine. My son’s favorite sweater. A bike. When I returned home, I didn’t have a clue where I could put the sewing machine. The sweater required a little repair before it could be worn. The bike had no brakes.
One summer years ago, I shocked my son, Luke, by saying, as I began sorting through stuff for Goodwill, that I thought we needed to have a garage sale.
“Have you ever had a garage sale before, Mom?”
“Once, when you were a baby. I think Dad still has the painted sign somewhere…”
“Why do you want to have one now?
“A little extra money would be nice for vacation.”
And so, in his twelve-year-old way, he helped me prepare. We swept out the garage, set up tables with saw horses and plywood, gathered and priced and displayed. My husband washed off the sign we found in the rafters of the woodshed, and on Thursday morning we were good to go.
Except it rained Thursday morning. So we waited until about 11:00 when it stopped, and then we put the sign out. Luke and I went out for breakfast and spent the first profits we had not yet made.
But the people came. Sometimes individually and sometimes in droves. In the course of those two days, I decided that people who go to garage sales can be put into various categories.
Category #1: Bargain Hunters
These people come into the garage with an air of disdain and authority. They have gone to enough garage sales to know that sheer gall actually works. So they glance over your belongings for a while, pick up a few, and then come to you and ask if you will take one dollar instead of two for a given item. Or a quarter instead of fifty cents. Generally my reaction is to say yes. And they know you will, because after all, you are trying to pass off your junk on some other sucker who thinks it has value.
One man made me resist giving in so easily. He was an older man, and he was looking for watches. I had two for sale, one that didn’t work, the other that did. He picked up the latter, which was priced for a measly five dollars and asked if I would take two dollars for it.
“Well, that one works. So I think it’s a bargain at five dollars. I’m just selling it because the band is too big for my wrist.”
“OK. Three dollars. “
And the man audaciously pulled out three dollars from his wallet and laid it on the table. Something in me just balked. I think it was his over-confidence.
“No, sir. The price of five. Take it or leave it.”
“You’ll be stuck with it then.”
“So be it.”
He sped off in his green pickup truck, muttering something under his breath. I did sell the watch later. Four dollars.
Category #2: The Curious
The curious come to a garage sale to see what you have for sale and to see what you don’t have for sale. These are the people who point to a rusty old shovel hanging on the wall and ask if that’s for sale too. Or who ask you how long you’ve lived here and how old the house is. Eventually they may even ask if they can use your bathroom.
Category #3: The Very Old
The very old look at garage sales as their entertainment for the week. They rarely buy anything, unless it is for their grandchildren. They are polite and kind, and generally eager for a little conversation. Often they are the biggest bargainers.
One old woman burrowed through my things, gathered a few small finds, and plopped down into Luke’s folding chair beside me. She grinned at me, and when I grinned back, she must have decided it was safe to tell me her life story. I ended up pouring her a cup of coffee from my thermos using one of the mugs I had for sale. We had a nice little visit about life’s challenges. When she was ready to go I helped her to her feet and carried her purchases to her car for her.
Category #4: The Very Young
My favorite garage sale visitors are children, although they are generally the customers with no cash. I ended up giving away several items to one little darling whose smile and charm I just couldn’t resist.
My son had somewhat reluctantly put up for sale his favorite puppet from his childhood. To make the parting less painful, he put a high price on it (five dollars). The puppet’s arms had Velcro on the ends, so that the monkey could hug you, which was a huge part of his popularity with my tender son. As a young child, Luke suspended reality almost entirely when I inserted my hand into that monkey’s little body and made him come alive. That puppet was his buddy, and the two of them laughed and carried on animated conversations.
A little neighbor boy came with his teenage brother to our garage sale. He attended the school where I taught for a number of years, and was a delightfully odd child, full of misunderstood imaginings. He was drawn to the monkey of course, playing and whispering to it as his brother looked over the roller blades.
Eventually the brother made his purchase, and as he started down the driveway, the little boy ran up to him. We could hear him begging for five dollars for the monkey. Finally the older brother stomped off, and the younger one slowly followed, kicking stones and wiping his eyes with his head down.
Luke looked at me, grabbed his monkey, and raced down the driveway. I don’t know what their conversation involved, but I do know that one odd little boy had acquired a treasure which he recognized as such, and one young man came whistling and grinning up the driveway with a little change in his hand.
It is all a kind of game, really, this garage sale business. Does someone win and someone lose? One person wins money, another loses money. One person wins what they would call a treasure, another loses a little piece of a memory.
What I won from having a garage sale is a little window into humanity. A window I often prefer not to look from because it all appears to be so ordinary and sometimes even a bit sordid. But there is something of each of these people that I recognize in myself too. That is the common thread of bare humanness that shapes our stories and frames our dreams.
7 Responses
There’s (Chicago area)always the old guys who come early as you’re setting up and ask about tools or WWII memorabilia . . .
We’ve taken to what our Portland-area kids have told us is legend there: just put items out to the curb on non-rainy days with a sign “Free Stuff”— gone within an hour. No cash, but no clutter, no yard-sale management.
I loved every word you wrote here about garage sales! They are in my blood, not going to but having them. My Aunt Betty, who was married to a successful jeweler and certainly didin’t need the money, had legendary sales in her garage and driveway on Deming Street every summer; she would save everything that didn’t sell and it would be unpacked and put out again the next summer. Mother and I would bring our priceless treasures each year, help set up, work the sale, and take down, thankfully counting our profit. Our neighborhood gives one Saturday every spring for residents to set out their ‘junk’; two years ago I had the granddaddy clean-out, last-one-for-me sale, which, as you noted, is a slice of life. The lookers, the pickers for the antique stores, the bored, the grandmas, the older gentlemen looking for guy stuff; they are all precious in their own way. There is something profoundly satisfying in seeing who is going to make a fine new home for what you have discarded. Thank you.
Thank you for reminding me of your Aunt Betty. What a dear she was. I bought a set of yellow dishes at her final sale after her death. We still live on Deming and still call her house Vanden Berg’s.
Garage sales can, maybe should be, places for kinda subtle humour. But it’s gotta work… Didn’t really work all that well 22 years ago when I (my wife refuses to participate) held a pretty good garage sale before we moved from Thunder Bay to St. Catharines. I’d priced paperback book at $.25 apiece or three for $1. A woman picked out three and put them on the table along with a loonie. I told her it was the for a joke and she could pick another book. In the two seconds it took her to get my bad joke, he expression changed from friendly to fierce; she took the loonie and threw the three books back on the book table. Later a close friend and parishioner picked three and handed me her loonie; I told her to think a moment… She howled, called me a politically incorrect anatomical part, grabbed her fourth book and continued shopping.
Before they moved to a smaller home my parents gave a bunch of stuff to the local school fete. I went to that fete and recognised something I’d made for my father a few years earlier. I picked up the handmade item, turned it over, and there was my gift tag still taped to the underside of it. The lovely woman on the stall said I could have it, no cost. She was as horrified as I was.
Thank you, friend, for this delightful post. It must bring out stories, because I remember an account by Harry Boer, the delightful, eccentric professor with the gravamen regarding reprobation fame. On a return from Africa, he encountered a garage sale sign for the first time and wondered who would sell their garage? Overcome by curiosity, he proceeded to discover the tables with items for sale. He was astounded by the sight and prices, holding up a perfect pair of jeans and exclaiming ” a quarter?” The startled seller quickly responded that he could have them for free! May love surround you.
Judy and I had a garage sale decades ago in Iowa City at the end of my sabbatical year at the U of Iowa. We’d bought all our furniture at garage sales at the beginning of my sabbatical, and now we had to dispose of it again. What I mention here are my observations of just this one garage sale.
We advertised the sale as starting at 8:00 a.m., and at 7:00 a.m. while we were still setting items out on the driveway, Mennonite women already began showing up, obviously hoping to get first dibs on preferred items.
At 8:00, 8:30, other people who I would classify predominantly as White middle class Americans, came by. That continued for much of the day, the number of people gradually dwindling. Later in the afternoon, the few people who still showed up were Hispanic folks. By then the larger items had all been sold and the display tables were almost empty. At 5:00 p.m. we decided to close things down.
No criticism of different ethnic communities, nor attempted stereotyping, just some cultural observations.