The dreaded garage sale:

            We both hate to have garage sales and after each one we swear solemn oaths to each other that we will never have another. This time we really mean it. The preparation for a sale takes about 3 weeks, there are signs to be made, ads to be placed, items to be cleaned and classified, tables to be hauled up out of the basement, and in general your home is in a shamble. What do you get for your trouble? You get 2 days sitting in the heat making conversation with a lot of people you wouldn’t normally encounter and you hope they don’t ask to use your bathroom. In the end you wind up making less money than minimum wage for one person, which your wife takes and you never see it again.

            I had 25 years of National Geographic magazines that I put in the garage sale. There was every issue, complete with inserts, and fold out maps. I really didn’t want to get rid of them because I thought they would be collector’s items, but they were so heavy that one end of the house was starting to sink, and the other end was lifting off the ground. They were all sorted by year and set out in neat stacks. I only had one man even look at them. I found him rummaging through the stacks and completely messing things up. He asked me, “Which ones have the Pygmy pictures?” I told him those weren’t for sale. He bought a 50 cent paperback and left.

            At garage sales people always comment on what a nice place you have, how nice those big shade trees are, or any such thing to make conversation. One guy said, “I love this kind of grass.” Avon was getting ready to make him a deal on the lawn when I told him, “The grass is all part of a matched set that came with the dirt and can’t be sold separately.”

            We had a couch and loveseat for sale. A lady came by in a Buick and bought it. I tried every way possible to get them into her trunk, but they wouldn’t fit. So, guess who was pressed into becoming a delivery service? Following her home, I kept praying that it wasn’t an upstairs apartment. While I was gone, the woman across the road came over to buy them – she has big strappin sons with pickup trucks. The garage sale saga goes on and on and could fill the pages of a multi volume epic novel. But the thing that struck me so peculiar is that Avon made several trips to the neighbor’s sale and came back with stuff she had bought. Wasn’t the whole idea of having the sale to get rid of stuff?

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 A Fine Kettle of Fish – Hickory Jack – Blue – Ace High – Blue Norther

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