I had an interesting experience today. I helped my sister with her neighborhood driveway sale. This was a new one for me. As I may have mentioned, I’m not very domestic and when I was married we lived in the city. City people do not have sales. If we don’t want something, we set it in the alley and people with shopping carts carry it away. The same thing will happen if you leave it in your unlocked car, but things like stereos and cds tend to disappear along with the junk, so the alley works best.
The suburbs is a whole different dimension, anyway. We go there for barbeques and family get-togethers, it’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. But this neighborhood sale thing is the most alien tradition I have ever encountered. People bring all their junk and old toys and clothes etc out onto their driveway, supposedly to sell it to strangers who might for some reason want it.
What actually happens is an entirely different thing, however. The neighbors walk from driveway to driveway, looking at everyone else’s junk, and of course, seeing things they can’t live without. My sister’s old tables end up three doors down, while their neighbor’s old holiday china finds its way across the street and my sister gets two used bicycles, three winter coats and an ugly lamp.
To keep up the pretense of a sale, relatives, especially grandparents, stop by, look through things, buy some of a neighbor’s old toys and promptly give them to their grandkids, insuring their appearance again in next year’s sale. Relatives occasionally buy a small appliance or lamp, take it home and donate it to Am Vets or worse yet, bring it back for next year’s sale. The toys that actually make it to the sale without being reclaimed by the children (“I love this doll, I don’t want to sell this!”) will always be bought by the kids next door or down the street, even though they play together every day. Some of the toys from last year’s sale actually end up back with their original owners.
The men play a vital part in all this; they start out early with coffee and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, helping to bring out things, complaining the entire time. By early afternoon, they have switched to beer and spend their time selling things for a dime behind their wife’s back. (They know who has to carry this back when its over.) They help load things in cars for little old ladies from around the corner and I swear I have seen them add things just to get them out of the way. When they aren’t loading, complaining or running for more beer, they nose through the things for sale, occasionally finding their favorite tool, a treasured baseball cap, or a chipped beer stein that just can’t go. (‘I love this! I don’t want to sell this!’)
I had a very important part in this sale. I was a cashier! I sat at a little table with a moneybox and a notebook. My sister looked really worried when I was assigned this job. I don’t know if it was the idea of me handling money, or if it was all about the stickers. She hasn’t forgotten how I decorated my baby niece with the magic markers last year. How the Hell was I supposed to know they were indelible? Besides, the mustache wore off after awhile and really looked kind of cute.
Anyway, the stickers….you see for the week before this sale, each lady had spent hours sticking cute little colorful stickers on their stuff, complete with price, which every one ignored, and their initials. My job was to take the money, detach these little stickers from the item and place it on the page for the appropriate person. In this case, there were three different people selling things from my sister’s driveway and these stickers were to insure they all received their correct amount of money at the end of the day. I knew my sister was worried that I would color coordinate the stickers instead of putting them on the proper sheets but I’m not that immature. Well, I did arrange them nicely according to their colors but I kept them on the proper page, and I think I made change pretty accurately, so I think I adapted to this suburban game pretty well. I may join the DAR next year.
I was really fascinated with the end of the sale, when leftover things were to be donated to Goodwill. First each neighbor had to come around and look at what they might want for free, to save the trip to Goodwill. This was a little confusing to me….I wondered why they bought anything earlier, why not wait and get it free later but like I said, I’m no suburbanite. When the money was figured up at the end of the day, each person had made a few dollars, which they promptly paid to their neighbors for the things they bought, making sure that not only the junk but also the money stayed in the neighborhood. If there was any small profit, it was eaten up by the pizza for lunch and the poster board for signs, which had to be put up before the sale and taken down after, another task for the husbands.
All in all, it was a very entertaining day. I was pretty relieved to see this whole thing,
because, when I had heard about all the swapping in the suburbs, I thought they were talking about wife swapping. I was so glad to find that it was just their junk they swapped from year to year, not their spouses. The thought of my sister and her husband and their well-fed neighbors as swingers, complete with Wesson oil and sex toys (hey I have an active imagination) anyway, the thought, when it didn’t make me laugh, made me a little ill.
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Reviewed by Robert Fullerton
1/24/2005
This was a belly laugh, through and through...I might show up at one of your sales...Thamks ...Bob
I could relate to this because I used to work in a flea market, some of the things they sold in the flea markets were interesting.
Reviewed by Cathy Montgomery
5/15/2002
I enjoyed this! My aunt, Mom, and I used to go garage "sailing"--what my aunt called it! She had this bumper sticker on her car--"Caution: I break for garage sales." Thanks for sharing this refreshing story!
ha ha ha ,this is too funny and believeable,me and a friend go to the burbs to pick up furniture for friends house warming(rent warmings) and sometimes clothes for the kids -smile- nice to know the story behind that
(Richard M. Feldman) Ever since I was a young boy, the only thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. I wanted to own and work on a real ranch, with cattle and horses. Especially horses.
While I never became a cowboy, considering everything I have done
Sepsis knocked her down and out. Faith, hope, and gave her the strength to get back on her feet. I am a Runner She fought the river of death They said she'd never run again
She proved them wrong...
After a long awaited weekend visitation caused by false allegations of sexual abuse, Glen got to see his children for the first time in over two months. He promised them that they would never be apart again and then they disappeared.
