Yard Sale Bloodbath

All right everyone … our recurring guest star, Leslie, has come through with an oh-so-special report for us! Take it away, Leslie …

As previously mentioned, we all went to a rather crusty estate sale that had been running for at least a month. The interior of the house was dusty, coated with spider webs, and stinky enough that I just kept thinking of the moist towelettes lurking in the bowels of my purse.

My purchases were very limited: one stick of Freedent Gum (possibly from the ’80s), a colorful Mexican aluminum decorative hanging thingy, and a BEWARE Of Cat sign. I don’t have a cat, but The Big Lebowski of cats on this sign looks like he’s chug-a-lugged an entire bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine.

Plus of course, the prize from the fetid basement: a copy of The Swiss Colony Christmas catalog. Oh forbidden fruit! My extended family were not Swiss Colony people, so I never got to sample the undoubtedly delicious array of Swiss Colony offerings. I flipped it open and saw a product called “Pet Gouda” that featured a telltale brown box with air holes and that unmistakable Pet Rock font. I figured that the catalog had to be from 1975 or ‘76. Wrong! It’s from 1978, well after the Pet Rock fad had passed and had shuffled off to nerdsville. Perhaps those Swiss Colony marketeers had been living under a Pet Rock for three years.

The catalog features 124 pages of enticing foodstuffs that would cause normal humans to double their Pravachol dosage. I feel compelled to share the magic … and especially the grammatical errors, bizarre capitalizations, funky punctuation, and random quotation marks that The Swiss Colony lovingly inflicted on their customers. Ladies and gentlemen, this truly is catalog shopping as it was in the ’70s (minus parking your polyester-clad ass on a plaid couch and having What’s Happening playing on the TV in the background). I’m not going to bother with snarky comments that would taint the enticing descriptions you are about to read. Here is a sampling of the exact text and photos from a sampling of taste treats offered by The Swiss Colony in 1978.

Pet Gouda
Deep in the Jungles of Wisconsin lurks the fierce and terrible “Wild Gouda”, fleet of foot and savagely predatory! With the ruthless instincts of a cunning wild beast, only Kaptain Kubly our “great white hunter” could hope to track and capture him. NOW . . . after months of training and obedience school, we have a Pet Gouda for YOU! The same glowing, waxy red coat, but underneath lies the most mellow, creamy personality you can imagine. This mild-mannered, lovable pet, comes with his own specially designed crate. Everyone will enjoy a Pet Gouda.

BE-E-E-F-A-LOG
What is this year’s most novel gift . . . most exciting culinary creature? The BE-E-E-F-A-LOG,” of course! Such a popular refrigerator roamer. If you free it from it’s carrying cage, you’ve unleashed the incredibly delicious taste of fine, hickory smoked Beef Sausage. We warn you and your gift recipient to “Beware! It’s Viciously Delicious.” Available in 1 lb. and 2 lb. Logs. So clever, folks will remember you all year long!

Crazy Creme Puffs
Men from Mars! You’d think so but they’re really our NEW happy, lovable people. Their plump little bodies are made of delightful smooth cremes: Dobosh, Pistachio, Mint, Pecan, Almond and Walnut, all “dressed up” in dark and light frosting suits. Each is groomed from the tip of his toes to the top of his head with an irresistible happy smile! Eighteen 1 oz. Crazy Creme Puffs handmade of course, in our Pastry Kitchen.

Chocolate Humbugs
The most lovable little creatures ever! They are sure to win over the most discriminating chocolate lover. 12 “critters” have centers of fluffy Chocolaty Creme, so meltingly good with tender Coconut covering. Hand decorated with “peepers” and ever so carefully cradled in egg carton. Absolutely heavenly to taste (if you can bring yourself to do it!) Made especially for our customers. Shp. wt. 2 lbs.

Heavenly Hash
All bedded down on a pillow of white clouds… That’s impish yet angelic, Rudolph as he keeps his eagle eyes toward heaven as if to say, “Isn’t it Heavenly, me riding on such a delightfully delicious cloud!” His solid flavored chocolate goodness with his red nose and bow tie, lies upon a 6 ¼ x 9” Heavenly Hash pillow that’s made of Chocolate, Pecans, Marshmallows and Cashews. What angel wouldn’t smile on this 15 oz. bundle of joy! Shp. wt. 2 lb.

I’ll leave you with this little puzzler: just what flavor is “solid”?

Hmmm … puzzling, indeed! And I’d also like to point out that below this description they note that the design of Rodney Reindeer is copyrighted … wait, is it Rodney or Rudolph? Get it straight, people!

Thanks, Leslie. I suspect I’ll soon be calling you in the middle of the night for emotional support after waking up in a panic from nightmares about the BE-E-E-F-A-LOG.

So, in my last post I mentioned this “Master Detective” magazine that I picked up. I thought I would show you just a little bit of what’s inside. As you can see from the cover, there are some cheese-ariffic articles in there. Will anyone be surprised to learn that they’re not actually as interesting as they sound?

The only one I tried to really delve into was “Who’s Killing the ‘Great’ Pimps of Hamburg?” From what I can gather, it was a complicated rivalry brought on by diminishing economic circumstances between two rival groups of pimps called St. Pauli GmbH and the Nutella Prostitution and Drug Organization. (Nutella — no shit — though not affiliated with the actual product. The article says that the name “is a sort of joke, because Nuta is slang for prostitute in German and Nutella is the name of a well-known spread to be put on bread.” Oh, those funny pimps!) I could not be bothered to track all of the specific incidents and motivations (I might have needed to draw a chart), but I was amused by all of the nicknames, apparently required for any pimp in Germany: Handsome Michael, Chinese Fritz (who died “without having time to pay for his beer” — I’m sure he felt really bad about that), The Businessman, Karate Tommy, Vienna Karl, and Angie. At press time the “Hamburg War of the Pimps” was apparently still in progress.

Like many magazines of yesteryear, the really fun stuff is in the ads. There’s a preponderance of invitations to start some flourishing career or another. Be A Law Officer! Be An Electrician! Be A Locksmith! Get in on the profits in SMALL ENGINE service and repair! Upholstering just one chair … may pay you as much as your present week’s paycheck! The big, quick money is in VINYL REPAIR! There are also ads which promise riches while providing absolutely no indication of what the hell you are supposed to be doing, as well as the requisite ads full of cheesy products that you can supposedly resell for big bucks. The “Fastest Sellers for 1984″ include such gems as the Permanent Match, Dynamo Flash-Gun, Drinking Bird, and Automatic Needle Threader.

Some of these ads were pretty funny, but my favorites were found in a hodge-podge of tiny ads crammed into the last ten or so pages. The following four gems were in the same location over four subsequent pages. First, I give you this.

For Men Of Action: a “lifted” pouch for macho swagger. Oh yeah.

On the next page, we see what Today’s Man is all about: “almost invisible” man-panties.

It’s the coolest brief yet! But wait – then we have this:

Notice the ad right above it, too. “Sexy Girls In Your Area Want Men Of All Ages For Dates!” I think I’ve gotten spam with that exact sentence in it. Some things never change. (And not the abundance of sexy girls desperate for dates.)

And then just when you think it couldn’t get any hotter … you turn the page in eager anticipation, only to find …

Yikes!

That’s all for this Book Report. And yes, I know this isn’t really a book. You want books? Head on over to this post on the always-entertaining Thrift Store Adventures for more books than you can shake a thrifted stick at.

It’s January and naturally we are starting to get the urge to hit some sales. The last time I went out was nearly 2 months ago. Unfortunately, there is not much out there this time of year. Meghan and I decided we’d hit a couple and if nothing else it would be a good excuse to hang out and get some breakfast. Our semi-regular guest star Leslie decided to come along for the ride as well.

After perusing the pitiful listings we decided to check out the Lake City Flea Market, where none of us had ever been.

As we walked in, Leslie pointed out that it was really more of an antique market than a flea market. I was just grateful that it wasn’t just stalls full of new tube socks and bad crafts. I circled around a few times knowing from the get-go that it would be extremely unlikely that there was anything there I would want to buy. Especially not this person’s box of Hamburger Helper.

I was pretty happy when we all decided we’d had enough and set out in search of food. We ended up finding a new cafe/bakery that hit the spot, then headed to a nearby sale that turned out not to actually exist. We were thinking we’d call it a day, then we decided to go to this one sale that had had some Craig’s List drama earlier in the week — they’d posted an ad, then someone else kept posting “rebuttals” saying “They’ve been having this sale for a month! It’s all crappy and overpriced!” Of course, these posts would get deleted, then another one would crop up, then get deleted again … Finally they posted an ad that looked similar to the real one with a disclaimer “Note: This sale started a month ago.” It was all vaguely intriguing in a wacky internet hi-jinks sort of way. When we drove up to the sale, Meghan recognized the sign from about a month ago when she’d gotten super annoyed trying to find the damn sale and ended up giving up in disgust.

The house was cute from the outside, but everything inside was quite crusty. There was an astonishing amount of stuff left considering the sale had already been going on for a while. As I looked around certain themes emerged from the piles of detritus: cats, Alaska, printmaking, and bones.

And not just regular bones! How about some bone ART.

Oh, but that wasn’t all the bone art. I was disturbed to realize that this funky-looking crucifix was made out of vertebrae. And some gold paint.

I think I was saved from getting overly creeped out by the silliness of the wet cat poster hanging right next to it. (I wonder whether that was the original owner’s placement or just a fluke of the estate sale.)

There was also a ton of really elaborate and huge carved wood antique furniture pieces. One of had a huge tall spire on top which evidently had required them to recess and re-finish a small area of the ceiling above it. I neglected to photograph that, choosing instead just to take a picture of some of the stuff on it.

In the same room as the bone art pieces (and that poodle) were these boxes of soaps. There was a sign indicating that they were ten cents each. I am going to get personal with you readers for a moment to say that if by chance you have saved anywhere near this many hotel and guest soaps, please stop now.

A little nervously, I made my way downstairs. There was a room that was just filled up with tons and tons of books, as well as assorted paper ephemera and all kinds of other random things.

It was at this point that we all felt a little sad, because some of it looked kind of good but it was way too crusted over and scungy to want to spent much time digging through.

We did leaf through a few of the piles. I picked up an odd old notebook looking thing which turned out to contain an “erotic mystery story.” I can’t tell when it was published but I would guess no later than the ’40s — probably earlier. With phrases such as “his male prerogative stood boldly upright” and “the warm dew trickling down the swollen tree-trunk” — and others a bit too dirty for me to include here — I just had to buy it. I also got a 1982 Kliban cat calendar (which sadly is not as collectible as I’d thought) and a copy of Master Detective magazine from 1984, featuring stories such as “When Hookers Fall Out, It’s Murder” and “Who’s Killing the ‘Great’ Pimps of Hamburg?”

On my way to pay, I noticed one more room I hadn’t been into. There were more bookcases here. Including this one, which Meghan pointed out was almost exclusively filled with books about the Nazis. Yet another theme emerges from this household’s stuff.

I paid a whopping $2 for my purchases and got irrationally jealous at the one item bought by the person in front of me, a lovely art deco wallpaper sample. Meghan bought one old group photograph and a 1959 edition of “Ford Times.” Leslie bought a hilarious pamphlet that I hope will be the subject of a guest Book Report for us soon. It definitely wasn’t a great day for sales, but I had fun, and that’s all I was really expecting from the second Saturday of the year.

In July we had gone to a woman’s sale (that Jenny and I refer to as the bugdi sale) who had some really great books and I purchased a incredibly pretty (yet awkwardly sized at 12 x 4.8 inches) called Playing Cards, by Buzz Poole and Ira Pearlstein. 300 cards from the 1930s and 1940s are lovingly reproduced in full size and brilliant color. It’s a graphic design wet dream.

The cards were acquired at an auction by Ira Pearlstein, who introduces the book, and this is the biggest reason that I would consider it for a Book Report on our blog. What really resonated with me were Ira’s thoughts on the auction, collecting and junking in general. Ira was warned by his wife “don’t go crazy, Ira. Remember what I said. We don’t need them.”

Here is where Ira really wins me over: “I looked the other way, pretending that I didn’t recognize this woman, the light and joy of my life for the past 23 years, mother of my only begotten sons. I was in the grip of Auction Fever and Sharon was powerless to rein me in.” His total cost for all the cards? $17.50.