Last Saturday there weren’t too many sales listed, but since we had blown off sales the previous weekend we decided to at least go out for a little bit.
Our first stop was pretty bad. Karl looked through a box of records and pulled out three or four halfway decent ones, but nothing special. Then we heard a guy walk up and ask “Got any records?” It was this super record squirrel dude that we’ve all seen around a million times. Karl smiled and I made a crack about how he had just gotten some amazing records. The guy asked to see them and Karl swept them under his arm. As we walked out I noticed a pair of glass squirrel sculptures in the window of the house, which seemed fitting. Karl said that if he’d really found anything great, then of course he would have gloated about it.
The next sale’s ad had boasted “Best yard sale ever!” It also said “If you are looking for any kind of electrical cord, we have it,” which in my mind automatically negated the previous claim. They did have nice big arrow signs pointing the way. One of them was hanging in a tree near this clock … which Karl immediately noticed was set to 4:20.
When we pulled up it looked really grim.
Meghan immediately declared it to be the opposite of the best yard sale ever while I perused the few items on display. For unfathomable reasons, they had stuck this lonely watch into a display case.
We left without purchasing anything (but not before Karl randomly asked the guy if there was a snake in that case.)
Next up was an estate sale starting at 10:00. We were a few minutes early and there was a sizable line outside.
Someone told us there was a list, so I signed us up even though we weren’t sure if they were really going to be using it. We had time to kill, so Karl and I entertained ourselves by repeatedly calling each other’s phone, since we had both recently changed our ringtone to the Keyboard Cat theme song. Finally they started calling names out. Karl made a comment about how we should just claim to be someone else on the list. Then they called “Janet? Janet H.?” There was a half-second of silence and then in an obviously fake falsetto voice Karl called out, “Yes?” Almost everyone in line burst into giggles.
The same record squirrel from the first sale was ahead of us and was the last of the first twenty people to be let in. He asked if his wife could come in too since she was number 21, and Karl yelled out, “No!” Meghan chimed in, “No wives!” The woman at the door looked stressed, like she really wasn’t sure what to do. Finally she let the wife go in (which we were all perfectly fine with, of course).
At this point we were cracking ourselves up right and left with various stupid comments and jokes. Most of the people in line were laughing too. But then Meghan made some joke about how she was going to leave, and some guy muttered “good.” Of course this just egged us on more. I unleashed the Keyboard Cat song again and we were all spouting off random B.S. This one woman with a bad perm and spackled-on makeup kept turning around and giving us snooty looks, but her friend was laughing.
Finally we got to go inside. There was a lot of stuff, but the prices were kind of a mixed bag. I picked up a huge bag of unused ’50s embossed wallpaper and it was $1. But then a mediocre ’70s hanging lamp was $95! And a couple of older toys were clearly marked as not up for any price reductions. Maybe they didn’t really want to let them go.
The basement was where most of the weird crap was. Like these ancient wine coolers. How long has it been since they’ve even made California Coolers and Citronet?
We also found a box of the largest light bulbs I have ever seen. (In case you can’t tell, the box was about two feet high.)
I laughed at this “Happiness Tooth Brush.” I can only imagine what a “healthy gum massage” it would give you! I might have been tempted to purchase it, but it looked disturbingly crusty and worn. I hope not from actual use, because that’s just nasty.
And I really wondered what this now-empty box had once been used for, and who that “Funk You” had been directed at.
Off to one side was a room full of tools and car stuff. Meghan said, “Oh, it’s the man room.” I said, “Yeah, where’s the porn?” Then we immediately noticed this provocatively-named pipe clamp.
I purchased the wallpaper and a Vernonware mug for a grand total of $1.50. Karl and Meghan each bought stuff here as well. We drove away laughing about our line antics and that one irritated woman. (We must have repeated the word “spackle” about twenty times.)
Then we headed to a sale that started at 11:00 and sounded great! Unfortunately, it wasn’t. They were still bringing stuff out, so we loitered around, throwing things at each other (really) and hoping that each new box might contain something more than outdated computer books. Nope!
There was an estate sale nearby that sounded okay. We got sidetracked by some signs for a nonexistent sale, and when we finally got there it turned out to be a rummage sale in a commercial building of some sort – not an estate sale at all. Meghan pointed out these really filthy pillows that were inexplicably priced at $10 each. We were horrified at the amount of dirt on them, until we realized that they were actually made of stone and meant for your garden.
They did have boxes of records and Karl ended up with a huge stack. I think Meghan bought one.
It was just about quitting time, but we saw this sign and made it our last stop.
The sale was in a garage with tons of stuff on shelves. Nothing was priced, but the seller seemed eager to make stuff go away and promised everything was cheap. Meghan got a handful of books here and Karl got an old newspaper-delivery tote bag. And that was it for the day.
