The Dynamic of The Yard Sale

After several weeks of a packed itinerary of appointments, this week is starting out lighter on the scheduling. This will free me up to get started on that list of projects Pam and I had determined to do in the first quarter of 2019. Yes...I am aware that there are only 14 days left in said quarter...but better late than never. There’s mulch to put down, the outside of the house needs to be power washed and painted, the gutters need to be cleaned out, and the deck stained. Then I’ve got to get the guys from the Mosquito Squad to come and rid my yard of that blood-sucking pestilence. If there’s any time left, I will need to do a deep dive cleaning out of the garage where I will identify items to add to the...ominous music...YARD SALE PILE. Yes, boys and girls, it’s that time again, that glorious Dunnevant family tradition which rears its hideous head every two years with all the warmth and expectation of an un-lanced boil. Long time readers of The Tempest know of my hostile feelings about this particular tradition, so I will not regale you further on the subject, except to say that in less than a month, Mechanicsville will be the site of a ponderous pile of worthless knickknackery being picked through by the oddest collection of bargain hunters, antique sleuths, yard sale junkies, rednecks, and high society women out for a day of incognito slumming ever assembled in eastern Hanover County.

Enough about the Dunnevant yard sale...but what about a few observations about yard sales in general? I have never quite understood the attraction of walking through a collection of someone else's rejected junk, cash in hand, ready to pay money to take it off their hands. Listen, I know that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but in my twenty years of yard sales I can tell you from personal experience that the definition of treasure has been bastardized beyond all comprehension. I saw a guy pay two bucks for a box of Fram oil filters in odd sizes that fit absolutely no engine that he possessed on the reasoning that for two bucks, they were cheap enough to use as something to throw at his neighbor’s barking dog! I’ve seen a reasonably intelligent looking woman buy literally the tackiest sculpture of an angel dressed in a firefighter uniform, an American flag firmly in her mouth, with the burning Twin Towers in the background, with the burning question...I wonder of my nephew will like this, I think he’s a fireman...I’ve seen a old man pulling his own oxygen tank on wheels around ask me what a box full of strips of metal in random shapes with slots hither and yon cut out of them were...to which I replied, Sir, if I live to be a hundred years old, I will never have an answer to that question. Then I watched him gather up the box and pay my sister 5 bucks.

I have no explanation for the dynamic of the yard sale. All I know is that there is something in the human spirit that loves the illusion of the bargain, the idea that you are getting over on the other guy. That moron just sold me a first edition of To Kill a Mockimngbird for 50 cents!! Everybody likes paying as little as possible for things...see Amazon, Walmart...and I get that, but paying as little as possible is one thing. Paying as little as possible for a Walkman cassette tape player without the headphones is something else entirely. But, it is this type of free exchange that has been the backbone of the Dunnevant Family Yard Sale success. We have averaged over $800 a year in revenue in the fifteen or so times we have staged the affair. That money has paid for the groceries for twenty people at fifteen beach weeks now. So, we keep doing it. And they keep coming...in teaming hordes, they keep coming, with their change purses, bulging wallets stuffed with one dollar bills, the official coin of the yard sale realm. And we keep taking their money and stacking it in our metal cash box until it is full. Then we stumble back home and stand under a hot shower for half an hour trying to clean off the detritus of hundreds of human interactions and regain the feeling in our extremities, secure in the knowledge that we will eat like kings on the Outer Banks yet again.