Yard Sale Junkies

Yard sales are as American as hotdogs, as addictive as football, as sure a sign of spring as the Colorado potato beetle. Collectors, pack rats and treasure seekers emerge at the first signs of melt-off and power the economy until snow buries the last abandoned exercise bike. We are a nation that will stop at nothing to avoid cleaning the house on Saturday morning.

We burn high-dollar gas in our high-tech cars to hunt matchbook covers, empty picture frames, scratched sunglasses and hosts of small-ticket gewgaws and gimcracks that are no longer lovely, trendy or useful. We are obsessed with recycled, worn and faded stuff, things found growing mold in flea markets, thrift stores, and consignment shops. We are so infatuated with rummage, garage and tag sales that we will pay big bucks for things labeled vintage, junque or collectible, even more for objects with pedigrees from antique stores or estate sales.

Our love for trinkets, whatnots and bric-a-brac is in the DNA. We have always been hunters and gatherers but, somewhere along the line, we decided it was more important to cram our attics than our larders. We abandoned the search for sustenance and the Golden Fleece in order to seek pre-owned, gently used, second-hand gadgets, games and gismos.

Truth be told, yard sales are a swell excuse to snoop on the neighbors, to paw through their cluttered lives and abandoned dreams. Boxes of unread books, roller skate wheels and unmatched wine glasses tell stories about the people peddling them--the blonde parting with an elegant luggage set she never had the opportunity to use, the fat lady getting rid of a Nordic Track she should have used, and the granny ditching Christmas cookie tins she is sick and tired of refilling.

Yard sales create the opportunity for you to feel superior to your neighbors, to find a windfall, to prove you were in the right place at the right time. They legitimatize haggling over the price because, for bargaining purposes, every item has a stain on the collar or rust on the handlebars. Saving stuff for a yard sale is the perfect excuse to postpone cleaning the attic or garage, and the fact that some yahoo will buy your leftovers justifies the folly of having bought them in the first place.

So every weekend, Mr. Flotsam and Mrs. Jetsam gas up the pickup, pre-map an attack, and rise before dawn to forage for do-das and whirligigs, items that every dry cleaner, mechanic and handyman in the county has refused to salvage. If we can’t find treasures, we’ll settle for broken pasta makers, dirty stuffed animals, chipped cookie jars, and puzzles with missing pieces. It’s extraordinary just how many Barbies, weed eaters and Mountain Dew bottles a community can accommodate.

My pal Fred sweetens his leisure and income by refurbishing yard sale “finds”.  He writes off vacations by searching for things he can repair, refinish and resell without seriously impacting the gross national product or attracting attention from the IRS. As result, his life is littered with broken car seats and three-legged chairs which he has promised to remove from the driveway before his Old Lady throws out them and him.

My friend Mabel is equally convinced that every attic in America harbors rich deposits of Depression glass, Fiesta china and Hummel figurines. Surely someone has dragged Beethoven’s wig, Elvis’ Harley or Hank Williams’ hat over the Pass. There must be a Ming vase in a shed in Morrison, a Lionel train set in a garage in Lamar, a little something painted by Picasso, built by Stradivarius or signed by Gilbert Stuart stashed away in Alamosa.

In college towns, where the kids who gave us stretch marks are studying to become leaders of the free world, yard sales provide the $25 computers, refrigerators and sofas essential to sustaining life with a $6,000 mountain bike. Trash gurus in Boulder estimate that students, on and off campus, generate 500 tons of trash a lot of profound philosophical questions.

How come people devote their lives to searching for things they never knew they wanted, items frequently found in dumpsters or along river banks on Clean Up Day? Why would Agnes think someone would buy a box of her old underwear? What prompted Gladys to sell her Virgin Mary nightlight? Where is it written that value accrues to things that have been sized, priced and displayed on tables in driveways?

But, then again, there may be someone out there who honestly needs a used garlic press.