Fun with the Yard Sale
In an attempt to clean things out of the house, simplify our lives, get some quick cash, and reduce the amount of stuff we’ll need to find a place for in our new house in Tennessee, we decided to have a garage sale. We would have had it about a month ago, but this was the first non-rainy weekend we’ve had since we started preparing for it. Despite some very, very uncool people deliberately stealing our signs near the new Kroger and diverting traffic in another direction to go to their yard sale, we still managed to sell almost everything major we wanted to sell.
Two or three interesting things stand out from the experience (besides the aggrevating sign swiping). First, there were so many nice people who came to buy things. Probably the only people that I didn’t enjoy were a mother-daughter team that as they continued to buy and bargain for things I realized they were just buyers (for flea-marketing or other purposes). I regret the deals I cut for them because they didn’t seem very appreciative of the effort I spent helping them load up their high mileage Lexus. But I really do enjoy getting to meat the Hispanic families — many of whom have to buy from garage sales for financial reasons. For them I like to cut the best deals. I was particularly happy to see a pregnant couple get Grayson’s baby crib for $10. It was in perfect condition and we even had the instructions saved for them.
Some folks for whom I cut a super deal was a Brazilian lady. She came with two of her Brazilian friends. Listening to them, their quiet Portuguese sounded to my completely untrained ear like Spanish so using a little a Spanish, I was nicely informed that they spoke Portuguese and that’s when I realized that they were from Brazil. Mentioning Brazil then earned me some points for at least knowing about it. When she came back today with a friend (also Brazilian) with a van, I asked where in Brazil they were from. Again, I got points for mentioning São Paulo instead of just Rio de Janeiro. However, based on what they said, they were from Goiânia in the Goiás state (central Brazil). They were extremely nice folks, the type for which you knew Portuguese so you could “really” talk.
Another interesting person was a nice older lady whose father-in-law had once owned the land that our current house now sits on. He apparently sold 1400 acres around Bentwater in 1951 for approximately $12 an acre. That works out to the price of one of the cheaper lots in the subvision a few years back. You can tell the family is still regreting that. I was also amused with her description of me as “a nice young man”. I’d been feeling older lately so it was nice to hear for a change. Her “heart-patient” husband was somewhat annoyed that I seemed unwilling to let him attempt to lift the heavy furniture they bought from us.
Towards the end, an eldery gentleman came. He was obviously very lonely as he seemed content to stay and talk with us. He was proud sort — fighting the horrible effects of diabetes and age. He was determined to make sure he paid for everything — often repeating “I pay as I go” as he picked out things. He nearly teared up as he talked about a great-grandchild who was born with holes in her heart. In all, he must have spent nearly 40 minutes at our sale and bought quite a few things with almost none of the stuff destined for his own use but rather for a son, grandson, or great-grandchild. There were several negative things about him that would make him fall easily in the “least of these” category (some of which I won’t bother to go into) but at the end of the day, the money we made from selling off stuff didn’t seem as great as the rich experiences of the day.