Insight: Yard Sale Confessional

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I have a confession to make. For many years I avoided going to yard sales, garage sales, estate sales, thrift stores or flea markets because I saw no purpose in it and didn’t understand why anyone would want to accumulate more of someone else’s junk or castoffs. But was I ever wrong.

Slightly more than 20 years ago, my wife encouraged me to drive her to a community wide garage sale in Florida and in looking over a table, I discovered a perfectly good wristwatch priced at just $2. Having $5 cash on me at the time, I paid for the watch and used the $3 change at the next house we stopped at to purchase complete sets of 1988 and 1989 baseball cards which were priced at $1.50 each.

When the weather was nice, visiting yard sales became a favorite Saturday morning activity for us. There were some things we could afford, and some we passed on. Not having small children, I avoided any neighborhood sales with piles of baby clothes or toys stacked in the driveway. My wife being an avid reader, she always stopped at sales that featured boxes of books. I preferred visiting ones with practical things I could use for our home, such lawn furniture, shovels or hedge trimmers.

And best of all, many of these used items up for sale came without a hefty retail price tag.

Once when we told my mother that we were spending a Saturday morning driving around looking for garage sales, she shook her head and gave me a quizzical look.

“I don’t understand why you would want to go rummaging through some else’s used underwear,” she told me. “I wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near one of those places.”

She didn’t know it at the time, but the chair she was sitting in at our home when she said that came straight from a yard sale. So were the napkins and glasses at the dinner table we ate at.

Through the years my wife accumulated an enormous selection of like-new children’s books for her classroom by visiting yard sales. Some of the books were priced at a fraction of what they would cost if purchased at a store.

Many pieces of furniture in our home have been rescued from a yard sale or a thrift shop, repainted and repurposed to fit our décor. We’ve found bookcases, several wardrobe cabinets, a kitchen clock, a bicycle, an antique soup tureen, a dresser and a like-new microwave oven that way.

For years I would buy most of my clothing at a department store and pay full price. But after seeing a generous selection of gently used pants and shirts and jackets at a thrift store, my thinking changed. I still buy some new clothes as needed but if I can find pants in great condition at a thrift store for $4 that fit me well, I’d much rather do that than pay $48 for new ones.

I can go through my closet right now and find several winter coats, five or six sweaters, some dress shirts and pairs of pants that came from a yard sale or a thrift shop.

Our beloved Scrabble game that swivels came from a garage sale. So did a pink serving dish in our cupboard that resembles one my wife’s grandmother had when she was a child.

Yard sales and garage sales have also been a way for us to get out of the house and to do something together on weekends. I’ve found it’s also an excellent way to meet people who live in our community and to learn more about streets and the geography of where we live.

Now that we have grandchildren, my wife is always on the outlook for inexpensive clothes for them at these local sales. Sometimes a sale at a local church will include homemade baked goods.

This summer at a church sale near our home I found a huge selection of record albums priced at $1 each with many of them still in the original retail shrink wrap. At a flea market nearby, I purchased a DVD set of Season 3 of the old television series “The Fugitive” for just $3.

The exciting thing about visiting a yard sale or a garage sale or an estate sale is that you never know what you will find there or what kind of deal you can make. Sometimes near the end of the sale, items will be greatly reduced in price just to get rid of them. Or you can offer what you can afford and many times, your offer will be accepted.

After the sales are over, sometimes leftovers will be set at the end of the driveway in boxes for free to anyone who wants them. The same thing happens when people are moving and can’t take everything. My wife and I just found a sitting room chair in perfect shape from neighbors who were moving while we were out walking our dog, and it had a free sign on it.

I’ll never know why I never went to a yard sale when I was younger, but I confess that I’m hooked on it now. <

Andy Young: Humiliation with a capital B

By Andy Young

I’ve never earned a paycheck as a butcher, baker, sous chef, dietician or short order cook. Consequently, I have no special knowledge about nutrition, not to mention any professional experience preparing, cooking, presenting or serving food. In retrospect, perhaps I should have kept that in mind before opening my mouth some years ago when I heard someone blabbing about a certain edible item.

I had joined a group of friends and acquaintances at a local sports bar. One of the latter, a serial center-of-attention-craver who loved eating nearly as much as he did boasting about himself and embellishing his supposed myriad accomplishments, was raving about some “Buffalo wings” he was consuming. I tried listening respectfully to his tiresome discourse, occasionally murmuring in faux agreement and even nodding when it seemed appropriate. But when it appeared he wasn’t planning on stopping, I decided enough was enough.

After checking to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ Day, I decided to shut down our verbose, attention-hogging pal by bringing up a verifiable fact that would mercifully end emphatically conclude his ongoing harangue.

Trying (though not terribly hard) not to seem smug or condescending, I blurted, “Buffalos don’t have wings, ____________!” (I’ll leave the term I addressed him with to the imagination, since some might consider it inappropriate for inclusion in a family publication.)

Momentarily flustered by my interruption, the speaker paused, presumably staggered by the superbly timed zinger I had just launched his way. That self-important braggart had been holding court for what I, and presumably everyone else, felt was far too long. Now everyone was staring at me. Suddenly I had become the center of attention.

Full disclosure: I’ll admit that for the briefest fraction of a second, I found myself bathing in approval, enjoying what I assumed were the appreciative and admiring stares of my grateful peers.

But the silence my clever quip had evoked continued for what seemed a bit too long. (Looking back, maybe everyone there was checking to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ Day.) Then I noticed the gazes of my companions morphing from admiration to incredulous. It was apparent I had committed some significant faux pas.

Panic set in, followed by full-blown paranoia. Had I forgotten to zip my fly on my return from the men’s room? Was there something unsightly hanging out of one of my nostrils? Had I inadvertently worn a pink shirt to an establishment where all 15 TV sets were tuned to football games, truck pulls, or professional wrestling?

My mistake became obvious when the blowhard I thought I had shut down triumphantly retorted, “They’re called Buffalo wings because they were invented in Buffalo, New York, ______________.” Irony of ironies, he had expertly employed the ultimate weapon to humiliate me: the very same derogatory term I had used on him just seconds earlier. The difference: he had used it far more accurately.

I spent the rest of the evening brooding silently, responding only when one of my now all-too-jovial chums referred to me with one of several new nicknames, including “Buffalo Boy,” Buffalo Bill,” and, most insultingly, “Buffalo Chip.”

Fate can be awfully cruel sometimes. If that big-mouthed egotist in our group had only mentioned any other food that began with B, I’d never have suffered through that horrible night of humiliation. Why couldn’t he have been holding forth about beans, blueberries, butter, bass, baby back ribs, bacon, bagels, burritos, baklava, beer, bologna, bread, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, Baked Alaska, beets, bananas, burgers, buns, beef stew, or even Vitamin B?

Hmmmmm.

I wonder if Vitamin B was named after Buffalo.

Correction: In last week’s column I incorrectly stated that no one born in the 1950s has ever been president or vice-president of the United States.. Thankfully though, several alert readers pointed out the inaccuracy, noting that Mike Pence, who was vice-president from 2017 to 2021, was born on June 7, 1959. The error was mine. However, in my defense, Mr. Pence is pretty easy to forget. <