CarmEmily

Yard Sale

412-A West Sola Street

So I had that yard sale like an entire week and a half ago, but I had planned on doing a post about it, so I was taking notes all morning. Here’s how it went, along with a picture from the scene of the crime, as viewed with my back to the street. The little cottage front and center is where Dylan lives, the main house to the left has tenants (four 19-yr old girls), the studio above the garage behind the main house has a tenant (another college girl) and the studio above his place has a tenant (a Presbyterian Orthodox pastor.)

6:45 am Off to a soggy start – Dylan’s sprinklers went off, so I moved my wares to the sidewalk.

7:00 am The man on the cell phone who has been milling around across the street for the last 20 minutes wanders over. He buys three IKEA rugs, a kitchen island, some random wall art, a bean bag, a footstool (he is over 6 feet tall and has to ask me what the footstool is used for, I cannot imagine what he is going to do with it) some storage bins, and two dictionaries. I throw in a third dictionary for free.

7:30 am Dylan brings out some coffee then takes off on his bike. A woman comes by and buys some shoes; her husband buys  a hand vac. They don’t speak English. Luckily, I know zapatos and cuanto cuesta? but I wasn’t sure if I quoted him $15 or $50 for the hand vac.

9:00 am I get hungry and dash inside to see what D has in the fridge. I end up with some fat free cottage cheese and lightly salted pecans. Dig some more and find his “junk food” stash, so I help myself to a Fiber One bar.

9:15 am A very small middle-aged man walks by and starts asking me questions; again, he only speaks Spanish. Another man pulls up in a landscaping truck and proceeds to follow the first man around, piling in his arms everything I have just quoted prices for. They don’t appear to know each other, and the first man is getting annoyed. I wonder if I am being scammed, or if my Spanish is so bad I have just offered to pay them $5.00 for a bookshelf. The first man says something I don’t understand, pats me on the back, and walks away. The second man gives me $37 for some women’s clothing, office supplies, kitchen wares, and a few pieces of jewelry. He tells me he buys stuff from yard sales and then drives it across the border and sells it in Mexico. I throw in a few calculators for free, and contemplate showing him how to properly calculate the exchange rate from dollar to peso.

10:00 am Man with a dog comes by and browses through a bench of books. A few other groups wander through, buying little things here and there.  One man looks like he might buy my printer, then looks offended and walks away when I don’t laugh at his “joke” about “where do you put the bread?” (Referring to the printer…see, it’s not funny at all.) Book guy is still there, so I walk over and make a recommendation based on the armload of books he’s collected. Turns out the book I suggest, Under The Frog, by Tibor Fischer, has a recommendation on the back by his favorite author, Ayn Rand, so he buys it, and then feels like the 25 cents he has just spent on a book entitles him to divulge the entire contents of his own novel (self-published on the internet) to me. At the risk of violating his make-believe copyright protection, or boring you to death, here’s a synopsis: Dinosaurs (like Mayans) can see the future and predict their own demise. They make a pact with some passing aliens that they will allow the alien race to seed our planet with humans who will unknowingly alter the climate of the planet until it becomes habitable for the alien race to land and take over, in exchange for the dinosaurs retaining direct access to our brains via DNA. (He points out that this part is true, we really are descended from dinosaurs and so share similar DNA. I decide not to point out the flaw in his logic, as he has just said we were seeded from an alien race and not descended from dinosaurs.) As per the agreement, the dinosaurs soon become extinct and the aliens plant humans on earth. However, the dinosaur spirit lives on through their fossils, which become petroleum, which we become dependent on, and so now humanity is caught in a power struggle between the alien and dinosaur agendas. The book is called The Reptile Manifesto. Although there were some plot holes, and throughout the story he revealed he was homeless and living in his car, I do like a good sci-fi yarn, so I gave him a few more books.

11:00 am Three generations of obese women come by and sit on the stone wall bordering the yard. One of them carries a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. The oldest, the matriarch, appears to be mid 40′s, the next, maybe early 30′s, and the youngest around 12…and pregnant. They sit and chat while I stare at them, confused and horrified. After a few minutes, they start picking through stuff in a manner that suggests they do not plan to actually buy anything and are only interested in unfolding and rearranging everything I’ve so carefully displayed. I try vainly to withhold judgment while the 12-yr-old tries on some 4-inch spike-heel vinyl shoes and the grandmother selects a tank top with a phrase so truly obnoxious I will not repeat it even on the internet. They end up disproving my first theory wrong when they actually buy these items, after which they promptly take a seat on the wall again and resume their conversation. I spend the last hour convincing myself 1) the appearance of a crowd is good for business, 2) that I am surely going to hell or someplace like it for being so critical, and 3) I never ever have to hold a yard sale again for the rest of my life.