April 11, 2010

Sale Beckons Crowds



It's started. The garage sale season is in full swing. Broadway Christian Church held their Habitat for Humanity sale yesterday. A couple of hundred people we already in line when I arrived in the church parking lot, a few minutes before they opened for business. Once I got inside, after browsing the outside offerings and picking up a worn out bench (perfect for outside plants), I was overwhelmed. This was the first BIG sale of the season. Imagine a cavernous room filled with rows of tables piled high with everything from books to toys and electronics to household. And another room filled with rack upon rack of clothing, all for $6 a bag. Being out of shape I was overwhelmed. It takes work to hunt and browse at garage sales.

The good thing about this sale is that the proceeds, upwards of $20,000, go to Habitat for Humanity. What a great effort by Broadway Christian Church and the scores of people, including Boy Scouts from the church’s troop, who pitched in to help.

I hit the road after about 40 minutes. There were about six other sales I wanted to visit. It was a beautiful day. Trees and flowers were in bloom all over town. At one sale I heard someone offer $100 for a leather sofa (it was priced at $150), adding that their husband was a police officer. What’s that about? Were they going to send their husband over to “bust” them later in the day for not reporting sale income to the IRS or did they want a sympathy price reduction? At a downtown sale I had a wonderful chat with a man who lives near MU and seems to know all about the ups and downs of people living on the edge. The street people. Students who stumble home at night from parties. The downtrodden, including a man who hung himself years ago in Peace Park. He had some great stuff for sale, much of it abandoned by students as they exit campus at the end of a semester.

My bounty in the box (see above) for the day includes a cool pair of Bass walking shoes (I’m wearing them now), Kreskin’s ESP Game, a stunning Tanqueray cocktail shaker and a green Napco vase, circa the 1960’s. Until next week, happy hunting.

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