The Joy of Yard Sales

My mother shared many things with me as I was growing up, and amongst them was her love of yard sales. Shopping was a vocation for her, a natural talent. I don't think she could have prevented instinct from turning the car in at every sign that proclaimed a yard sale event.

Yard sales fit perfectly with my mother's idea of interior decorating, the first rule of which seemed to be to cram as many items of furniture and objet d'arts into every available space as was logistically possible. But more than that, yard sales provided the excitement of discovery, the thrill of negotiation and the satisfaction of acquisition.

Those pieces of milk glass, the tiled wall plaques fashioned by some avid craftsman, and even the blue vase that I filled each spring with apple blossoms, all became part of our family's home – none more so than a kitchen table with a bench that she snapped up when I a teen. The bench was covered in a vinyl material in what once may have been a colonial pattern but was now faded, tattered and worn. Together we bought several yards of vinyl in a sunny orange and yellow pattern and reupholstered the bench ourselves. Over the years the bench and chairs broke and were discarded but the table continued to stand in our kitchen. When a niece set up housekeeping on her own, the table was ceded to her. When she replaced it with a new and modern dinette set, the table came to me. When I moved, I gave the table to another family member and so it continued to serve for many years. That yard sale table had become as much a family heirloom as any antique passed down for generations. It became more - it became a memory of days spent with my mother, poring over the discarded items of another family, looking for treasure.

My mother's love of yard sales taught me many things. I learned to look for the value in something that didn't arrive new in the box, to look beyond the worn exterior to find the shine from within. I learned the excitement of the hunt and the pleasure of the find. With a few dollars in our pockets, we were on an exciting adventure, an expedition that would uncover hidden treasures - furniture, books, toys - whose former owners had outgrown their delights.

That is the essence of a yard sale. It holds not just dusty junk brought out of the attic into the bright sunlight once again, it holds memories and stories, that having once been stored away, come out to live anew. Each item will be forever part of those who loved it or who loved a child that played with it. A table that has seen a thousand meals and heard the conversations of a thousand family dinners can also be that which carries the memories of days spent in joyful pursuit of the perfect purchase and a loving memory of one who understood the joy of life.

Filling In The Spaces

From time to time, I like to keep up with the studies going on at universities and within the scientific community. I feel it is my civic duty to ensure that tax revenues and government grants are spent wisely.

Imagine my shock when I read that Bernard Engel, a professor at Purdue has produced a study showing that the country has too many parking spaces. My first thought was "sure, when's the last time you went shopping?" but I decided to read further, my interest piqued by his claim that parking spaces outnumbered drivers 3 to 1.

Naturally, his two extra parking spaces are out in the Midwest, where they just naturally have a greater expanse of land on which to lay asphalt. But it was this reasoning that really had me scratching my chin.

“The problem with parking lots is that they accumulate a lot of pollutants - oil, grease, heavy metals and sediment - that cannot be absorbed by the impervious surface,” Engel said. “Rain then flushes these contaminants into rivers and lakes.”

If only one in three parking spaces is occupied by a car, then I can't see how having a larger parking lot contributes more pollutants. The only oil, engine grease and other nasty chemical solutions that will leak onto that parking lot will come from that one car, not from the two empty spaces beside it.

Here where I live, I can guarantee you there are not too many parking spaces, in fact, every parking lot is designed to have at least 20 fewer parking spaces than the actual expected number of customers per day. This is to give the impression that this is a very popular place to shop, and it is well worth driving around the lot a few dozen times, following people leaving the stores to their parking spaces so that you too, can shop here.

And all the time these cars are driving around, they are spewing more pollutants into the air and possibly posing a mortal danger to the occupants of the car that just beat me to that space I had my eye on. Well, maybe I wouldn't really run them down.

Maybe they have extra spaces in Tippecanoe county because they are expecting a lot of cars to drive in from other states, having heard how nice and spacious the parking lots are.

Engel's point I guess is that this land space could be used for something else, but he doesn't say exactly what. Few people want to build their houses in the parking lot of the mall.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the thrill of victory when after circling the lot for 20 minutes I find the perfect space just two away from the front of the store, I wouldn't even go shopping, I would just order everything online. But there's something very satisfying about pulling in just ahead of that sleek, shiny new sportscar and taking the space they just zoomed over from the next aisle for. Finding a parking space is an activity that requires concentration, strategy, nerves of steel and lightning reflexes.

Plus, it's kind of fun.

.

Don't Tell Me to Have a Nice Day!

I had to bite the bullet and go to the grocery store today. Somewhere in my book of parenting rules, it says I should feed my family. Honestly, I hate the trip to the supermarket and today it appealed even less than usual because I have some quirky injury to my right leg. I wasn't actually sure I could manage to shop, even with the help of the shopping trolley to hold onto, but my sister was going and I had to take the ride when I could get it as driving is out of the question until my leg heals.

Right down the street from me is a store that has a huge selection, a bakery with the most delectable cakes, pastries and fresh-from-the-oven bread, and also boasts the lowest prices in town. It has too much of one thing, though. Customers. I swear everyone within a ten-mile radius shops at this store.

The parking lot is jam- packed a full 20 minutes before they open each day and each night there are customers still rolling their shopping carts down aisles for just a few more items as the voice on the loudspeaker urges them to cash out as it's closing time.

I could only get a few items, I couldn't walk or stand up long enough to get too many. I forgot to get some bottled water and made the selfish decision to forego walking back three aisles for it. "Let them drink tap water", I grumbled. I ended up with some absolutely necessary items (chips and soda) and a few meals worth of food. Not too many items but more than the 12-item limit at the express line. Did I mention that I am so stupidly honest that I wouldn't ever think of getting into the express line with more than 12 items?

The rule goes like this: "If you pick the shortest line, you will wait the longest to be served". This rule holds true in every store and fast food restaurant in the world and the wait time is doubled at any customer service counter.

The guy in line ahead of me glanced at me sideways once or twice. I could see him weighing his options as he noticed that I was devolving into a creature that could no longer stand erect. In fact, I was losing height by the minute as my legs gave way little by little. I didn't have very many items, but then neither did he - in fact, he could have slipped through the express check-out unnoticed. But he chose to stand his place, after all, he was next. Ha! we soon saw how little good that did him.

The woman who was currently being checked out had an amazing array of groceries and although the cashier at this line wasn't going to win any prizes for speed, the tallying of the bill was not going too slowly. That's when I saw them.

Coupons!

The woman had a fistful of 'em. The cashier sorted through and tried to scan them. The very first one she tried refused to be counted no matter how many attempts she made or what mysterious codes she entered into the register. Finally, in desperation she called over a supervisor who unlocked the baffled register with a key and entered the secret code that means "I am a manager, reset yourself". During this time, the woman had pulled out checkbook and pen, written everything on the check but the total, applied her lipstick and combed her hair. I was turning into a sideshow freak and she was fixing her makeup! The poor cashier had to call the supervisor over three more times to assert authority over the cash register and override the fact that one of the coupons wasn't for anything this women had purchased. By this time, even the store just wanted her gone and to accomplish it, they gave her 35 cents off.

When I finally got to the register, with my unglamorous and full-price cartload, I was completely unable to return the weak smile of the harried girl running the register. She mumbled something at me in a quiet and meek voice. "What?" I nearly shouted, in a slightly too startled voice, as if I had been awoken from an engrossing dream. "How are you today?" she asked in the store-prescribed manner.

I am ashamed to say, I told her exactly how I was.