October 23, 2010
I worked all week on it. Hours and hours of preparation: sorting, stacking, cleaning, organizing, and then pricing decades worth of collected crap. I ran out of tables halfway through and had to drag the lawn furniture up front to set things on. The rain came in on Friday, the day before the sale, and we were afraid all was lost. But Saturday morning dawned bright and clear, with temps in the low seventies; it was perfect garage sale weather.
At seven o’clock, coffee in hand, I opened the garage door and was immediately trampled by a family of Mexicans looking for goods for resale at the Tonopah flea market. An hour and a half of intensive bartering ensued, most of it in Spanish, after which he pulled away with a pickup truck full of my stuff. I think he took advantage of me, but good.
The entire day went much the same. Troops of tightwad retirees, blue-haired and foul-tempered,shuffled through the aisles and beat me up for seventy-five percent off on every glass, picture frame, kitchen accessory, Christmas ornament, paperback book, stuffed animal, and used appliance. There was even one old duck who wanted to arm-wrestle me for two bucks off on a set of 1982 enclyclopedias. I told him to take them.
Between the lowballing Mexicans hauling used merchandise down to the border and the bargain-hungry Snowbirds with their annoying midwest accents, by four o’clock I was completely whipped. My temper was foul from hours of haggling, my fingers were sore from making change, and my back hurt from loading the trunks of senior citizen’s late-model sedans with Danielle Steele paperbacks and boxes of kitchen gadgets.
I closed the garage door mere instants before another convoy of pickup trucks pulled into the drive.
I made $87. Next year I’m going to skip the garage sale and stay inside to drink beer, sit in my underwear, and watch reruns of Rambo. Garage sales are hard work.