“Our life is frittered away by detail . . . Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand . . . Simplify, simplify, simplify!” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Bill and I are packrats who follow our mothers’ practice of saving things for a rainy day. You never know, for example, when you might need a margarine tub, do you? After my mother’s demise, my sisters and I counted 23 margarine containers in her cabinets. She also couldn’t resist buying cream pitchers and sugar bowls at auctions and garage sales. Some were nicked, but too pretty to be thrown away.
During trips with Vicki, instead of buying souvenirs at shops, we collected “natural” items such as shells, rocks and pine cones. For many years we kept a stick that Vicki brought home from Buffalo Bill’s Scout Rest Ranch in Nebraska when she was a girl.
Sometimes Bill pronounces, “We have too much stuff. We absolutely mustn’t buy another thing unless we get rid of something.” We try to keep our house neat, but drawers, closets and the storage shed outside are jammed with a jumble of seldom-used odds and ends. What to do, what to do? The answer is, of course, a garage sale.
Our former home on N. Ritter Ave. was even worse than this one. The big attic was full of old clothing, stacks of National Geographic and Life magazines, toys that Vicki had outgrown, a sewing machine that no longer worked, unmatched glasses, and dishes and just plain junk such as a statuette of an elephant that was missing a leg. The small basement contained partially used buckets of paint and surplus canning jars left from my short-lived fit of becoming an old-fashioned housewife who put up preserves and vegetables for her family’s nourishment. The garage was too small for Bill’s car, so it was full of extra flower pots, a child’s red wagon that we had retrieved from a neighbor’s trash, extra roof shingles and hardened paint brushes.
We carried everything out to the driveway and ran the sale for a week. We were astounded by the things that people paid good money for. A man who was dressed nicely in a suit and tie bought a whole box of stuff and the electric sewing machine that no longer worked. He paid no heed when I warned him about that. “My wife is going to be thrilled when I get home with this.” “Bet me,” I thought.
On Saturday evening Vicki and I dragged what remained to the curb and put up a banner that said, “Free to a good home!” Sunday morning we giggled as ladies dressed in their Sunday best pawed through the boxes. What they didn’t take was left for the trash collectors. We made enough to buy our first season tickets to the Indianapolis Symphony.
Bill loves to browse at garage sales. He went over to Vicki’s neighbors’ home and came back to tell me about his latest find. When we were first married we bought a heavy ceramic, oval-shaped turkey platter that we’ve used for over fifty years. Vicki grew up with that platter, but has never been able to find one just like it. Bill said, “They’ve got a turkey platter.” “Buy it!” I replied. He must have been swept up in a garage sale fever because he came back with a really chintzy, ugly, round plastic platter that is nothing like ours. “How much did you pay?” “They were asking a quarter, but the man gave it to me for nothing.” More than it’s worth,” I said. “Oh well, you can put it in your garage sale that you’re having next week.” More to come. wclarke@comcast.net