If I weren't already mellowed out yesterday, last evening would have polished off my rough edges 'til I gleamed like a tumbled rock. Eric came in from work at six and announced that the neighborhood was abloom with yard sales.
"That can't be right," I protested."Yard sale day is Thursday in Medina."
"Well, yard sale day may be Thursday everywhere else, but here it's Wednesday night. They just opened and there are so many cars I couldn't get down the street."
Still skeptical, I opened the door, went out on the screened porch and – WHOA BABY! Banners of cars, pinwheels of whirling kids, streamers of strollers, and bouquets of people decorated the neighborhood like the party room at the church social. Even “Medina’s finest” were out there on a loud speaker warning revelers that cars cannot block fire hydrants. Normally, I'm not much of a yard sale-goer but THIS was a festival! I grabbed some cash from the money tin, collected Eric on the way out and we were off. Not two doors from our house we spotted a WWII collector we've been seeing at book sales for years, and one door past that I made my first score of the night -- two enormous baskets.
Of course I have books on the brain to the point where I don't even see anything that's not a book, or related to books, so jewelry, home decor, clothing, garden stuff etc. are invisible to me. If anything other than book-related stuff gets bought Eric's the buyer. So what's up with the baskets then? I guess I've never mentioned this before, but along with those bandboxes I showed you a few posts back, I’m a maker of themed gift baskets which center around books. I'll pick a book, or books, pile in lots of related goodies and dress the basket up ‘til its limo-ready for the gala -- cellophane, ribbon, flowers, the works. Mostly I make these for local charities as fundraisers -- St. VM (former high school of LeBron James), the battered womens’ shelter, Project Learn, stuff like that. Once though, I actually had a paid gig making a bunch of them for an insurance company as Christmas gifts for their best clients.
But never mind that -- the important thing is this unexpected party. There's something about the light at that time of night in the summer that casts its own brand of enchantment, so toss in the carnival atmosphere and the great deals, and it's no wonder we were giddy. Predictably, the books were not good by bookseller standards, but by reader standards I loved the children’s books, including an Eleanor Estes reprint of Ginger Pye, some battered 40’s book club editions of the Anne of Green Gables series, and Konigsburg’s Newbery-winning The View From Saturday. I didn’t buy them, but just having them as backdrop to the party made me want to throw confetti.
By the time we’d wended our way through 31 sales and got back home I’d bought the two big baskets, two shoe boxes overflowing with brand new rolls of ribbon, including FIVE wide ones (think gift baskets again), AND – drumroll here! – a vintage souvenir booklet from the Panama Canal. The grand total spent -- $15.25.
The best thing of course is the Panama Canal book. Isn't it gorgeous? Look at those colors! And I paid a quarter. Maybe, to parphrase P.T. Barnum, "there's a yard sale-goer born every day."
No comments:
Post a Comment