The Day o Sales

I am up super-early for one good reason: yard sales. But today's a little different. When my great-grandparents were alive, we would go "yard-saling" eevry Saturday morning. We got up early, but not at the crack of dawn (close, though). My great-grandmother would get up long before the rest of us and circle all the yard sales announced therein. Then they would argue over where they were, what was the best way to get there, which ones we should hit first, etc. This was our regular routine for most of my childhood (when I visited them, that is).

I don't know about everywhere else, but down South, yard sales are a kind of cultural... sub-plot unto themselves. (I'm sure there's a technical term for what I'm trying to say, but I'm not digging through boxes to find the Sociology books just for this.) There are as many different yard sale people (the ones who have yard sales) as there are yard-salers (the ones who frequent them). There are those who spend weeks just planning their yard sale, there are those who decide they're going to have a yard sale Friday night, and then there are those who start dragging crap out of their shed and house Saturday morning - or mid-afternoon! (The latter are called "crackheads.") Sometimes, several families will get together and have a huge yard sale. Sometimes, yard sales offer coffee and/or other refreshments. Some are so big they have one person dedicated to handling parking. Some sit in one place with a little, metal box of money beneath their chair; others walk around to make sure no one steals the crap they're trying to get rid of.

Anyway, just a few towns over, there is one of these cultural events. Every Labor Day, Camden, TN has the 30-Mile Yard Sale. It's exactly what the name implies: 30 full miles of nothing but yard sale! Of course, this is a well-known and highly-publicized (throughout the immediate area) annual event, so I'm sure a lot of these people will be of the type who take their yard sale far more serious than they should - and charge far too much for crap they don't need or want - but you can still find some great deals and, every so often, unearth some incredible treasures at yard sales. And I'm hoping to do both!

I'll let you know how the whole thing went some time later today or tomorrow.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009