Connections: Hard-Earned Dollars
Thinking of having a yard sale? Don’t. At least that’s what my friend Maggie said. What she didn’t forecast was that it would take three, four, and five days out of my life, even with incredible help by members of the family, a pair of friends who are yard-sale aficionados, and three muscle men.
Actually, getting ready for the sale was surprisingly fun, although Maggie won’t believe it. My daughter came all the way from Nova Scotia to take charge of emptying closets and corners of all kinds of household goods, from vintage Hawaiian shirts to Art Deco toasters, and she whipped through it all using blue painter’s tape to mark low-ball prices.
This was neither a run-of-the-mill yard sale, nor an upscale “estate” sale, however. Our mission was to empty a barn of the stuff that generations had stuffed into it. We offered old wood crates and trunks that had been in the barn for a hundred years or more, many heavy and mysterious chunks of cast iron (all of which sold), and wooden doors, screen doors, French doors galore (which didn’t). It was fun watching people snatch up old sailboat tillers, apparently as unusual decorative items, including one I am certain was put in the barn for safe-keeping by a friend about 40 years ago. (Sorry, Marjorie.) I should have asked some of these buyers to email me photos after the tillers were put in place.
I never thought ancient, rusty bikes would sell, but what did I know? In fact, two young men got into a bit of a tussle arguing about who had dibs on one old, crusted specimen. They eventually settled on one of them taking the coveted bike while the other went home toting two rims that didn’t fit anything anyway. And those half-dozen windsurfers we advertised? Three of the six were sold for a pittance, while the others will stand guard outside the barn for another day.
Two young women were my favorite customers. One arrived with a male companion in a convertible Lexus, and you should have seen the way they cheerily tossed a Singer sewing machine in terrible shape into the car. So long, Singer! She had eclectic tastes, buying clip-on earrings and remnant upholstery fabrics, too, looking everything over carefully.
The other favorite customer was an elegant French artist who bought two cupboards, a turn-of-the-century hutch, and a coarse handmade chair that, in my opinion, had absolutely no style (though my daughter said she would have bought it herself if she’d seen it at a yard sale). Off to the bank and back with the cash she was before we put our heads together and realized we no doubt were giving her too generous a bargain. She even arranged right then and there to have two of the pieces delivered to her New York City kitchen.
What didn’t draw buyers were martini or sherry glasses from the 1930s; various bits of nice antique china; vases and lamps, or an overstuffed sofa in a cabbage-rose print. (In case you are interested, I offloaded quite a few batches of household goods at the Animal Rescue Fund’s thrift shop the day after the sale.) And all Liza Werner of Sage Street Antiques in Sag Harbor bought, I think, were three exceedingly simple, American-made ceramic coffee cups of the five-and-ten variety. I’m sure she knows what she’s doing. What do I know?
One unexpected visitor at the event was a village police officer. We had our permit in place, but didn’t know we were allowed only one sign, even on our own property. The visit from the law went well enough, but there was a bit of an ominous cloud hanging over us as the afternoon drew to a close: As the pace slowed and energy flagged, we started to consider everything that we hadn’t even gotten around to sorting and attempting to sell, including the many, many (many) books we continue to accumulate or anything whatsoever that might be gathering dust up in the attic, which had been too daunting to climb into, and in what we call the “new” part of the barn. My conclusion? We just have to have another sale.