Went to a garage sale last weekend. Not just any garage sale — Oak Bay’s Garagellennium XIV, first organized by then-councillor and now-Mayor Nils Jensen to celebrate the millennial year 2000.
The town was alive with garage sales. It was a buffet of garage sales. It was the Halloween of garage sales — you could go door to door filling your treat bag with bargains.
I didn’t collect a bag full of bargains, though — I was allowed out of the house with $10 and a warning: “Remember, whatever you bring home, you will eventually have to get rid of.”
There’s a great ebb and flow to garage sales. We acquire things, we get rid of things, then we acquire more things. It’s an eternal cycle aided and abetted by garage sales.
I know people who are garage-sale experts. They can drive past a sale and, with a glance, determine if it’s worth stopping. They can quickly tell the difference between trash and treasure. They come home with incredible bargains, once-in-a-lifetime deals, rare finds, works of art, things that actually work.
I am not one of those. The treasure-hunter in me is tempted by garage-sale signs, but I have learned my limitations, so I usually keep driving.
Although there was the time when my son and I were on a road trip through Oregon and drove past the recently decommissioned Trojan nuclear-power plant along the Columbia River. The sign at the entrance said: “Garage sale.” I think our skid marks are still on the pavement — we weren’t about to pass up that sort of an opportunity. Visions of surplus plutonium and enriched uranium danced in our heads.
We had no use for such items, but when did that ever stop anyone at a garage sale?
Alas, all the interesting stuff — if there ever had been any — was gone, and we were left with a dismal assortment of freight palettes and nondescript landscaping tools, none of which had any sort of radioactive glow about them.
Oak Bay’s garage sale, though, had a definite glow about it, an irresistible festive spirit. Whatever bargains were to be had — and there were plenty — were eclipsed by the plain fun of human interaction and friendliness.
Streets were crowded and parking places were at a premium, but no one seemed to mind. Some people were on foot; others came on bikes equipped with saddlebags and panniers — not too many of those bought sofas or pianos.
Speaking of pianos, I nearly bought one. It was a Roland digital piano in apparently good condition, and its $50 price tag brought me to sudden stop. It wasn’t plugged in so I couldn’t hear how it sounded, but the keys felt right.
“Are you sure this price is right?” I asked the seller. “It seems way too low for a Roland.” I sure know how to drive a hard bargain.
“Two keys are broken,” she said.
Still, if those were fixed …
The same thought occurred to her. “I think I’ve changed my mind,” she said, and went inside to phone someone about getting it repaired.
I followed one man from place to place, and each time he stopped, he had to explain how excited he was to find a stack of recordings by beat poets “and they were practically giving them away.”
A huge amount of goods changed hands, recycled from one home to another. Some homes got decluttered; some people made a few bucks; everyone had fun. It was a good day.
There were no hitherto-unknown Vermeer paintings or Louis XIV chairs, no $5 items likely to show up later on Antiques Road Show with an estimated auction value of $50,000, but the $10 allowance was well spent. Three dollars bought a thick biography of Winston Churchill and a stack of excellent children’s books for the grandchildren. Another two dollars bought the works for a music box, still in its package. My grandkids got my money’s worth out of that item before the day was out.
The most expensive purchase was a glass figurine of a deer for $5. “Genuine Murano glass,” vowed the seller. Perhaps, but does it matter? I liked it and it will look good on my mantelpiece.
If I only had a mantelpiece. Maybe at the next garage sale … .
