Somehow, I have made it to the advanced age of 50 years without ever having held a garage sale.
This makes me, I guess, the Britney Spears of consumerism, as the bespangled pop singer and I are still waiting for our first time.
The fact that I’ve been saving myself all these years for just the right garage-sale moment has not come about because I have never owned a garage. I’ve been proud owner of one for years now. And it isn’t because I have not had much of anything to sell. The rafters in the attic above that garage, as I write, are groaning from the weight of the dozens of dusty artifacts of a life spent in what is popularly known as conspicuous consumption. Sharing space with the cobwebs up there are books, typewriters, hockey shin pads, stereo speaker stands, old record turntables, etc. The kind of stuff I imagine garage-sale junkies lie awake dreaming about on Friday night before Saturday morning’s sales.
I have no philosophical differences with those involved in the garage-sale subculture. In fact, I have been known to take in one now and then and some of the very items which at this moment are being crawled on by spiders in the upper regions of my home were picked up at such events. Above my desk at work is a painting I scored for $5 in somebody’s driveway one morning of a blacksmith shoeing a horse while a little boy and two old farmers look on. I treasure it.
As far as I can tell, my aversion to becoming a sidewalk salesman to rid myself of my clutter has a very simple explanation. I’ve just been too darned scared to invite the world to rummage through my stuff and carry it all off in their trunks, trailers and hatchbacks. What if I didn’t ask enough for it? What if I suddenly missed it all as I watched it being carted off down the street? What if nobody bought any of it? Or tried to haggle with me over the price?
But, as Britney has confessed to a bit of heavy petting, I now have my own dark secret to tell. And if fooling around leads to sex, then the cheap thrill I derived from the following encounter can only mean one thing: some Saturday morning soon, I’m going to go for it.
For months, in a back room off the tiny office I rent, an old black leather armchair sat mocking me with its uselessness and reminding daily of my inability to send it packing. Its wide, square seat, at some point re-covered amateurishly with black cloth in the basement of its then-owner’s home, sagged from the weight of the many boxes, bags and papers I’d tossed onto it, no doubt in some subconscious effort to hide it from my sight. But no matter how I camouflaged it, I always knew it was there, taking up space in my cramped workplace and my life.
I had inherited this albatross when I took over the office. The previous occupant of the small quarters, though he cleaned out everything else he owned, refused to have anything more to do with his chair and his face looked pained every time the subject was raised.
“I don’t care what you do with it,” he said, like a father disowning an errant child. “I just do not want it back again.”
A rather harsh judgment, I thought at first, and so I pulled the chair out from time to time, to see if I could make any use of it. Each time I did, it didn’t take me long to realize why it had become so unwanted. The ample seat of the high-backed affair was attached to the standard chrome swivel apparatus designed to make it super-functional. But too many years of overuse had made it hazardous instead. Sitting in it was not unlike trying to stay on one of those freaky bucking machines so popular in country music bars in the ’70s.
So, it had to go, or I risked whiplash. But how? It wasn’t worth an ad in the paper. No one I knew had any interest in it. Even the local dump didn’t want it and to prove it, they proposed to charge me $10 to leave it there.
“Aw, just put a sign on it and leave it at the road in front of the office,” said the former chair owner, contacted again for his reluctant advice.
So, pulling out a large piece of paper and heavy black marker, I printed “Take Me!” on the sheet and taped it to the chair, hoping the exclamation mark I added as an afterthought would seal the deal. I asked my landlord if I could park it at the street every day for a week, after which time I promised to junk it. He agreed.
So, I wheeled the chair to the road and scampered back to my desk to begin a furtive vigil through the mini-blinds in the window. An hour passed, with no activity, and I expected many more to do the same. And then, while I was describing my daring move to a friend on the phone, I suddenly became excited.
“Omigosh!” I screamed. “Some guy’s stopped at the chair.” I gave a running commentary as the shopper carefully checked out the prize with all the deliberation of a modern consumer trying to decide on a major acquisition.
“Don’t sit in it! Don’t sit in it!” I called out from the safety of my office.
And thankfully, he didn’t. Opening his trunk, he tossed the black beauty in and drove away with a smile on his face that showed him to be the happiest man in Canada.
But he wasn’t.
The happiest man in Canada was already sweeping up the spot once occupied by the treasure which at that moment was weighing down the other man’s car. And his mind was awhir with wondering, if that small victory felt that good, what it might be like to go all the way.
The same sort of thoughts, I imagine, that must occupy Britney’s mind from time to time.
©2001 Jim Hagarty
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