Rowing Club Garage Sale

How I love the early mornings. Sundays are so quiet here. It has been dry all week; the effects of the last rain have worn off. The poor marigolds were drooped in a pathetic manner in the front. They got a good drink as the sun was emerging in the east this Sunday morning. Stump was trailing me and a noisy Mockingbird was trailing him. Poor Stump, that damn bird was squawking and divebombing him like no tomorrow. A neighbor down the street has roosters, so I’m hearing the crowing as I'm trying to keep my plants from drying up. Those crazy roosters crowing reminded me of an Edison Record in my collection, “Daybreak at Calamity Farm”. When sound recording was in its infancy, the record companies tried to squeeze in as many sound effects as possible. They pulled out all the strings recording this “chestnut” of a vaudeville sketch.

Saturday was the Rowing Clubs garage sale held in Northport under the Hugh Thomas Bridge. What a perfect location. This area is a public parking lot with some 27 parking spaces adjacent to a popular restaurant. I scoped the area out as perhaps a possible location for a future “Brick Swap”. We had a two person Double Scull Boat out for display.

There was such a variety of merchandise offered: We also hosted a bake sale. I whipped up a carrot cake with crème cheese icing. There was a flurry of activity starting at 5:00 a.m. setting everything up. The early birds were there in droves.

I have been purging my life of unwanted stuff for the past few years so I did not have that much to choose from for everyday stuff. However, I still had tons of Christmas trimmings that were dumped on me from the last clean-out of Sherri. She loves to decorate for the holidays, but gets bored with her stuff. She is always replenishing her decorations. She will then dump what she can’t give away on me!

The bulk of these decorations had been packed away in the upper crawl space forever. Sherri’s style of decorating is NOT me. One of the “country look” half baskets that was designed to hang on a door had been festooned in artificial fruits. The mice had gotten into it and ate the foam apples! What a mess! It was cathartic to get that mess all cleaned up.

I priced all those decorations at the one, two and three dollar levels. I’m glad to report pretty much all of it got sold! The danger of these sales is that you will end up buying more than you brought. I only bought one thing. I could not bear to see this treasure relegated to the shrift store where all the unsold stuff was headed. A glow in the dark plastic statue of Saint Clare of Assisi – The patron saint of Television is now holding court in the bathroom atop the cinnamon candle tin. I found this tin when cleaning out the storage shed in back of moms house. My dad stored it there years before his death in 1985. There is still some wax and wick left. I burn it at Christmas. The picture in the background was a Christmas present from Linda 30+ years back. When my nephews were little they were scandalized in that I had a picture of a “bare-naked lady” on my wall! This is just another example how nearly everything I own has a story…..

The sale netted the club over $1,000.!!!:A return like that made all the hard work and planning worth the effort.