Thrifty extravagance
Garage sales — do they happen elsewhere in the world? I never hear of Japanese or French families hawking old shirts from card tables set up in the driveway.
It's community-wide garage sale season in Marion County. Like many features of our nation, garage sales are based on two opposite factors working together: our desire to make a thrifty purchase and our quick-consumption lifestyle. If we weren't buying new stuff, how could we get rid of our old stuff?
Some people turn garage sales into mini-businesses. They collect items from neighbors to sell on consignment, or hit garage sales themselves, buying used items they figure they can sell at a higher price. And if they guess wrong, what are they out — maybe $20?
Of course, professional garage sellers have their opponents. Mostly it's the neighbors who don't want their quiet residential street turned into a shopping center at 6 a.m. every Saturday in the summer.
My family wasn't one for garage sales. This was due to shyness (why do we want somebody sifting through our stuff, and worse yet, rejecting it?) and pack-rat genetics. It's tough to have a garage sale when no one in the family is willing to give anything up.
The big sale was the church rummage sale. The parish hall would be filled with tables of cookware, tools, books, and clothing. Mom always volunteered, which meant I spent a week each summer hanging out at the parish hall, sifting through items.
Mostly I was interested in the books. A parish priest used to pick through them, too, taking all the Ian Fleming novels. Most had racy covers, so it created quite a tittering among the volunteers (if only they knew what the church was going through now).
When I was a Boy Scout, we would go collect items from parishoners who couldn't bring it themselves. I remember an elderly woman, whose grown, but mentally-disabled son, lived with her. Most of us knew him by sight because if there was only one altar boy at Mass, he would come help with Communion. They were so grateful as we loaded a pickup with their contributions.
"This would have taken us 10 or 15 trips!" I remember him saying. We felt good, lending a little muscle and time to help out people who were less fortunate.
The Japanese and French don't know what fun they're missing.
— MATT NEWHOUSE
