Garage sale joyride

The most personal of deals, each house its own story

Find this week’s Analog Mix Tape at the end, where I interview my Drake university co-worker Ray Fredregill, whose wife Suzie owns Funky Finds in Des Moines, best vintage shop ever. Ray shares his tips for finding—and planning—the best garage sales.

I’m third-generation garage sale stock. My people would pack up the car and head out as early as we could manage, which sometimes wasn’t early enough for Grandma Kate, Aunt Terri, and grandma’s sister, who we only ever called Auntie. My mom and I would meet them mid-stream, parking the car at the far end of the block sale, working our way toward them, where they’d be lugging lamps and armfuls of still-decent bath towels, Mary Kay moisturizers and Avon perfume solids set into cameo jewelry, the occasional lawnmower or trampoline. I remember my mom, happy and hunting, joyful to be finally out of the house.

Aunt Terri, praised for her ability to navigate to sales with the best stuff, usually helmed a single vehicle and we all stuffed in. Sandwiches were passed and Thermoses of coffee emptied. When the cake donuts were eaten, Grandma lit up a Virginia Slim, never cracking a window. I white-knuckled it without complaint because I feared being uninvited from the rummages.

From that car, four women built wardrobes for entire families from secondhand clothing that you’d never guess wasn’t brand new, and for which they paid in coins. I read anything I could get my hands on then, and the women bought me books, which generally ran about a nickel apiece. I discovered EC horror comics at one epic sale where I cleaned the place out and spent the rest of the year having nightmares about carnivorous butterflies and secrets so horrific they could melt your face.

Image: Stuart Ng Books. That’s me at left, in the middle.

Oh, and since the writing of this post, I’ve read that EC Comics are back, after causing a moral panic in the 1950s, with their grisly tales of just deserts. Ray and I talk about it in the podcast. I would give a lot of money to find that issue about the murdering butterfly. I think there were also Nazis.

I couldn’t find the murder butterfly comic book, so I settled for a common theme of 70s television: death by quicksand. Art: Al Feldstein

These were formative years for me, with existential moments. Once Grandma and Auntie were haggling with a suburban lady, I think over the price of a girdle, and as I waited in the driveway, a boy walked out of the house to ask, “Do you believe in God?” I told him probably. “Well, I don’t. I’m an atheist.” This blew my mind. I’d never met someone who didn’t. I asked him if he was inclined to murder, or to steal, since he didn’t have any rules in place. “No, that’s anarchy,” he told me. “I don’t believe in that.”

We’re at a moment of transition here at home, the kids are slowly moving into their own lives, and we cleaned out the basement and held our own sale last weekend. I got to watch pieces I once haggled over pass into the hands of others who will hopefully like them just as well. There’s something about that exchange that makes me feel really good, as opposed to the Goodwill drop-off. It’s not so much because of the negative press of the thrifting underworld (no link; there are hundreds of stories down all sorts of wormholes), but that the passing of goods from hand to hand just feels more intentional to me. I even use a muffin tin for change.

When I see a garage-sale sign my heart still jumps, though I’m not looking for necessities anymore. I’ll use tole trays for just about anything. Odd little glass vases for plant starts. Big fan of vinyl ottomans, which cost $50-$100 online, but I’ve snagged them for $5. I gravitate to parts of town that will likely have good stuff but avoid the extremely affluent areas because the prices aren’t great and you’d be surprised at the quality. I prefer a dense mid-list suburb. I’ll get there early. I like the buzz of getting to something really good before the resellers. I’ll haggle if the owners seem up for it, but only for the cheap stuff, so it’s mostly just fun. Low stakes for everyone.

I keep a running list of finds I’d like to … find … but about which I’m in no hurry. And it’s not so much the acquiring for me anymore. It’s seeing someone’s wares set out for sale, and their desire to chat with you as you look them over, touching things they lived with, learning what they care about. It’s the stack of vintage handkerchiefs, hand-embroidered, that you will wrap around your wrist in memory of a carful of women with a map, bettering their fortunes, sipping from a secondhand Thermos, for a handful of coins.

Press play on this week’s Analog Mix Tape!