My nemesis always was one step ahead of me, it seemed — each time I arrived, he was nearly out the door, leaving with the prime stuff, leaving me to sift through the dregs.
Both of us were engaged in an Indiana Jones-esque pursuit of artifacts from bygone times, and the man with the gray curly hair and a scowl had the advantage of rising earlier than me on Saturday mornings. So he usually got first shot at the vinyl records occasionally sold at area garage sales.
I’d seen him leaving with stacks of albums, giving me the side eye as I looked despairingly at the remaining assortment of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Perry Como collections, musty Christmas compilations and sometimes Perry Como Christmas collections.
I’d pick through and sometimes hit a minor score, nabbing a scratchy copy of Paul McCartney’s “RAM” or an unloved Allman Brothers platter. But most of the time, garage sale records are the unwanted discards, uncool selections cleared out from beneath the parents’ console stereo.
Consolation came in the enjoyment of the hunt. Those Saturday morning forays into the detritus of other peoples’ lives were somewhat doomed from the start, as the serious garage shoppers are up and at ’em first thing Friday mornings, and sometimes even on Thursdays. My wife, Tonya, and I, both weekday workers, take a more leisurely stance, heading out midmorning Saturdays, and still we’ve had luck acquiring the junk of others.
For me it’s the esoteric — items that are strange and tell a story, such as a plastic anchor outfitted with a tiny thermometer and compass with a yellowed image of the “Floating Bridge” in Seattle, Washington, which sank in 1990. Someone thought that bridge was cool enough to commemorate their visit with the purchase of a plastic anchor, and now that bridge is gone. While I’ll never see the original floating bridge in Seattle, at least I now have someone else’s memory of it. It’s hanging on the wall near my desk.
Dust collectors on my knickknack shelf include a small decorative dish made from Iceland lava and a model of the Unisphere, the United States Steel exhibit at the 1961 World’s Fair in New York City.
Tonya’s garage sale joys are more practical, such as a big Yeti tumbler she acquired for $1.
“These things cost $30 brand new,” she said. “It’s got some advertising on it, but I don’t care.”
There’s a tile mosaic sculpture of a cat she also got for $1 that she loves, and anytime she finds outdoor statuary that’s in good shape, she jumps on it.
My luckiest find was a $5 tuba that had fake flowers wired to it and had been turned into a wall decoration. I had it refurbished and began to play again 25 years after last picking up a tuba.
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Sometimes our Saturday morning outings can lead to strife, such as when I find another flower pot I like but have long ago run out of practical places to situate another indoor plant. Those situations are infrequent.
We began garage sale shopping in earnest last summer amid the pandemic. It was a fun release that got us out of the house while at the same time enabling us to enhance our living area, or at least make it look different.
It also was a chance to get a glimpse of how other people live through the stuff they no longer wanted. Estate sales are especially apt at that. At one last year in Olympia Fields, the garage was full of boxes of record albums, mostly by soul, dance and funk bands and artists. There were some good ones, but all had been heavily used, and a closer look showed many were stamped “Property of The Rink,” with the address of a venerable skating venue in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood. This was the music that accompanied fun nights for thousands, songs couples fell in love to and broke up to. The albums may have been scratchy, but they were records that had stories well beyond the music engraved in their grooves. I bought several.
At another estate sale in Flossmoor last year, a line had formed outside the door, not an uncommon advent as organizers tried to maintain social distancing. But this line was large, and kept getting larger. Chatting with others outside, it turned out we were at the home of legendary radio personality Herb Kent, “The Cool Gent,” who had died a few years earlier after more than 7 decades as a DJ.
If I think about it, it’s weird and a bit ghoulish to rifle through the possessions of the dearly departed. But, as they say, you can’t take it with you, and these things are better off on my shelf than in a landfill. Sometime hopefully far down the road, someone may be going through my record albums and souvenirs from trips I never took, trying to guess who I was by the stuff I collected. I won’t mind.
Toward the end of last summer, someone in the next neighborhood over posted photos on social media of a sale they’d be kicking off the following morning, a Saturday. There were plenty of record albums. This time I set my alarm, got there as the sale opened and basked in the bounty of plenty of pristine vinyl by artists I enjoy. I amassed a huge pile and was lugging it to my vehicle when my record-buying nemesis pulled up, glaring at me and knowing, for the first time, defeat. It was glorious.
Not long after, local garage sales were essentially shut down by the worsening pandemic.
Word just arrived that my town will start allowing garage sales once again starting next week. We’ve been to a few in other towns — at one, an organizer said people were lined up first thing in the morning. “People must be looking for stuff to do,” he said.
He’s right. More than just buying stuff, garage sales offer an opportunity to collect stories and experiences, and sometimes, engage in a competitive quest. I’m looking forward to getting back to it.
Landmarks is a weekly column by Paul Eisenberg exploring the people, places and things that have left an indelible mark on the Southland. He can be reached at [email protected].