By Staff
Leada DeVaney, Editor
There's an infamous story of a time when Greg and I went deep-sea fishing. I had planned the trip for weeks, woke up at 2 a.m. to get there by 3 a.m. and paid lots of money for this special occasion.
We arrived at the dock, rode two hours on a choppy sea to get to the perfect fishing site only to have me throw my line in once, catch a single fish and then announce to all those on the boat, "I'm done."
The "I'm done" story came up again last Saturday after I made a similar pronouncement during my first – and possibly only- yard sale.
I'd decided to have the yard sale about two weeks ago after cleaning out a closet and discovering what I thought was a trove of treasurers I simply had no space for. I started looking around the house and found lots of things I didn't need but were too nice to throw away.
I planned the yard sale for a Saturday and enlisted Greg's help to set everything outside.
"Don't you have anything you can sell?" I asked Greg, as I hauled the 10th ceramic pig from my former swine collection to the front of the house.
Greg's contributions were an old remote controlled car and a pair of kids' water skis.
"Those skis will sell," I said, assuring him I was an expert on what would sell at a yard sale. "And these purses, people would be crazy not to buy them. Some of these cost a lot of money."
We took everything outside and like bees to honey, people started coming. They flipped through the books, walked past the ceramics and didn't even look at the skis. My treadmill sat there without attracting so much as a flicker of interest.
"How much for the remote controlled car?" someone asked.
"$5," I said, just as Greg said "$1."
The person bought it, paying the $1.
We watched as people bought blow-up picture frames (still trying to figure that one out); a doll with a broken arm; and a hand-held mixer that came free with a magazine subscription.
They didn't even look twice at the purses or the skis. The treadmill sat there unnoticed.
By 8:30 a.m., it was time to call it a day.
"That's it," I said. "I'm through."
Greg just laughed.
"Not cut out for this, huh?" he said. "Sort of like fishing, huh?"
At the end of the day, my yard sale made only $47. And, since one large item was sold for $25 and the permit to have the yard sale cost me $5, my actual take on real yard-sale items was $17.
We loaded everything up in the back of the car and took it to a local thrift store. Everything, that is, except the treadmill. I put it out in front of the house with a sign bearing the words "Free to a Good Home," on it. Someone picked it up while we were out running errands.
That was the day's biggest success.