Amy and I drove two vehicles full of basement detritus, redolent with the must of disuse, to a friend's house where a garage sale was coalescing and in which we were welcome to participate. Following the colourful arrows pegged at street corners as we got closer, our arrival was marked by sharply turned heads and narrowed eyes directing calculating glances - not at us - at the contents of our vehicles.
Like scavenging birds on the African Savannah, the garage salers descended upon us en masse. Strings of gristle dangling forgotten from their bloody maws, they espied fresher meat and began to circle. Though only having opened several hours earlier, and intending to run through Saturday, the carcass of the garage had already been picked clean of the most delectable items: entrails, gizzard, liver and the like. The weaker predators could fight over the remnants of sinew and marrow.
With not enough remaining in the garage to satiate the influx of hungry birds, the arrival of a pickup truck and a sedan overflowing with unused miscellany and hoarded sentimentality was akin to the hand of God lobbing two baby gazelle carcasses into a flock of turkey vultures trying to pick the remnants of flesh off the bones of a wildebeest.
The flapping wings and rending talons were replaced with jostling elbows and rooting hands. The wickedly curved beaks with curt requests of, "how much?" accompanied by an unsmiling grin, more a rictus of bared teeth than any pretense of courteous enquiry.
The box of my truck held the larger, big-ticket items. A brief lull in the swarm was surprisingly filled by a young, recently married couple wondering politely if their aid in removing the futon frame and mattress from my truck would entitle them to offer the first price. And oh, by the way, do you mind if I write you a personal cheque for it?
Not having been there for more than ten minutes, and our son barely able to have begun making a mess of some of the smaller toys, I already had 60 bucks in my pocket. A ceramic nightlight in the shape of a hand giving the 'OK' sign, circa Simon in junior high school, emerged from a cardboard box and was affixed with a circular green sticker. 62 bucks in the pocket.
For the paltry fee of ten percent of earnings from our 'stuff', we were more than welcome to add to the garage sale. A ten percent fee for the privilege of abandoning our aggregation of downstairs debris and coming back two days later to receive money for it?
Yes, please! Thank you very much!
Garage salers are their own breed of predatory retail shopper and I'd happily pay more than that to avoid an entire weekend of what we experienced for two hours last night.
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