Gifted Typist

On Saturday morning I awoke just before six to the sounds of “clink clink” and “chink clunk” coming through my open window. Curious, I looked outside and saw something unusual.

Spread out all over the neighbour’s lawn was stuff, tonnes of stuff, furniture, mirrors, lamps, books, everywhere, at six in the morning. A yard sale.

I dressed, went over and met my neighbour. She introduced me to her brother who was “between lives” and using his sister’s lawn to purge a previous life, 18 years worth of a life lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Everything had to go.

Normally, I would resist the temptation, but I just happened to be starting anew myself. My old family cottage has recently been purged of its stuff to make way for a renovation.

The synchronicity couldn’t have been more perfect.

Digging through the piles of stuff in my neighbour’s yard was like conducting an archaeological dig through someone’s life. Books, trinkets and little household items tell so much about their owner.

This fellow had eclectic interests ranging from planting dwarf fruit orchards to Newt Gingrich, aeronautics, landscape painting, cooking, sailing, golf and God.

Framed pictures showed him with children who were now young adults helping out with the sale.

I picked up a couple of large nautical prints in lovely frames, model yachts with intricate rigging apparatus and little lobster boats with their own tiny buoys and wooden traps. Perfect for a cottage.

I found a fantastic piece of Georgia folk art, a wooden lighthouse, with the artist’s name displayed on the bottom. There were the gorgeous floor-model tiffany lamps - not the real thing, of course - but high in quality. Several other floor-model lamps wore shades that resembled the Sunday hats of Edwardian ladies promenading through the park.

But the piece de resistance was a two-foot tall hanging birdcage made of tiny rattan spokes with a little trap door on the side - an impressive knock-off of a Victorian bird cage. Inside were two fake parrots with real feathers, their talons clutching the spokes of the cage. Except for the eye hanging off one of the bird’s faces, those parrots looked so real.

This stuff would all find a home in my cottage. I was thrilled. My neighbour was thrilled. My neighbour’s brother was thrilled. The other yard sale shoppers were filthy.

They had come before the advertised time (but after me) to pick over the good stuff only to find me there taking away their booty.

But that’s OK. Yard sales are the ultimate free market and like the old saying goes: the early bird gets the Victorian cage and the fake parrots.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 2:35 am and is filed under odd things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.