Beware Of The Yard Sale Creeps! Part One

 I know, I know. You see "part one" as part of a blog title and get scared. It's such a commitment, and we hardly know each other. But don't worry it will either be a fun trip or a quick divorce. 

Yard sale season in Maine. This year it started in May and ended around the second week of November. The start was delayed until we got to a certain level of reopening  due to the virus. The actual opening, as well as the ending, is unofficial and is dependent on the weather.

At the start of the season there would always be a sale or two each Thursday, with still more on Fridays and Saturdays. Seldom would there be any on a Sunday. What do you do in Maine on a Sunday? Basically breath. Most things are closed, except for corporate run businesses, but the people working there are generally not happy about being there and being forced to provide a higher level of customer service than they themselves are used to.

Having been stuck in our home for an extended period going to yard sales was a pleasant diversion. Apparently a lot of people also felt the same way as each sale we attended that day was swarmed with buyers, who after looking around would get in their cars and trucks and go to the next one looking for their "treasure."

Why do people go to yard sales? Some for the fun of the hunt. Some for saving money or being cheap. Others are looking for something they can buy and resell. For me it's a bit of the first two, coupled with a fourth as buying used goods is better for the economy and the environment. Why buy something new when something used is waiting for a new home?

People from Maine, for the most part, are very polite, even to those of us from "away." However, along the way you will meet some people who for lack of a better word are "creeps." Not the proud sort of creeps that it would be great to know around Halloween, but rather the impolite ones that give a bad name to creeps everywhere.

There are two guys who comb the countryside looking for items to sell or flip. At one sale I attended there was an area that was set up for people to pull up in their cars and walk over to the garage. They drove past it and parked right in front of the garage blocking everyone else and then had the nerve to ask the guy holding the sale if they had done something wrong. 

At one sale we attended on the grounds of a storage facility, the lady running the sale was taking things out of a storage bin and one of the guys saw a weather vane. The woman said that the vane was two hundred dollars. The guy said that he could get one at a thrift store for $60.00. Well if that is case why did he not go back there and buy it? I stood in awe of the stupidity of his statement, if it was being used as a bargaining tactic it was not a very good one.  

After he left Lisa and I shopped some more at the sale talking to the lady in charge. She was short and had trouble opening one of the bins that had a sticking roll up gate. Maine is a big state with a small town feel so getting inside information is always valuable. She cleared up the mystery of why the Bangor Bazzar Market was closed (fear by the owners of being sued it some caught covid); and that the local department store that had an area for local made crafts took a 30% bite out of each item sold.

Lisa and  I found some interesting items. An old wood homemade cabinet that was cleaned, repainted and turned into a CD holder, a whicker dress form that Lisa is going to use as a decoration, a book on the Blues, and a very sturdy yard stick with levels built in. The woman told me she knew the guy (his partner was missing that day); and said they were always trying to "Jew" her down on the prices. Of course she was using the word "Jew" as a verb meaning someone who wants to bargain in a negative way, but I got her point.

The guy's partner looks for certain items and will run through his list in a soft mumbling voice. These include: jewelry, old comics, watches,  antiques, etc. First when having a yard sale what is out there is what is being sold. Secondly I am not telling strangers that I have such items in my home for obvious reasons.

This guy has a passive-aggressive manner about him. He will stand in front of an area of a sale and deliberately go through everything as slow as he can, especially when he knows there are others nearby waiting. At one sale his partner saw that  the other attendees were getting pissed off and asked him several times if he was ready to go.

One thing I will say about them, other than their total lack of empathy and manners, is that they do put a lot of effort into what they do. They scout areas the day before a sale and actually enter people's property to look at  the goods and question them on what's available. They also "early-bird sales" (entering before the posted opening time). I do that myself for often if you come to a sale at the time  posted you will be late and miss the best stuff; but I always do so with the owner's consent, and if I sense they are too busy I  will come back later. It can be so bad that one man put in the ad for his sale: "Early-birds will be charged double." I love him

There is "open-door-Harry." At one sale he was so anxious to get at the goods he left his driver's side door open and engine running. "Pile woman," goes to sales and starts grabbing everything while telling everyone that the stuff over there is her "pile." I have struggled to keep my kicking foot in check whenever I see her pile. 

The "desperate couple" will pull up in their truck, and while it is polite and customary  and human to say "good-morning," to the person running the sale, she, like the other creeps does not. She dashes out of the truck like a water retriever and looks under furniture for the maker's mark.  I joke that her and her husband act like they won't have any money for grain to eat unless they find something. If they don't see anything worthy of their "attention," they wordlessly dash back to their truck and floor it as if they are fleeing from something disgusting.

Of special note is a woman who I met at one sale. It was at a rare Sunday, one-day only sale, and it was one of the best of the season. This couple  had bought a house that had not been emptied of the belongings of the prior owner. I found a lot of good stuff we could use. There was an older, but not ancient projector you could use to project movies from your phone or DVD player. I checked Amazon and eBay and it looked like a bargain. I said I would take it if I could plug it in to make sure it worked.

As I waited for the husband to find the power cord an older grandmother-like woman, came over to me. She asked  in an innocent voice if the projector  was a slide projector, all the time she tried to put her hands on it. I told her in the voice of a scientist from the future, that the device was used to project movies and I was interested in buying it. 

At that point she got all insulted and stormed off. So  at this point you must think I am the villain? You want to "boo!" me. Okay hold on for the Twilight Zone twist. Her license plate was something like, "VIDEO1," (not her real plate mind you, just something like it) meaning she most likely owned an electronics store, sold on eBay, or was a collector. So fuck you lady and your innocent grandmother  act!

This is not to say that all the people I met at these sales were creeps. Some were fun to talk to. At several sales I went to there was this older man, who I dubbed, "Grandpa." He was sweet and wore his pants way too high with his belt far too long. He drove a Cube, and I pictured that his wife had  recently died and that maybe her body was in a freezer in his basement packed in with last season's deer meat, but I still was fond of him anyway. Going to sales for him was a pastime, a chance to get out and meet people. To occupy time before he would die or meet a rich widow. 

As the season got later there would be less and less sales. First there were no sales on Thursdays, then Fridays blinked out, Saturdays stood for a while until they too vanished. Now is the long season where we will enjoy what we bought and mull over what we learned. More of that later though...