The Longest Yard Sale 2012

August was pretty busy, ya'll. I went to the Longest Yard Sale in the World. (You know - the garage sale that takes place on the first weekend in August and stretches from Michigan to Alabama? I've actually been twice before. I'm pretty much an expert at junk.) Spending four days straight looking at treasures is pretty much the stuff that genie lamp wishes are made of, in my opinion.

This year I roamed the outer fields of Ohio and Kentucky with four other ladies with impeccable taste:

There may have been a little worry at first that we'd all be competing for the same treasures, but I think it speaks well for us as civil human beings and for the immensity of the Yard Sale that we managed to come home without any missing limbs or bloody scratch marks from trying to claw finds out of eachother's hands, AND we still ended up with a luggage rack that looked like this:

Maybe you want to know what is inside all of those suitcases? You and the airport security both want to know. I'll tell you as long as you don't unpack my suitcase and hold everything up while laughing and showing it to your buddy who is working the x-ray machine.

There were old forgotten treasures like viewmaster projectors.

Pretty collars and pins and other things I like to wear.

And, maybe I picked up some decorative baby toys that I got a preemptive kick out of as I imagined future children using their iPhone to look up photos of what a telephone switchboard would have ever been used for.

(I posted a few more pics on the AHV blog if you'd like to keep looking at old things.)

One new addition to this year's adventure was a quick stop at Dollywood, aka the most patriotic and tacky of all theme parks, hidden right outside of Knoxville, TN.

There are a lot of all-American bald eagles around. While waiting in line for roller coasters, you felt a little like you were in a motivational calendar.

The sign posts in the park actually didn't give you any direction, but you did feel good about yourself as you wandered aimlessly in search of a bathroom.

There was also plenty of Dolly paraphernalia to peruse. Her hair reached epic proportions in many of the photos, and there was evidence of her being BFF with a lot of other famous people (like Rod Stewart, who incidentally in the 70s was dressed like every blogger in 2012).

Indeed, the whole experience left me motivated (to pursue bigger hair and more sequins in my life).

re: Being Around

It has been brought to my attention recently that I haven't posted on this blog in a few months (which is basically one million years in blog time). I have been tweeting a little, and I post photos on So Verbose, so I haven't disappeared off the internet completely, but this poor blog has been a little neglected. Well. Stuff has been happening that you should know about.

Like, look! I went to the Longest Yard Sale in the World with Tom and Sarah! And scoured thrift stores in Northern Ohio with Amanda and Casey and fam.

Sorting through old junk is one of my favorite pasttimes, and part of it is because you sometimes stumble upon treasures like this:


I hope someone can say the same about me some day.

(thanks for the pics, Alana)

re: Uniforms

A few months ago I bought this white and gray striped shirt from American Apparel without realizing that it was part of an unoffical hipster uniform that I apparently was the last person to purchase. It must be a little like buying a new Honda in Golden Brown and only after driving it off the lot do you realize that everyone has the exact same car, and somehow you never noticed until you owned one. Anyway, as soon as I bought it, I started seeing The Shirt everywhere. At an outdoor concert I saw It at least 15 times in Its many different forms: the v-neck version, the tank top version, the paired-with-neon-80s-sunglasses-and-a-cute-neckercheif version, etc. It is sort of ironic, because everything American Apparel makes is so plain and simple that it shouldn't be such a fashion statement, yet I can pick an AA shirt out of a crowd now, no problem. I have taken to only wearing The Shirt when I go to visit my grandmother in her retirement home because it is the only place I can be 95% sure that someone else won't be wearing the same thing.

On the Longest Yard Sale trip, I packed one of my other favorite AA shirts - my soft gray v-neck - only to find that both Stephen and Kristin had both packed the exact same item.

I guess that is okay, because sometimes when people dress alike, that is how you know that they are good friends. And when paired with some cutoff denim shorts? Official Road Trip Uniform!

I wore the Uniform the first day:

Then on Day 2, Stephen rocked the look (along with hat-with-built-in-radio, not officially part of the Uniform).

And on Day 3, Kristin donned the outfit and made us all proud.

On the fourth day there wasn't much to do other than all put on the uniform together and take photos of ourselves with our cutest pieces of luggage.

We never actually made it out in public all wearing the uniform simultaneously, but maybe we can take a cue from this couple next year as we wander the sale. I think it would do a lot for group morale.

re: World's (and probably the Universe's) Longest Yardsale

What I didn't tell you about being in Ohio is that I planned that little trip so as to coincide with the World's Longest Yardsale. If you aren't an Antiques Roadshow aficionado or addicted to purchasing other people's old things, you might not know that every year for four days in August, Route 127 (stretching all the way from Defiance, Ohio to Gadsen, Alabama- four states long!) fills with Antique dealers and garagesalers set up along the side of the road, and thousands of people come out to root around in the junk. I have a weakness for old stuff and an even bigger one for bargains, and since my tolerance level for dirt and sorting through piles of junk seems to be exceptionally high, this weekend was really a dream come true.

I have shared a few of my favorite garage sale purchasing techniques before, an important rule being to bring small change. I brought all my money in ones, because everyone knows that only douchebags haggle over a dress until they get the seller down to a quarter and then hand them a $20 bill to make change.

Luckily I am not the only one that loves sorting through junk. Stephen and Kristin can stop at yard sales for four days in a row too.

One of the things that I like best about garage sales is that unlike thrift stores, a) you can haggle and b) you know exactly who it is that used to own the thing you are haggling over rather than going home with a faceless object that only has an implied former life. You always know you are buying used stuff, but usually you don't have a clear picture of who exactly used it and where they lived. At a garage sale, you get to actually meet the person that purchased and poured over all of these romance novels, highlighting their favorite parts.

Or that wore this old underwear.

Or that actually needed pants this size.

(You can't be that surprised. I think the midwest is where deep-fried everything came from. We can't really get mad at them for being the geniuses to recognize that everything tastes better with a layer of deep-fry around it.)

I wish I had been able to meet Joey, the receiver of this valentine from his friend Darrell encouraging him to keep it in the closet?

There were some educational portions of the trip as well. Do you know how many different kinds of fun there are? At least 3: Family Fun. Fun of the Party. Clean Fun.

Oh man. There were just so many treasures to look at and buy. My heart starts beating faster even just thinking of them all now.











Needless to say, by the end of the trip our car was a little full of treasures. We would have bought twice that if we didn't have to all fly home.

My favorite find of the trip might be this little red guy. It appears to just be a mostly-normal-extra-cute suitcase ...

But then it gets all Clark Kent on you and turns into a table! Oh, the miracle of it all.

Maybe you are doing the math in your head and are going to want to roast on us, since if you tallied the cost of getting out to the Sale in the first place, gas and car rental, hotels and food along the way, and the $50 the airlines wanted for checking several pieces of overweight luggage...that $.25 we paid for a vase might not have been such a bargain in the long run. But then I would tell you about the icecream we bought from a Mennonite horse that churned the cream without the aid of electricity and you will feel foolish as you realize that the 127 was mostly about the experience.


(lots more photos too)