Garage Sales offer great alternatives to buying “new” stuff…a form of recycling, or community sharing. They are especially helpful to people during tough economic times. And when small efforts are combined into one large one, focused on raising money for community service projects, you end up with a spectacular social event to boot.
This is the case each summer in Coupeville. The Lions Club gathers used goods from hundreds of donors, organizes them into sections at the local elementary school parking lot and gym, sticks fantastic prices on them with masking tape. They hold excited buyers at bay, behind a yellow tape, until precisely 9am on a widely publicized Saturday. Then, with a short countdown and blast of a foghorn, everyone races to find their treasures!
Great fun, great buys, great times. And…
To increase interest in the sale, the Lions open it up for a “preview” the Friday before the sale. At that time, folks are welcomed to explore the amazing variety of stuff to see what they might be interested in. They are not allowed to touch anything (so you can’t move an item to a less visible place ☺) and not allowed to reserve or purchase anything.
What ends up happening is a form of strategic planning. Families come prepared with bits of paper on which they draw maps. Individuals snap photos so they can go home and mull over their priorities before the next morning. Kids find one toy or another that they “just have to have” and newcomers stake their hopes on a house full of “new” furniture.
And what happens next is fascinating. With desire established, anticipation sets in. And sometime before bedtime, anxiety will begin to creep into the psyches of garage sale goers.
In the morning, lining up behind that yellow tape, you’ll hear parents calmly but seriously telling their kids “remember, it’s just an object…if you don’t get it, that’s OK, you’ll find something else,” or couples talking themselves down a bit with “we already have plenty of stuff, so if we don’t get that chest of drawers, we’ll be OK.”
You’ll also hear families going over their plan of acquisition. “OK, honey, you run back to the BBQ’s and I’ll dash over to the china and flatware…kids, you run and jump on that green couch and give this $20 to one of the Lions so we can use it as a place to drop off all our stuff while we shop for the rest.”
The foghorn goes off, and people literally run! It’s not unusual to see little kids or fragile elders fall or get pushed off paths – fortunately in most cases, those nearby stop to get them out of harms way.
It’s intense. It’s an event that brings out both the most generous and the most greedy sides of our community. Luckily, I believe that the strength of our community allows us to experience this paradox with good humor and compassion. We can congratulate the person who snatched up the table saw right as our hand reached out for it, and offer to trade the remote controlled helicopter for the remote controlled corvette. We can say “I didn’t really need another sewing machine” and mean it, and can recognize the joy of finding something we hadn’t noticed the day before.
Humanity meets community. Definitely a glorious work in progress. And as evidenced by the Lions Garage Sale, one worth engaging in, for all it teaches us about ourselves.