Sluggo Needs a Nap

The "Worlds Largest Garage Sale" is great, but it takes a lot more stamina and determination than I could muster. The last few years we've tended to take the path of least resistance and pretty much stick to the standard vendors along the main street. T-shirts, Peruvian sweaters, postcards, baseball cards, antique tools, Korean massages, raffles, wacky old salt and pepper shakers and the Life magazine from the year you were born. And some antiques I can't afford. One guy was selling a Stetson bowler for $300. In between each one put a faux-sausage sandwich stand, on overpriced barbeque or, of course, a blooming onion.

If you really want to get it done at one of these things you've got to get in your car and cruise the outlying streets where folks set out the detritus from their basement and attic hoping to make $100 or so on a nice fall afternoon sitting in a lawn chair. And they do; they make a lot more than that sometimes, if they're smart. You got to figure, though, usually its a guy who probably bought most of the stuff on his table last year at the yard sale. A guy whose taste does not precisely align with yours and, in fact, you wouldn't take anything he's still got in the house for free.

That's where the stamina comes in. You drive around, park on somebody's lawn, take a quick look at his eight-track collection and busted lazy-suzans, get back in your car and drive fifty yards to another house where the guy's got a nice compressor and band saw combo, but how would you get it back and where would you put it? Across the street she's got Hummels and antique Valentines. The next block somebody has collected Popcycle wrappers and sticks since the late '40s. Somebody else has exercise equipment from the '70s. And on and on.

At your 33rd stop you see a dream formica kitchen table set in perfect condition for $75. Or an Adirondack craft mirror for $10. Or a baseball signed by Roberto Clemente for two bits.

Unfortunately, I bailed two hours ago. I'm back at the house taking pictures of the sunset.

Our friends Steve and Sandi Parisi, who run the best bed and breakfast in the Adirondacks, close the place for the weekend and invite a select group of their friends up. We've been fortunate to be on the list for awhile and it's hard to imagine facing the winter without this ritual. I thank them.

I did get three more antique felt pennants. I got three of them a couple of years ago just because they were Jersey-centric. These have nothing to do with Jersey, but I got them anyway. I guess that's how you become a collector. A buck apiece.