Excitement is running high here at StraubCorp (a proud subsidiary of controversial parent company Strauby Lobby), because this yard sale has been imagined, mooted, and hashed out over many months. (At one point, there was even a Netflix “re-imagining” of it, starring Hugh Jackman.) I’m not sure what the exact gestation period was for this momentous event, which in my official capacity as Head Officer-In-Charge, I fought with every ounce of my remaining strength. It quickly joined the long list of family decisions where my veto was overridden by a 2/3 majority, as required by our Constitution. (As an aside, if you have a kid who spends all his time sitting on the couch, the most effective remedy for this time-honored American tradition is another time-honored American tradition- buy him a pet. The purchase of a goldfish, for example, with its damnably specific daily requirements for feeding, cleaning, and burying, will magically change your child from Inert Holy Man Who’s Made a Vow of Silence to a footloose boulevardier who spends more time out of doors than most surveyors. You won’t see him again, except at mealtimes, and even then, you might miss him if you turn your back just long enough to take care of some quick chore like tying your shoes, or scooping a dead fish out of a bowl.) Following a sequence of events too labyrinthine and numinous to detail here (if you’ve ever seen a Nicolas Cage film, you don’t need it spelled out for you), it was determined that I was the only person in the administration who would be available on the appointed day to actually sit outside with the junk and deal with the public.
No problem! As a guy who’s been writing and performing original music for decades, I’m an old hand at weathering sales resistance. I recall fondly the grousing of a besandled youth who felt my band’s cover charge was an affront to his generation. (Two dollars? Skip that!) And my exchange with a trust-fund hippie at legendary venue dc space is itself the stuff of legend. This man with blackened, or “Cajun,” feet tried to bamboozle me with two ample-bosomed young ladies doing an estimably hypnotic shimmy before my very eyes, but our five dollar cover was firm. (Firmer, by far, than the bosoms.) “Sorry, Charlie Manson Junior, but I can’t pay my rent with the memory of your toe-ringed retinue and their loose-fitting raiments,” I told him. Or would have, if I’d been as clever back then as I appear to be today.
Of course, as any economist can tell you (if you can still find one who’s not already busy getting paid to lie to our democratically elected representatives), there’s a giant chasm between a band gig, where you’re trying to sell just one thing that only a few people want, and a yard sale, where you’re trying to sell a whole bunch of things that no people want. The psychology of the customer is entirely different. People paying a cover charge at a club don’t mention the weather. They don’t tell you that they’d gladly pay the cover, but they already have a band just like it at home. They don’t ask unnecessary questions. (Does your band play— music?) One fellow this morning looked at a box that had “Mr. Coffee” printed on all six sides and even two of the flaps, and asked if it was a coffee maker. I told him no, it was not a coffee maker, but rather, a rare and highly collectible item, a souvenir of the historic moment when Mr. Coffee branched out bravely into a non-coffee area, to the indifference of his narrow-minded public, and the audible consternation of his stockholders.
Another Mensa member slowed his car down to ask, “Hey, is that Jablomi (from Parker Brothers)? I heard on NPR that it’s based on a game that they’ve played for centuries in the foothills of New Guinea. I think it was New Guinea. I know it was the foothills of New Something.” I tried to tell him what he could do with his damn foothills, but his Prius was already tooling down the road, in search of other people who looked like they could use some half-remembered information.
You can learn a lot about Americans on the internet. But I say, keep your social media, Marc Gatlinburg! I just whiled away a pleasant morning chatting face to face with a cross section of our melting pot, and let me tell you, it was a peck of fun. As with our president’s Cabinet, or the NRA (to name two unrelated groups), African-Americans were underrepresented at approximately 0%, but I’m not really qualified to draw conclusions from this. (It could be that African-Americans prefer to arrive “fashionably late,” and since we packed up all the junk an hour before the cutoff, the stats aren’t really reliable.) But just about every other sort of American turned up to demonstrate how devilishly easy it is to keep your wallet in your pants, even when the merchandise on display includes used sneakers, backpacks so physics-defyingly filthy that a newspaper humor columnist would probably say they were “more dirt than backpack,” and our marquee item, a wine fridge. This is an item sold to people whose standard fridges don’t have any way of keeping wine bottles cold. My son, returning from whatever appointment had detained him, asked me indignantly why I’d marked it down in his (lengthy) absence, and I explained that the one person who’d inquired about the price heard me say the words “fifty dollars” and sped away so fast that she actually left a lady-shaped cloud of smoke lingering in the air. I’d been afraid that this smoke cloud would hang around all day and further discourage trade, but fortunately a conveniently timed thunderstorm took care of that.
Another way the yard sale was like an analogue version of Facebook (or, as my mom used to refer to it, “SpacePage”) was the constant revelation of clues about the secret lives of my fellow Americans. “Do you have any old bottles?”, I was asked, by a grizzled old prospector. Ashamed to admit that if I had, I wouldn’t have thought to try selling them, I asked him if he collected old bottles. “Yes, I do,” he said, with the level of pride our countrymen generally reserve for discussions about the out-of-towners who have relocated to their region in order to play football. He then volunteered the intel that he had recently sold one of these bottles for $7300.00. I suppose this was the moment where I was expected to slap my chaps and let out a respectful whistle, as if we were in a general store on one of the 716 episodes of Gunsmoke, tradin’ yarns about fish we’d caught, or bears, or something.
My mom used to say, by way of indicating the trivial optics of a paint smudge on a wall, or a tiny rip on a piece of clothing, that it wouldn’t be noticed by “a man on a galloping horse.” I was reminded of this by the large number of people who slowed their cars down to survey our wares, only to then accelerate and drive on. Using the sort of observation and deduction technique Sherlock Holmes might have indulged in if he were having a yard sale, I guessed that it was less about them seeing what we had, and more about seeing what we didn’t have, and judging from how rapidly they pulled this off I figured they must be looking for large items that one could identify from the street. Regular size fridges instead of wine fridges, perhaps, or giant inflatable licensed characters. We didn’t have anything in that vein. Specialists seeking handheld items were forced to get out of their vehicles and make eye contact with me. When potential customers weren’t explaining why they were not going to buy something (another eerie echo of Facebook, where musicians promoting their shows can use a free feature that gives their friends an opportunity to lay out in detail where they will be when they are not at the show), they were quizzing me about various things we didn’t have on display. “Are you selling any cufflinks? I’m looking for cufflinks.” “No.” “How about stuff for women?” “No. Wait— do you mean stuff along the lines of cufflinks?” “That’s right.” “No.” “Any old video games?” “No.” “New video games?” “No.” “Junk jewelry?” “No.” “What’s this, a flagpole?” “Yes.” Do you have the eagle that goes with it?” “No:”
The majority of my interactions over three hours fell into one of the categories mentioned above, and I’d say it ran about 50/50, roughly half undesired information about why they couldn’t buy anything, and half unrequited requests for things we didn’t have. Eventually a guy came along who addressed me in a baby voice, by which I mean the manner of speaking even the grouchiest and most unpleasant Americans adopt when they talk to a baby. I’ve always found this practice to be singularly nauseating, and accordingly I’ve always spoken to babies as if they are my colleagues. I’ve never once found a baby who didn’t appreciate the gesture. At any rate, he looked at a framed print we’d brought outside so it could get some sun, and he said something along the lines of, “That’s a very pretty picture, isn’t it, Waggy? What do you think of the nice flowers, Waggy?” I could make nothing of this, but presently he took a few steps to his right, and I realized that my sneaker display table had been blocking my view of what was, basically, a dog. Drawing on my Sherlock skills again, I deduced that the dog’s name must be Waggy. “Waggy doesn’t appreciate art,” he said in a sad voice. It’s always tough to know what to say to a maniac, so I told him I’d found this to be pretty typical of dogs, and he shouldn’t feel that this represented any kind of shortcoming on Waggy’s part. I speculated that Waggy very well may have had other, more significant failings, but this last bit I kept to myself, and the madman seemed satisfied. He then said, with an apologetic tone, that he and Waggy had to be going, because they were, after all, out for a walk. It was only later that I realized it was another milestone, like so many I’d reached in my long life. It had finally come to this. I’d inspired pity, and condescension, from a grown man who talks to a dog named Waggy.
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