We have had a few garage sales over the years. I remember once selling some of my albums and somehow my copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (picture disc nonetheless) got in the mix and was gone before I knew it.
When we were preparing to sell our house in Crystal Lake, we hosted a two-day garage sale. We were planning to move to the Fox River and wanted to downsize some of our clutter that had been accumulating. We had racks of clothes, tables of tools, games, gadgets, and more. When preparing for the sale I was in the basement going through boxes of junk when I stumbled upon a box of music from my grandmother. I would have kept them but they were in the old 8-track format. I had no player so into the garage sale pile they went. They found a spot on one of the tables we put up in our garage. Some of the titles included Liberace, Cole Porter, a film track from Kiss Me Kate, and more.
On day one, we did good business. The street was filled with cars and the garage with people. By end of day, we had unloaded more than half of our merchandise and made a decent buck on the sales. Day two was different. There was very little customer traffic all morning. At one point, my wife, Carrie, decided to hop in the car and bring back some lunch. I sat in my garage by myself, bored as could be.
A little while later, a little boy wandered up my driveway. We exchanged glances, but he looked away, a bit shy perhaps. However, he did want to shop, curiosity working its best on him. As he meandered from table to table, he paused in front of my grandmother’s tapes. He was a short fellow and quite close to the box. I wondered if he knew what they were and how accomplished his reading skills were. He reached out and gently picked up a tape. He turned it over and over examining the cartridge. He stood there for some time. He reached up with his second hand and cradled it in close as he turned and slowly walked over to me.
“Is this a video game?” he inquired. I looked at the tape. It was The Best of Roger Whittaker. I looked left and right a bit. No one else was around and temptation was seducing me from my left shoulder. I envisioned his angry parents returning the tape and demanding his money back.
The No Returns policy was not going to fly.
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I still can’t believe he sold that album. What a garage sale. Glad he did not sell to the boy that wanted a video game. I married and honest man and love that quality of him.
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