I BRAKE FOR GARAGE SALES
Hello, glad you stopped by. Let’s talk garage sales.
For starters, when you spot a car with a bumper sticker that reads “Warning: I Brake for Garage Sales”, you’d better start pumping your brakes!
Garage sale shoppers are so compulsive they can’t pass a sale sign stuck in the ground without stopping. It’s the lure of the bargain – the unexpected rare find – weekend entertainment – you name it. Surely it’s not the $65.42 I made the one time I ventured into this frenzied market.
Let me explain right off that there is a difference between Estate Sales and Garage Sales. For one thing, estate sales are conducted inside a home. Granted it is the same old dusty vases collected over 24 years from hospital stays and the mismatched sets of dishes and paintings nobody knew what to do with, but somehow they look more expensive. Plus, the shoppers are a lot calmer.
Not like the garage sales that make Alice’s Mad Hatter Tea Pary look like a monastery coffee break.
No matter how early you arrive for a garage sale there’s always someone who got there first. At 6:30 a.m. on the morning of my sale, a scary-faced woman pecked on my kitchen window and mouthed an offer for the mailbox and bird feeder. She was so charged up, with the garage doors went up, she grabbed two plastic sacks of garbage and started dragging them to her car. Another woman drove up dressed in pajamas and robe. (I didn’t ask .) She bought a set of four chairs with no seats.
By 7:15 a.m. there were six cars in my driveway, two parked on the lawn and a Smart Car trying to parallel park between the two flower pots flanking my front door (albeit large pots, but come on…)
Garage sale shoppers are happy to shell out money for anything they can grab at a reasonable price – a broken cell phone, consumptive bicycle tire, rusted ice cream churn or a VCR player with no cord. One woman paid $1.25 for a box of candle stubs, $6.50 for a pair of lace gloves missing a finger, $1.00 for an electric toothbrush with a short, $1.50 for a chipped punch bowl with one cup and $3.00 for a set 0f Thanksgiving napkin rings made out of corn shucks. Her husband haggled over exercise equipment larger than his car, a Blackberry someone had run over, a duck decoy with no head, a golf bag with no shoulder strap, a pair of Nike left shoes and a stack of old Playboys. (magazines, that is)
Since no one goes to a garage sale with a shopping list, the only explanation for some of the weird purchases has to be impulse buying. How else can you explain someone getting excited about an orange ceramic warthog, a rusted tackle box or an Elvis night light that sings.
Some of these items were heirlooms and had been in my family for a number of years. Most of them can be traced back to another garage sale.
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Here are a few social notes from my Social Scene weekly Sunday column.
Lyric Theatre’s annual Broadway Ball was a hit again this year.Staged at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel, the gala was a study in black and white. The stair rails were draed in black and white fabric as well as the table cloths. Centerpieces were tall glass containers topped with tight balls of white carnations wearing black top hats.
Bob McKown and Martha and Megal Mullally were the honorees. Amy Bankhead was chairman and her co-chairman was Paula Love.
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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie Blair, was a recent keynote speaker at a banquet hosted by the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Women in Law Conference at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel Four female attorneys and one judge were honored with Mona Lambird Spotlight Awards.
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Michael Laird was awarded the Crystal Orchid Award for his impact on the beauty and success of the Myriad Botancial Gardens. The presentation was made at the annual Orchids in October luncheon presented by the Myriad Gardens Foundation.
Langston University raised more than $1.1 million at its annual gala at Cox Convention Center. Gov. Brad Henry, Mary Johnson and Cynthia M.A. Butler-McIntyre were honored and Darrin Henson hosted the event after actor Morris Chestnut canceled. Jennifer Holliday from “Dreamgirls” provided entertainment. Proceeds from the galawill go toward funding the university’s scholarship program.
***Some upcoming calender events found in my weekly Sunday Fundraiser Datebook .
Oct 25-Oklahoma County Medical Society Alliance 19th annual Kitchen Tour, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Nichols Hills homes; $12 in advance, $15 at the door. 475-9771.
Heritage Hills Historic Homes and Garden tour, noon to 5 p.m., Oct. 24-25. Ticket information, 524-4953.
