THE FLYING PIG WHIRLIGIG, AND OTHER YARD SALE BARGAINS

If you can’t find it here, you don’t need it.

Pardon me if I borrow the old country store witticism, but Memorial Day was the beginning of the bargaining season, where everything new will be old again. Welcome to those weekend gatherings of clans and neighbors around shaky tabletops and folding chairs, where the finest in attic, basement and closet clutter is haggled over and passed on.

Yes, I confess: I'm a yard sale junkie.

Yard sales, where one man's trash is ... well, another man's trash, but because it can be had on the cheap, a bargain's a bargain. Sure, that three-legged milking stool may be missing a leg, but didn't your grandfather have one with only ONE leg? Hey, honey, look at this! A bonus leg!

(Come to think of it, Grandpa had a bonus leg, too, and Grandma considered him a bargain for 67 years.)

I’ll get to the great deals I've found in the past, but first a few rules:

Before going on anyone’s premises, make sure what you’re seeing is a yard sale. It could just be a family picnic and lawn debris. There’s nothing more embarrassing than making someone an offer on that Bathtub Jesus in the middle of their Aunt Hattie’s outdoor birthday party.

NEVER pay the marked or asking price. It may be that genuine vintage Hoosier Cabinet you've always longed for, (missing its flour bin sifter, sugar bin and tambour door, it's still a steal at that price) but it’s the seller's junktique, and bottom line is they don’t want to drag it back to the basement. This will become painfully clear at your yard sale next summer, when you drag it out of yours.

Remember, these are what's known in the yard sale circuit as "motivated sellers." Translation: Grandma doesn't want that behemoth in the house another minute, and either it goes or Grandpa goes. Make an offer.

In fact, make an offer on anything you’re interested in that’s not nailed down. But, don’t let that stop you. I once watched a motivated seller climb a ladder to the top of his garage and rip a flying pig whirligig off the peak. Before I left, he’d sold the ladder (missing two rungs) to the same party.

What if it’s something you really want, and must have, and you know no one else does or would?

Leave it and go back late in the day. By then the Basement Syndrome is in full force and you’re likely to get that single-winged flying swine for a song. The owner, at that point, will even load it in your pickup and possibly offer to come over the next Sunday to help you nail it to the rooftop of your choice, or to that cupola (only missing three of its cups!) that you got for next-to-nothing at another yard sale. You can hold your new-old ladder for him.

Not to worry, if you're so-disposed, you will ALWAYS find the following items between now and fall or winter, whichever comes first (this is the North Country, after all):

A box or boxes of Tom Clancy and/or Jacqueline Susann novels. They'll be stacked on or under a box or boxes of National Geographics.

Milk crates full of the world's worst used cassette tapes. Their cases and inserts will be cracked, cloudy or rain-damaged, and the titles will range from the least desirable to the unknown: Yanni's Disco Album. The Plastic Wooden Steel Band. Jazzercizing With Tandy (who's "Tandy"?). Still, at 25 cents a tape, who can resist? And, you can play them on that almost-new cassette player you snatched up earlier that's only absent one speaker, its rewind button and power cord.

The omnipresent (every self-respecting yard sale has at least one) physical fitness apparatus: The 500-dollar stationary bike/rowing machine combo, only ten bucks! Minus one oar and pedal, but for a 490-dollar savings, you're not above getting fit by rowing & riding in an imaginary circle. Or, the almost complete set of dumbbells you will use once, (when you carry them from your vehicle into the basement, or twice, if you count lugging them back out to your yard sale next year, where they'll prop up nicely against the broken Hoosier Cabinet).

And, the ever-popular cardio-flextrak walking machine. You know the one: it looks and acts like skis on roller skates. Hold that thought, and your groin pull, and save your fifty bucks for:

That hand-crafted metal wall sculpture of the first bicycle ever made. Yeah, honey, we’ve now got a flying pig on the garage, why not a bike above our headboard?

Or, that state-of-the-art yogurt maker. "Only used once!" (This should always be your final discipline and warning, when you can find no other reason not to buy it.) Come now, you're never going to make yogurt, and if you do, as yogurt goes it will make great sour fudge.

Or, any of the following:

A box lot full of artificial flowers, costume jewelry, mismatched salt and pepper shakers, clock figurines, a nose-less stuffed bear, (slightly matted) jumper cables, (slightly frayed) and a limited-edition set of chipped and gilt-scuffed dinnerware emblazoned with someone else's state motto and bird (fully partial).

All these items will all store nicely in your basement atop your box of unused dumbbells until next year.

Ours have, anyway.

Copyright 2007 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.