Garage Sale

The trailer park had a swap meet/garage sale on Saturday where everyone put their stuff out and we posted signs out on the highway and everything. The rain held off for the most part and though the sale got off to a slow start, by the early afternoon things were really hopping and the money flying. Sweetie and I won the prize for most money made bringing in $130 bucks and two bottles of wine. The wine having been traded in by Dewy and Ham in exchange for a painted chair we no longer wanted and that they thought would go nicely in their guest bedroom.

It was all crap that we sold. Crap that had been cluttering up the back closets and storage shed since we moved here right before the youngest boy was born. Boxes of books, an old Mac monitor, air filter, CD towers, playpen, torn green leather chair, small bookcase, small beat up dresser. My sale of the day was made when I sold a paper shredder for $2 as a toy to a woman with kids. She hadn’t even been looking at it, I just said I thought she needed one and after I explained why, and she said that they were thinking of getting mice, and wouldn’t that be useful shredding paper for their bedding. She asked me if I would take less than the $3 dollar asking price and since she was getting some books I said absolutely. It was my goal to not have to cart any of that stuff back into the trailer or the shed and I wasn’t going to let that sale get away. By the end of the afternoon I was left with a high chair and stroller, some old beer mugs from Europe and an Ivana Trump Biography given as a prank a few Christmases ago. Around three, Earl backed up his pickup and we loaded in all the leftovers and took them over to the Goodwill station, though not before I managed to sell one last end table off of the back to a garage sale latecomer. People were just in a buying mood I guess. Garage saleing has got to be better than reading the morning paper these days anyway.

After the sale we packed up the boys and headed out to a birthday party for the four-year-old son of some friends who live in Sumner. They have a large piece of property in one of those modern housing developments where none of the streets have curbs and there are no sidewalks and they tell you what color you can paint your house. Though the surroundings are unsettling our friends are not, and we had a great time catching up with them and their family. E_ and I went to high school together and was one of the first friends I’d made when I moved to Tacoma back in 81’. There are not many people that I still keep in contact with that have been around longer than Sweetie has, but he and his brother are two of them.

We dodged rain clouds and ate bar-b-que until the youngest one started to complain that it was past his bedtime. The older boy was starting to feel it as well, though he swore he wasn’t tired. He had had a t-ball game early that morning and since arriving at the party, had only slowed down long enough to eat a hot dog, and then only because Sweetie made him. The proof is that neither boy put up much of a struggle when we said it was time to go.

Ike complained every time the car had to stop at a light on the way home, which is his way of telling me to quit messing around and get him to bed already. The older boy felt carsick and though neither of them fell asleep on the way, it didn’t take long for the trailer to get quiet after we got home.

I sat out on the stoop for a while and listened to birch trees talk to the wind. For a moment the sun made it’s way out from under the Cedar trees that line the road at the bottom of the hill escaping the cloud cover and the tree’s thick branches in a burst of gold. Two minutes later it was gone, swallowed by the earth. Night was falling.

I closed my eyes and it started to rain.

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