Hear That Lonesome Whistle

When I was in college, my friend Lesley lived in some random falling-down bungalow, the kind of house so crappy that if actual poor people lived in it, there'd be a stink, so they rent it out to college kids instead. It had the added attraction of being right across the street from some train tracks, which were actively used at the time. (The line has since been torn out, and there's talk of a bike trail.) I asked her how she endured the noise, and she told me the same thing everyone tells you when they live near train tracks -- that the first night you think you're going to die or something, but that you quickly get used to it.

I'm in a small northeast Ohio town right now, one that seems to have been stuck on the map like a push-pin for the sole purpose of holding down freight tracks. Trains roll through on a regular basis all night long, a block or so away, horns wailing, bells clanging, wheels squealing on the metal tracks. You can sometimes hear the shouted voices of workers over the din. I soak it in, here in the middle of the night, although it's not why I'm awake. It doesn't bother me, but it doesn't let my mind rest, either.

I've always been a night owl. I've had a fascination my whole life with the nighttime world -- not ghosts-and-goblins bullshit, but the real work that goes on when everyone else is asleep. I used to sneak out of my house at night and walk around the streets of my hometown, or ride my beat-up three-speed bike from one end of town to the other. Once, when I had a crush on a girl I met at someone's graduation party, I rode out to the highway exit, then onto the divided state route, five or ten miles down to Uhrichsville, then cruised the streets there, forlornly wondering if this mystery girl would just happen to be looking out a random window when my stupid ass pedaled by. I may have seen one car the entire time.

I was always in and out of the few convenience stores and diners we had that were open all night. It's a wonder no one ever called the cops on me. (Actually, one night when I persuaded my friend Matt to ride bikes with me in the middle of the night, we did get "pulled over" in the Bag-n-Save parking lot; we ended up with three squad cars and a thorough third degree because someone a mile away had broken someone else's window with a rock. One cop tailed us all the way back to Matt's, driving his squad car at our speed, a block behind us, with his headlights off.)

Rock throwing wasn't my thing, though. Other than a few juvenile ad-sign-letter-alterings and the occasional changing of an old school metal gasoline price sign, I crept around and observed. I liked seeing the newspaper trucks tossing bundles onto sidewalks, and see the Wonder Bread truck pull up and make its deliveries. I liked riding down the main street in town, on a long flat straightaway, and not seeing a single pair of headlights. It was like the city was on autopilot, ticking and whirring like a cooling engine in the driveway, and that its mechanical workings in the dark were a secret for me and a select few others.

When I stayed home, I'd get up and put my headphones on, and creep through the AM dial on my little Emerson portable radio, listening to these all-night DJ's talking to people on the phone, arguing about politics or exhorting the nonbelievers. I could get one or two New York stations, including WCBS, and I remember being astonished by that fact. In the heady, pre-internet days of modems and BBS's, I'd rack up horrific long distance bills logging on to bulletin boards around the country, posting messages, seeing if anyone anywhere was awake like me, marveling at how these systems whirred and clicked and ran even when no one was paying attention but me.

It's not as fun now, of course. Mainly because I'm old now and I know why everyone else is asleep at this time of night. But it's also because staying up is almost...well... kinda passe. You can go to Wal-Mart or McDonald's at four in the morning. At least a few of your Facebook friends are always gonna be awake, or you'll know someone in Australia or Germany that you can chat with. Cable stations may go to real estate scam infomercials, but they don't play the National Anthem at a sensible hour and then sign off and leave you to your own devices.

I had a unique time and place to explore insomnia. I got to grow up in a town where they rolled up the proverbial sidewalks at nine, but it was a place where a kid stupid enough to ride his bike around alone at 3am (with Walkman blaring, likely as not) wasn't as likely to be beaten and robbed. I kinda had the run of the place, me and the delivery guys and and AM radio jocks, and the bleary-eyed lady in the blue smock at Lawson's flipping through Penthouse Forum and drinking stale coffee. Whatever arcane mysteries of the small hours there were, we had to ourselves.

The junkman thing requires me to get up early - specifically, in about three hours. A lot of times, just HAVING a set wake-up call is enough to keep me from getting to sleep. I'll worry myself right into a self-fulfilling prophecy of oversleep and/or an ass-dragging day. But no one seems willing to start a yard sale or a flea market at noon. And while my daughter got my good sleepin'-in genes and will snooze till lunchtime if you let her, my son is invariably up by 7:30, ready for anything, be it cereal and cartoons or a long morning of sales.

So when I'm out later this morning, full of coffee and home fries and ill humor, trying to get in the zone and pick some good stuff, being dragged around by an eight-year-old and wondering if a nap can be squeezed in after lunch, I'll be pissed off that I sat here woolgathering and listening to train whistles. But I gotta confess, right now, I kinda enjoy it. It's gotta just be the small-town setting, but I'm feeling some of that old vibe, like I'm in on the inner workings while everyone else is oblivious, in tune with the graveyard shift delivering the goods and adjusting the machinery for the sleeping civilians. I got used to the train whistle - you have to, eventually - but at this particular moment it feels good to howl with it into the gloom.

Blank walls

No, this isn't evidence that the warehouse is haunted. I put in a few hours this evening, in the failing light of some dying fluorescent bulbs, taking down some crappy old shelving racks from the store and moving dozens of boxes of books and LP's. The result was a clear wall space, ten feet high and ten feet wide, where my buddy Kevin is going to build a massive floor-to-ceiling rack for our CD inventory.

The entire time I've been doing this, I've been using scrounged shelves - stuff I've picked up at yard sales, gotten along with a purchase, or just grabbed off the curb on garbage night, in a few cases. Great way to start out -- low overhead and all that -- but it's time to put in a little work on the infrastructure. To make this work, I have to be able to walk in and immediately put my hands on one piece of inventory among thousands, especially if it's something cheap. If I spend fifteen minutes looking for a $3 CD, I just cost myself money.

Walls of CDs, library shelving for books in the middle of the room, metal industrial-strength shelves in the back for computers and bulky items -- by fall, I'm hoping the warehouse looks like a place where grown-ups do business, not a hoarder's nightmare or the aftermath of a tornado.

I mean, if you think about it, this whole gig is about bringing order to chaos. You want item X, but you're not gonna drive across 700 miles of two-lane blacktop to find it sitting on a card table in a side yard of a falling-down house in the rural badlands where the rust belt meets Appalachia. I go out and get that one shiny thing out of the infinite maelstrom of crap out there, and pass it along to you. But I can't fully focus on exploring the chaos beyond my street when I'm bogged down by chaos inside my own walls. I earned some of that chaos, in some of the haphazard ways I got to where I am now, but things are stable and growing, and not cleaning it up at this point would just be madness.

And yeah, maybe some new lighting would help in there, while I'm at it.

We need a bigger truck

Vintage Foley long-handled measuring spoons on eBay - ends Sunday


When I was a kid, my dad told me a joke about two Polacks (don't shoot the messenger, that's how jokes came in the 70's) who hauled coal in their truck. They bought it for $100 a truckload, drove it to their customer, and sold it for $100 a truckload. After busting their asses for a year, they were flat broke. "I don't get it," the first Polack cries. "We're working so hard. Why aren't we making money?"

"I got it!" says the other one. "We need a bigger truck!"

I've run, and closed, two record stores, bought out a bookstore, and occasionally have been "gifted" with fifteen or sixteen boxes of crappy paperbacks at a time, at the close of a yard sale when it's starting to rain. I got a lot of stuff. Sure, there are nuggets in even the worst box of crap, but there are a LOT of books, CDs, albums, cassettes, and videos in my warehouse, garage, and basement that are worth a buck, if that much.

Sometimes I'll take an evening, like I did tonight, and I'll grab a couple boxes of the cheap stuff, blowing the warehouse dust off the top and marveling at the crap that settled to the bottom of the record store clearance bin like sediment. Tonight I put up forty or so CDs at $1.25 each. Assuming I actually would eventually sell them all, that nets me $50.00 in income. Keep in mind, I sometimes sell one rare video game cartridge - one - for more than that, and it takes me a helluva lot less time to list one game than 40 CDs, even bunk ones.

So would I be better off just pitching 75% of the inventory in my warehouse into a dumpster?

Part of me rejects that idea out of hand. Call it environmentalism or call it hoarding, but I can't throw away something that still has life in it, even if it's not a rare or expensive commodity. I'm always happy to find an object a new home, even if it's an old paperback or a once-popular CD.

On a more pragmatic level, I know that those $2 and $3 sales can add up. And I've streamlined my listing process to the point where a big pile of cheap stuff can be up in an hour or two, photos, descriptions and all. There's also the fact that my cost on these items is either free, or so close to free as not to matter. If I paid 10 cents each for 100 books, and list them for $1.99 each in a short time, I've (theoretically, at least) turned $10 into $200.

But am I actually costing myself money by leaving better, hotter inventory on the shelf while I list the crap? It could be. I try to list a diverse mix of both, to keep the flow of stuff moving, however sluggishly, out of my warehouse. I do envision a day when ALL of it's listed, there's no backlog, and we get stuff up online within a day or two of it arriving.

Whether that ever happens or not, it keeps my life interesting, digging through such different stuff - a pile of books on Native American culture tonight, a stack of dollar CDs from the dregs of 2001's top 40 tomorrow, a pile of common video games the next night. The real trick, I think, is to keep all this flotsam organized, so that it doesn't cost me 25 minutes in time to search for a $2 item once it's been sold and needs shipped.

The whole thing is always a work in progress. I'm pretty happy with where it is right now, but that's always subject to change every five minutes. For now, though, it's time to shut 'er down for the day, with visions of hardcover first editions dancing in my head. Tomorrow it's more Commodore 64 stuff, and a few more square inches of basement reclaimed.

You're in High School Again

Oscar Mayer Wienermobile plush bean bag toy, bought this weekend

I left Friday night for a picking trip to my hometown of New Philadelphia, Ohio. The circumstances weren't good -- my wife's grandfather had just passed away, and the funeral arrangements were still up in the air. It had been a bad week for getting items listed, so I was starting to feel like a hoarder -- encroaching piles of merchandise were threatening the dining room and my office, and unopened boxes were piling up in the living room. Why the hell was I going out of town to buy more?

But getting out on the road for a day or two sounded good, if only to clear the head and get a little bit of focus. And I had another obligation -- my high school friend Matt is just getting into the Ebay game, and he was driving up from his nome in North Carolina to go with me and learn the ropes of buying. While a part of me doesn't feel like I'm qualified to teach anyone about anything, I realize that in this weird little career path, I've amassed some knowledge. He'd taken time off from his day job, and was driving nine hours each way, so cancelling wasn't really an option.

I left Toledo hours later than I'd intended, after packing a coupla tubs of mail and taking the fam out to dinner at Manhattan's. Any thoughts of being too sleepy from the effects of sausage tortellini to keep my mind on the road were soon banished. A horrendous thunderstorm that had rolled through the area earlier in the day was apparently just waiting a little ways down the Ohio Turnpike, so I could catch up with in and get re-acquainted. I pulled off at one service plaza to get coffee and regroup, and the travelers huddled around the weather map on the overhead TV looked like wet refugees from an overthrown Wal-Mart.

By the time I got to I-77, and its delightful orange barrel slalom, the rain was coming down in horizontal sheets, wind was howling, and my visibility was pretty much zero. I was going longer and longer between periods of being able to see the white lines on the road, and I had to hope that the owner of the headlights ahead of me was in the right place and not prone to sudden stops. Somewhere in that strip-malled apocalypse between Akron and Canton, I actually started hydroplaning, drifting back and forth while trying to stoically keep the wheels straight, doing 40 miles an hour and not feeling at all in control of my vehicle.

It let up a little by the time I rolled into the Motel 6 parking lot at 1am. I gassed up and grabbed a beer, and sat in my dank room, unable to sleep for a couple hours, rattled by the awful weather and a little overwhelmed by the long day ahead.

Got up a little later than I'd intended, but I hadn't seen any must-sees in the local paper's classifieds -- no church sales with $2 bag day or anything time-sensitive. Met up with Matt at his mom's restaurant, and inadvertently managed to solve a childhood mystery at breakfast -- when we were kids, we occasionally had "krepples," kind of a weird sausage-y mush that you cut into strips and fried. Later on, I was pretty sure that what I'd had was actually "scrapple," that east coast delicacy that skeeves out everyone west of Lancaster, PA. But I KNEW we'd called it "krepples"!

There it was, on the menu at Dee's Restaurant. Krepples and eggs! Of course, I ordered it... and it was really good, too, crispy and a little spicy, kind of like sausage but kinda like grits, too, if that makes any sense. It's basically the boiled-off pieces of meat from a pig's skull, with seasonings and corn meal, if I'm not mistaken - but man, is it good. That and some eggs and home fries, and I was good to go.

After a couple uneventful yard sales, Matt and I stumbled across one for the record books, the kind of place that makes you wish you had a camera crew at all times. These folks had just hauled all their yard sale stuff back into their house, due to the looming threat of more bad weather, but had neon-green poster board signs that read COME ON IN! So we did -- up the broken stairs, onto the filthy and sagging enclosed front porch, and into the living room with gritty blackened carpet and the kitchen full of clutter, knick-knacks and kennels. Two dogs and a bird made an unholy racket as we tiptoed around the chaos, while a short, chattery woman told us her life story -- they were moving to Arizona, they had to get rid of everything, the basement was full of stuff they couldn't even get to yet, she had over $7,000 invested in her NASCAR memorabilia collection, and so on.

These people were dealing. Ask about a book, and they wanted you to make an offer on the whole box. Pick up a piece of flint from their collection of Native American tchotchkes, and they'd try to sell you three dozen framed pieces of Southwestern art. I wound up buying an overflowing box of VHS movies, a storage container full of CDs, two big boxes of books, and a few other miscellaneous pieces of flotsam. Matt tried gamely to pick up a few swanky-looking 60's men's magazines, and wound up with two boxes of Playboys, Penthouses, and a few less savory spank rags.

All the while, these people were asking us to buy more, telling us about moving to Arizona again, and flitting around nervously. A tall, threadbare biker kept giving us running commentary on everything we picked up to look at, repeatedly reminding us that it wasn't his sale, he was just a friend of the family. We finally had to flat-out lie and say we'd come back the next day, or next week, to get the transaction finalized and get out the door.

After those people, the next few houses seemed positively normal. I very nearly bought a 100-year-old sleeper sofa because I thought it looked neat, although I don't think anyone with my current backlog of goods needs to get into furniture. At one place, Matt scored big-time, grabbing two big boxes of books (including some still-worth-a-bit textbooks) for ten cents each. I tried buying a big Hoegaarden beer banner off the wall of a guy's garage-slash-mancave, but we couldn't agree on a price.

Leaving Dover and New Philadelphia behind, we headed up Route 800, which eventually leads to Canton and the interstate. Along the way, though, you pass through or near a number of tiny burgs - Zoar, Mineral City, Sandyville, East Sparta. We'd seen an ad for a community sale in East Sparta, so that was our goal. My only memories of Mineral City were from fourth or fifth grade, when my mom had a slimy boyfriend who lived there and I wound up hanging out there for eternal summer days with absolutely nothing to do. I don't remember who I heard refer to it as "Miserable City" back then, but it definitely fit the bill as far as I was concerned.

Passing through this time, a sign for a book sale caught our eye, so we pulled off. Oblivious to the dark clouds hovering in the sky, an ambitious woman with a bunch of little kid helpers had some plastic tubs full of books sitting outside a small trailer, itself a rolling bookstore on wheels. There was no sense to the stacks at all, no rhyme or reason, and when we asked about pricing, the kids kept telling us "it's a donation, just make a donation."

Going into the trailer to talk to the woman, we found out that the sale was for Mineral City's small library, which got no state funding and survived on donated books and volunteer work. Whatever they couldn't use in the library was sold to raise money. "Just give what you feel they're worth," she said of my giant box of books (and the stack of folk music CDs Matt found in a bin). I wound up paying more than I probably would have if the items had been at a yard sale or a thrift -- I guess that guilt approach works. It's not like I can be upset, I'll still do well on the stuff I bought, and the money's definitely for a good cause. I got a book by Charles Darwin at that sale that's at least 100 years old -- can't wait to research that one a little more and see if it's important.

We got to East Sparta and hit a few lackluster sales, and drove up and down some huge hills (my ancient van protesting here and there) following signs for sales people had evidently already packed up. Sensing that we were long past productive yard-sale pick time, I took 800 up to 77 and then headed for a couple goldmines I know of in Akron. The one, Village Discount Outlet, is always a madhouse, and it fulfills everyone's worst stereotypes about thrift stores -- loud, cluttered, understaffed, and you're never more than an arm's-length from a family with fourteen kids gleefully destroying an entire wing of the place, or a morbidly obese person on oxygen snuffily arguing over the price of a coffee mug and holding up fifteen other people in the checkout line.

But for all that, this place is a thing of beauty to me. I always leave there with a cartful of vintage shirts, and they're usually good for some great LP's tucked in among the Mitch Miller frisbees. I didn't get to peruse the CDs because now they're all in a display case, and the woman running that counter was covered up in other customers. A few looked promising, but I did well enough with the shirts, and I was getting to that point where it was time to go.

We didn't hit the Goodwill on the same road, even though I've had a lot of success there in the past, and we didn't go any further north like we'd originally planned. I hadn't expected to eat up that much of the day on yard sales, which I don't usually do up here in the big(ger) city. We were both getting a little burnt out and crispy, so it was time to think about dinner and the rest of the day.

We wound up cooking hot dogs over a fire at Matt's parents' house, visiting with his sisters, their husbands, and his niece Emma, who was a riot. After a couple hours of pleasant conversation, hot dogs, a couple beers and staring into a fireplace, we realized that our grand plan to go out for beers was just not gonna happen. I decided that since the weather was clear, I'd make a break for home, so I could sleep in my own bed and be more prepared for the trip to the funeral we'd be taking. We loaded all Matt's treasures into his car, and I asked how he liked the picking trip - he was fired up, and more than ready to do it again soon. I expect him to be the terror of the mid-south this summer.

I got back on the highway, already wondering if I'd made the right decision, with the windows open a crack and the iPod blaring to keep me alert. I no sooner hit Canton and the heavens opened up AGAIN - I spent another hour driving in teeth-grinding misery, not sure if I was gonna merrily skid right off the road or plow into someone. Luckily, by the time I got to the turnpike, it had blown over, leaving me with a wet but clear and eerily deserted westbound trek to get home.

You know you're beat when you pull into your driveway, shut off the van, and have to sit for a minute to muster up the energy to get out and walk up to your front door. I got in, checked on the kids, kissed the wife and collapsed for a good 12-13 hours of emergency hibernation.

Was it a good trip? Financially, I think so, but it's gonna take me a while to work through listing all the goods I picked up. But it gave me something to focus on at a stressful time, it got me out on the road and soaking up people and stories when I was sitting at home getting self-absorbed and cranky... and most of all it was a great time with my best friend. Matt and I don't get to see each other that much now that he's so far east, but if anything, I think the years and distance have made us even better buds. I wasn't sure how I'd like having someone along on "my" pick, but I'm already envisioning the two of us going on longer trips, further out into the wilderness, loading up on diner food and improbable finds.

Black Oak Burger King

Last month I went on some hellacious picking trips while in central Alabama. Behind the curve as ever, this was my first roadtrip with a GPS, and I was smitten with it. I found one thrift store I'd heard tales of, but had never actually found, and it was a treasure trove -- I spent hours poring over old books, long-forgotten gospel tapes, and I even picked up my first Betamax title. The Foundry is a store run by a rehab center - the proceeds benefit them, and their patients (clients?) work in the store. My pile of CDs and tapes elicited a bonafide Southern "whoo-ee!" from the bagger, who alternated between macking on the lady ringing me up and asking me if I'd ever heard of Percy Sledge.

Thanks to the wonders of the GPS, I also rediscovered another thrift store that I hadn't seen since 2004, since I was down there living at my dad's house, convalescing from open-heart surgery. My sister and I wandered out, for something to do, and found this place called "Big Saver," and man, it was dreadful. It still is today, too, making me wonder how bad a thrift store has to be before it actually gets closed down. Chewed-up romance novels were two bucks, CDs were four, broken answering machines and ZIP drives were $15. If Big Saver wasn't on the same trajectory as two other awesome stores, I'd probably never see it again. But since it's so close to the real goldmines, I'll go make a stop on every trip from here on in, to marvel at its craptitude, hope against hope for a change in management, and to challenge myself to find that one nugget I can sell out of their piles of overpriced garbage.

(I got one there this time, a David and the Giants Christian CD from 1989 or so. I broke my usual picking rule and texted my friend Jeremiah, asking him to look it up and see if it was worth buying - normally, I go with my gut feeling and chance it, but at $4 a disc, mistakes can add up quickly).

I hit the second of my "goldmine" spots after Big Saver, and then planned to head back to Tuscaloosa, where we were visiting my family. But on the way in, as I'd turned from the offramp, I'd seen something odd. In what looked like a decrepit, abandoned Burger King location, complete with twisted and burnt remains of a drive-thru sign, there appeared to be a thrift store! It seemed to have kinda sprouted there, like a patch of kudzu or an impromptu garbage dump off a ravine near a road. The handmade sign outside called it "The Master's Mission," I think, and offered "free clothing to the truely needy ONLY!!!!"

I had to scope this out. I pulled into the gravel-and-broken-concrete-strewn parking lot and walked in through the front door, where a faint ghost of Burger King decal could still be seen. Inside was the kind of place that gives orderly, neat people like my sister full-blown panic attacks -- boxes of crap everywhere, thousands of shirts and dresses crammed onto makeshift racks made of wire and old pipes, dusty dishes piled onto card tables. There was barely anywhere to stand or walk. The "front counter" was an office desk with an adding machine, sitting next to a few suspicious-looking boxes of candy bars for sale. The whole place smelled of laundry hamper and the faraway musk of long-ago deep frying.

Did I dig in? Of course I did, although not as enthusiastically as I might have earlier in the day. Even I have my limits when it comes to shopping and junk-picking, and I was in dire need of a shower, some sweet tea and a nap at this point. But I soldiered on, quickly realizing that this place was chock full o' crap. It looked like they'd raided the dumpster at other, better thrift stores to stock this hopeless outpost. It didn't help that the scrawny white dude at the 'counter' looked more like he shoulda been down the road, manning the thrift run by recovering meth addicts and small time hookers-turned-cashiers. He wasn't chatty, which was good, but he'd perfected the art of staring at you until you felt like you were in his house, against his wishes, rifling through his sock drawer looking for a reason to hold another intervention.

I bought less than half a dozen items at this weird shambles of a store, but one of them was this:



I got it home with my other treasures, listed it, and within a week, I'd sold it to someone in Japan for $40. When I put it up, it was literally the only Black Oak Arkansas shirt on the site.

Black Oak Arkansas completed auction on Ebay

Doing what I do takes a little bit of a leap, one that a lot of people won't contemplate - the idea of going to even a nice thrift store and spending some time digging around bums them out. Even some of the hardier souls I know might have passed on the weird, awkward Burger King thrift store. But I figure, if you're not out looking for adventures, and you're not willing to turn over every stone, then why are you even out on the road in the first place?