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.