The first yard-saling trip in a long while

Because we’re temporarily not in financial straits, I took a pocketful of money (a hundred bucks, which is what I usually carry for these razoos) and went hunting the yard sales for Waring Stuph stuph.  As usual, there was an enormous amount of useless junque that I couldn’t re-sell if my life depended on it, but once or twice I rather think I hit the jackpot.

My first find was a bag full of ’50s and ’60s-vintage Civil Defense and fallout brochures, including Defense Against Radioactive Fallout on the Farm, Emergency Instructions in Event of Atomic Attack or Tornado (nothing like trying to cover all the bases at once), Lancer Fiberglass Blast & Fallout Shelter, and Survival in a Nuclear Attack.  I also grabbed a small cache of LPs out of an enormous collection of pretty good material—I could easily have dropped the whole hundred bucks right there and not have picked out a real clinker.  As it was, I picked up a Flanders and Swann I’d never heard of before, The Anna Russell Album, a Flatt & Scruggs anthology, a Doc & Merle Watson, Oingo Boingo’s Good For Your Soul (in retrospect, I should have picked up all the Oingo Boingo they had), Brickman & Weissberg’s New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass (the Dueling Banjos album without “Banjos” on it), and an Oscar Brand album of flyboy’s songs.

The next several stops were washouts except for one place where I picked up a Pioneer tuner/amplifier and a JVC CD changer for free; the man claimed they worked only intermittently, and I’m enough of a tinkering idiot to see if I can figure out what’s wrong.  If I can’t, I’m not out anything, and if I can make ’em work, I’ll sell them and so much the better.  (This is like the episode last week, which I forgot to mention, when I found a pile of eight or nine old turntables, a couple of VCRs, and a couple of professional rack-mount tape decks, all showing obvious signs of being stored somewhere dirty—like a garage—for years, set out on the curb for the trashman.  I picked up one direct-drive Technics turntable that looks as though it might be possible to rescue, and the two rack-mount tape decks on speculation.  Again, since they didn’t cost me anything, I’m not out if they prove to be junk.)

I was almost ready to go home when I hit the best find of the day, a Plume & Atwood kerosene parlor lamp for $50.  For a wonder, it hasn’t been electrified, and the pot and burner appear to be intact, although the original glass globe is missing.  I need to wash it carefully to remove the grime without removing the hand-painted gilt and roses on the glass vase, and then line it up to have its picture taken.

In all, I’m satisfied with the morning’s work, and I now feel as though I have some inventory that I can sell properly.

Richard Nixon has the opulent wand up his butt.  Fnord.