Summer is happening to Seattle. She is a city transformed, ripe with bare skin, generous smiles, and fair-weather fitness enthusiasts. Best of all, people hold yard sales. Yard sales, garage sales, tag sales, rummage sales, estate sales, moving sales, all energetically advertised - signs written in sharpie on neon paper and taped to telephone polls - as "huge," "gigantic," and my favorite, "multi-family."
Probably a holdover from my childhood - many a Saturday morning spent chasing sales around Worcester County - I love yard sales. I find something both comforting and exhilarating in the tables crammed with other folks' junk. Each collection of books, records, board games, china, or tools offers pieces of a narrative about their soon-to-be-former owners. I learn a lot about my neighbors by perusing their recycling. And best of all, I always find something I can't life without.
In the last twenty-four hours, my household has acquired:
an antique coffee grinder - $7
a 1900s 10" drawknife (log peeler) - $18
a hatchet - $5
a swiss army knife - $2
a set of japanese carving tools - $5
a paint-spattered but functional boom box - $5
a copy of Clearcut, an "erotically atmospheric" (Kirkus Reviews) novel about the PNW by Nina Shengold - $1
Strangely, I haven't found what I actually need - a toaster for my kitchen - but I have a good feeling about tomorrow . . .
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