Paul's Ponderings

The US 127 Yard Sale was held this past weekend - it supposedly officially started Thursday but some vendors were set up and open for business as early as the previous weekend. Billed as the world's longest yard sale, stretching for somewhere over 800 miles from its start in Ohio, then going through Kentucky and Tennessee before ending in Alabama, in my opinion it should be officially named "The World's Longest Junk Sale."
For the past several years, I've usually tried to get out and travel along US 127. I've never made great journey on it, as the farthest north I've been is to Danville and the farthest south I've made it is a few miles past Jamestown, TN. This, due to the very hot weather and a bad hip that limits my walking, I curtailed my venture and never got out of Russell County, making a few stops in the vicinity of Russell Springs and Jamestown. However, the few stops I did make convinced me that the yard sale appears to be getting more loaded down with junk each year.
(Myself, I generally shop for one specific item during my stops along the yard sale - old cameras and camera equipment. Sadly, I didn't see anything that caught my eye this year, and the few cameras I did see for sale, mainly older model Polaroids, had ridiculous prices on them.)
I'm sure that there are still places along the length of the yard sale where you can find quality items such as quality furniture, household items, leather goods, etc., I didn't see much evidence of this on my foray this year. In years past, you'd also run across what I'd call "unusual items," things you'd never seen before that would leave you wondering where such things came from. However, I'd have to admit I did see one very unusual item for sale - a mid 1960s Buick Hearse (see picture) with a license plate on the front that read "The Last Rides" and a piece of cardboard with "4 Sale"placed on the windshield. I thought about asking the price on it, but decided I really didn't need to know.
However, I did come up with a few observations about the 127 Yard Sale after my visit this year:
1. Apparently there has been very little glassware - cups, glasses, plates, flower vases, etc. - made since the Civil War or before that been broken or thrown away. Otherwise how could so much of it still be around for sale.
2. That old fishing rods and reels, when stored in an enclosed place over the winter, must breed and produce many more old junky fishing rods and reels. Either that or somebody goes around the entire United States each week collecting them, then scatters them everywhere along the yard sale.
3. Items such as clothing, books, stereos, purses, beat up toys and the like, never go out of style at the yard sale, even if they're 10 or 20 years ago.
4. The only time an item becomes unsuitable to put in the yard sale is when it falls apart and crumbles into dust when you try to load it up and take it to the sale.
5. And, finally, I'm convinced the majority of the items for sale along the US 127 corridor are very familiar with their surroundings. Folks either box up and store what they didn't sell the previous year and bring it back out to see if than can have a little better luck the next sale (this can be repeated for several years in a row), of if they do sell things, the majority of them are bought by other yard sellers, who will put them up and then have them for sale at their booth the next year. Sort of like history repeating itself.
An old adage I've heard for years goes, "One mans junk is another man's treasure." All I can say after my latest foray on the 127 is that there must be a heck of a lot of treasures out there still looking for that other man.