Are you hooked on garage sales?

Okay, I admitted it. I got hooked. I was addicted. I couldn’t help it. I would see one and it is as if an uncontrollable urge takes my steering wheel and leads me to it. I’m talking, of course, about garage sales.

It all started so innocently, just a few years ago. I was a successful bank auditor for a national chain of savings and loan associations. (Right there, you could see me heading down the slide). Married. Two kids. Beautiful house in the neighborhood of the upper echelon. It was Friday. The end of a particularly difficult week. I was on my way home from the “Beemer” when a neon sign, taped to a telephone pole, caught my eye. At the next corner, there was another. In this one, I could almost make out what the magic marker scribble was saying. In big, bold letters it said, “Yard Sale.” Having invested in various real estate properties, I decided to check it out.

When I got to the address written on this quiet excuse for a sign, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Instantly, I thought to myself, “No wonder this poor soul can’t sell her property. She has garbage strewn all over the yard.” Then I realized that a group of people were looking down at all this garbage, picking up some of it and inspecting it as if it contained the meaning of life. The way these people looked down at the ground I could only assume that someone had lost their contact lenses. So, I joined.

I asked this diaper-looking gentleman, dressed in an old flannel shirt and jeans rolled three times at the cuff, what was the appeal of this particular property. It was then that he informed me that the property was not for sale, but all those used belongings, sometimes dirty, but always unattractive were. “You have to be kidding me,” I laughed.

As I was leaving, shaking my head in disbelief at these poor bastards, feeling sorry that I had nothing better to do with their afternoons or their money, something caught my eye. Something that threw away that particularly difficult week that I just had in the back of my mind. Something that reminded me of a more innocent time in my life. A time when my most absorbing decision was which game to play after lunch.

It was a cookie jar. A cookie jar that by today’s standards would be stereotyped and controversial. It was a cookie jar in the shape of a heavyset black maid wearing a headscarf and ankle-length petticoats. An image not unlike Mammy in the movie “Gone with the Wind.” An image that reminded me of a wonderful time in my life when all I needed was to lift Mammy’s head and, inside her body, find a delicious surprise that my mother always kept full.

I had to have it. The price tag on the duct tape read: “Five dollars.” I quickly took out my wallet and handed the woman who had the sale the exact amount. My friend who looked like a diaper told me on my way out that paying full price at a yard sale was a sure sign that he was a hobbyist. He told me that haggling over an item was as common a practice at a yard sale as wearing an old flannel shirt and rolled up jeans.

The next day, Saturday, he was spending quality time with his wife and kids, taking them skating in the park.

On the way home, he couldn’t believe the number of neon signs posted on everything from telephone poles to street signs. I just knew that there were memories of my childhood in each and every one of them. But if I was going to rebuild my youth, I was going to need a plan. So every Friday I would search the newspaper and look for the section that listed the garage sales in my neighborhood. He would circle the ones he wanted to go to and number them in order from furthest to closest. I kept finding things that reminded me of my youth; little men of the green army, 45 RPM records and a first edition Jeopardy box game.

My fascination turned into an obsession. I couldn’t wait until the weekend and my weekly scavenger hunt. I traded in my “Beemer” for a pickup, because my treasures started to grow.

Then one day “Nappy” said something to me that my ears couldn’t believe. He asked me if I had ever been to a flea market. I had heard of them, but always thought they were very little King Kullens.

In no time, I attended every garage sale, yard sale, flea market, and Chinese auction within a hundred miles.

Finally, my wife divorced me.

I hit rock bottom when I was arrested for vagrancy. In all honesty, I was just camping on the lawn of a garage sale the night before it took place. These folks were rumored to be selling a classic GE washing machine with an electric wringer.

As I was spending the night in jail with a drunk who reeked of stale beer and a teenager who beat his parents with three feet of number two garden hose, I realized I needed help.

The judge looked at me dressed in my flannel shirt and jeans rolled three times at the cuff and sentenced me to one year in “The Home of the Chronic Bargain Hunters” in Wilma, Iowa, where the people of Wilma have never heard the words. garage sale or garage sale.

I am proud to say that I am almost recovered. I can say. The house held a mock garage sale last weekend to test our discipline. We passed and stopped on a company bus to see who couldn’t resist getting off and clamoring through these seemingly fake reproductions of authentic garage sale trinkets.

We all passed except Oliver “Ollie” Parker, who jumped off the bus, donned his double-knit suit, and paid full price for a fifteenth edition of Jeopardy. I just smiled and chuckled, “Amateur.”