Yard Sale Addict

As expected there are no yard sales to be found this weekend. Christmas actually falling on a Saturday destroyed any chance of sales around here. The Saturday holiday has implications for non-celebrators such as the orthodox Jews around Toco Hills. Normally these folks would go ahead and have a sale around Christmas time but with the holiday falling on the Sabbath there is no chance that anyone will see the keppan-wearing folks who dwell ironically in a subdivision called Merry Hills having sales. When I worked for an orthodox organization I always felt it strange that so many of my students lived on streets with names like Holly, Merry, Reindeer and of course Christmas.
I had considered just randomly driving around the Lawrenceville Highway area in hopes that some Hindus may have clutter in their yard. Maybe I could find a large Ganesh statue with a missing tusk for fifty cents. Maybe the Bosnians, Buddhists and Copts (who knows when they celebrate the holiday?) of Clarkston might be having sales.
But sadly in today’s AJC, the 805 section of the classifieds was empty and no notices were seen on any nearby utility poles.
I wondered if this was true all over the nation. In cosmopolitan cities such as Los Angeles I found two moving sales in the classifieds of the LA Times. Among the items offered were a bed, furniture, house wares CD’s and clothes.
San Francisco had two sales advertised in the Chronicle one was a moving sale with an Ikea TV stand, a desk and a lot of picture frames. In the Pacifica area there was an event termed a “Quality Relocation Garage sale” scheduled for Christmas day and the day after. This offered furniture, antiques knick-knacks, a TV and a VCR. The ad noted great stuff everything must go. This is the real holiday spirit.
Closer to home in The Miami Herald I found one sale on Christmas day in Palm Grove. This sale strangely offered mature plants and trees with the note “bring your shovel” perhaps this is a south Florida tradition of having the neighbors descend on your property on Christmas day armed with gardening implements to tear up your yard. Appliances, a lawn tractor, tools and odds and ends were also promised.
Checking on the far side of the world where it’s summer I found no sales scheduled on Christmas day in the classified ads of newspapers in Sydney or Melbourne. Perhaps I should check some of the English language papers of India. Someone may even have a broken Ganesh figure for sale.