Junk

by Alison Stewart

  “I’m a collector,” she said.

  Of what?

  “Everything.”

  Well then. There’s a bag of corks waiting for you.

  “They are just looking for junk.” Hugh Stump has seen it year after year since the event started back in 2003. He is the executive director of the Greater Gadsden (Alabama) Tourism Board, and he welcomes all those folks who want to sell their random stuff because it brings bodies to town, and those bodies stay in Gadsden’s hotels and eat in its restaurants. “The purpose of the yard sales are to get people off the interstate and back into the country roads. A bunch of chambers of commerce got together and said, ‘Let’s put on a yard sale and advertise among our communities and get people to come buy some stuff in the communities.’”

  Because of its location, close to the gorgeous Noccalula Falls Park and a doable drive from two fair-sized airports, Gadsden is part of several annual come-one-come-all sales. Stump is partial to the much bigger summer event, the 127 Corridor Sale, marketed as “The World’s Largest Yard Sale.” It runs 690 miles from Addison, Michigan, to Gadsden, Alabama, or vice versa. It has been covered on HGTV and has its own website with a countdown clock. Antique dealers come from all over the country to that one. Stump loves it and describes it as a huge weekend for his county.

  In comparison, the 411 is just a tiny little old thing, although it does have its own T-shirt—homemade of course. “This sale is more of a county sale,” according to Stump. “It is the uniqueness of the road. Highway 411 is a state highway. Etowah County come across to St. Clair County and into Rainbow City, across the Coosa River and creek.” The road narrows at one point and, as Stump explained, the pickings would be slim. “Heading toward Leesburg and Centre, the road widens out. You will see a lot more yard sales.”

  The way it works is you just get on 411 and drive. That’s it. You slow down a bit when you see a tent, RV, or sign, eyeball the sale you are passing, and then make the split-second decision whether or not to pull off on the shoulder. Stump says it can get crowded, but mostly on the last day. “It is just regular people who are looking to buy stuff. You can get a lot of antique dealers, but the majority are just people, regular people.”

  The advice to just keep driving until the road widens was welcome because there’s very little official information about the sale. There’s not an official sponsor. There’s no official set of rules. There’s no official anything. The closest thing to an organizer is Parker Tinsley, one of the original supporters of the event, who has been quoted in the local paper every year for the annual story. There aren’t any maps. No permits; no security. People just plunk down and set up shop right there on the roadside. There can be twenty-five set-ups back to back to back. People who live along the route sell space on their front lawns to folks who come in from out of town. Some slots go for five dollars a day. One family with a prime location divided its large front lawn into fifteen even slots, rented each for twenty dollars, and provided a port-o-john on the property.

  Stump finds the whole thing kind of amusing. “I look at it as a bunch of people coming in buying a bunch of junk they don’t need. They put it in their garage and they come back next year and sell it.”

  A well-preserved African American couple in their mid-sixties who I’ll call the Mister and the Missus were very focused buyers. Watching their approach to the 411 sale was like watching a cheetah stalk its prey. They were deliberate, stealthy, and determined. The negotiation was swift and the cash transaction was a quiet strike at the end. For the entire day we’d pull up to sales at the same time and give a nod of the head but there wasn’t much else in terms of communication. In a part of the world where I’d been called various forms of some sweet by total strangers (Hi, honey!, What can I get you, sugar?, Would you like another water, sweet pea?) their silence was noticeable.

  It was the same pattern all day long. We would arrive at a sale at the same time; they would zero in on something of value, and then move on. At one point, we all came upon a large red hand-painted sign that screamed HIGHWAY 411 SALE propped up in front of a nondescript block of a building with literally a kitchen sink for sale by the front door. We found ourselves inside this packed space and it was hard to avoid each other, although the Missus did her best.

  The lady running the sale warned us all about the poison ivy growing through the broken windows on the left. The building was once the Union Grove Baptist Church and her parents had bought it to use as a storage facility. “Throw it away? Noooo,” said the church lady of her late parents’ philosophy, and it was clearly the reason she had a church full of old oddities. Things were piled nearly to the ceiling. It was hard to tell what was what. The place required some junk spelunking. If you wanted to find a treasure, you best be prepared to dig.

  The church lady was a very attractive woman in her forties who clearly spent some cash on her new age crystal jewelry. She showed off a bit of her husband’s art that was placed in the one semi-organized corner of the building. They hoped to turn the church into a faith-based creative art studio, community center, and gallery, and they wanted to call it the Art of Worship. They believed in a type of artistic worship that was, in their words, “giving praise to God through spirit-led creative expression.” She had a higher purpose associated with getting rid of everything in the building, including the 1960s era Aloha napkins in my friend’s hand. My lifelong pal Scooter, who was doubling as my navigator on this trip, offered her a dollar for them. The church lady did not haggle one bit. “If it brings someone pleasure then I am happy,” she said. It became clear that there were gems sprinkled between the old dictionaries and straw boater hats.

  Suddenly the very quiet Mister and Missus piped up. They had been clearing things off two pieces of furniture that were barely noticeable to the untrained eye.

  “How much for the table?” asked the Mister.

  “Oh, it’s not for sale,” replied the church lady.

  “And for the desk?” asked the Mister again.

  “It’s not for sale,” the church lady said again quietly. The Mister would not be deterred. He tried chatting up her son a bit and explained that he and his wife were not from too far away. They lived in Talladega. It was then that he asked her son to help move a bench. The Mister saw something else and wanted a closer look. He was trying not to arouse others but clearly he thought he spied the mother lode. Underneath a couple old beat-up transistor radios and behind a distressed bench was a beautiful old dark wood-paneled radio, the kind you see in pictures from the 1930s in which Norman Rockwellian families are gathered around staring at the box with the voices coming out of it.

  “Does it work?” The Mister looked directly at the church lady. She looked off and then looked back with a pained smile. “Yes . . . but I did promise it to the man up the street who is helping me clean out this place.” She went on to explain how he was a local Civil War reenactor, but that revelation didn’t seem to have the weight that she intended, given she was talking to two black people of a certain age. However, the Mister did not skip a beat. “But I’m here now.” He was in full charm mode. The church lady hemmed. She hawed. She invoked the strength of her word. After a couple more tries, the Mister gave the woman his number and said if the man didn’t come back this week to claim the radio, to give him a call. The Missus just gave the church lady the death stare. They had the good cop/bad cop routine down.

  We ran into the couple again at the next stop, which was a bust except for the pure spectacle of a cool old-fashioned washing machine and a rusted Camaro hood for fifty bucks. I smiled at them again. This time, no response. None.

  By the fifth stop Scooter couldn’t take it anymore. He marched over and said, “Hey, you have a good eye, what are you all looking for?” The Mister started to answer but was cut off by the Missus. “We know what we are looking for.” And she got in their car. End of conversation.

  Then, finally, at one of the last stops, the Mister finally broke the silence. He whispered to us, “
I got such a deal,” as he carted off some chairs. It was also clear by the end of the day that we were not antiques dealers or any sort of buying competition. Yes, we—and by we I mean my friend Scooter—had picked up some really nice Fiestaware, some comic book glasses, and the ceramic dachshund hot dog from our first stop at Happy Hollow Road. We were hardly a threat. Finally it came out that they were retirees, she a former school principal (of course—who else has that kind of death stare), who wanted to open a little vintage store in Talladega. That’s all we got. And we never saw them again.

  There were so many people who lived in the area and were simply cleaning out their garages and taking advantage of the increased traffic on highway 411. Dottie B. had a prime spot, right on a corner with her front lawn facing the highway. It was terrifying to watch her seventy-something-year-old husband teetering on the top of a ladder hauling down things from the garage rafters. On the hood of their car they had about twenty brand-new T-shirts, most of them XXXL, with the state of Alabama on the front and the phrase “Alabama Is Praying for America,” which made sense. However, the tiny, tiny blue sweater with a Star of David on the chest was a bit of a mystery. “It is for a dog,” Dottie told us. A Jewish Chihuahua, maybe? Scooter bought it.

  Others yard sale vendors were pros who had their patter down—“If you see anything you want, must have, or desire, please inquire!” one tattooed, mustached fellow shouted out, not unlike a carnival barker. The crowds were thinning by 5:00 PM and he wanted to move some of his military memorabilia. As the sun set, the prices dropped as well. The tarps came out, buyers headed home, and sellers hunkered down in their campers and tents to get ready for early birds who would show up the next day.

  Day Two: Georgia

  “Well, we killed it. Had to get rid of the rooster. He was attacking the grandbabies.”

  Day two started with another fowl. This time it was on a farm not too far from Cave Spring, Georgia. The sellers, a younger couple, were filling in an older couple on the events of the past year. Clearly these retirees had visited this particular yard sale last year, which is why they got the update on the now-dead bird. The sellers still had quite a few head of cattle that did not seem at all interested in the people parading up the driveway of their farm. The wife told me she and her man just fill the barn with stuff all year long. “You all interested in any knives, guns? I can take you in the back.” Her husband offered us a chance to check out his weapon selection. No thanks. No permit. No thanks.

  The return visitor/buyer, Linda, was an emergency room nurse who works near the Talladega Super Speedway. As she picked up teacups and floral dessert plates, she told funny stories about taking care of people who find themselves over-served at NASCAR events. “Some people pay all that money for seats and never see the race because they are SO drunk.” Her husband kept an eye on her as she considered this and considered that. They were headed up to the Smoky Mountain Woodcarving Festival in Tennessee and he seemed eager to get going before his wife loaded up the car. She enjoyed taking this route each year because she was a self-described “piddler” who likes a knick or a knack. “My kids call it junk. I call it treasures.” Her accent was so sweet and lilting it made me side with her. “My children said they are going to set fire to it—the house—full of stuff.” The teacups went home with her.

  I’d made a deal with myself that this was a research trip, not a shopping trip. Then I saw a red camouflage baseball hat with Budweiser across the front and Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s number eight embroidered on the side. Bud and Dale. Two of my husband’s great loves. He is from St. Louis, home of the King of Beers, and he loves NASCAR. Did it matter that he owns at least six hats with Bud stitched somewhere on the lid or brim? Not really, I reasoned, because this one is red camo and Dale’s number and Bud.

  And this is how it starts. At that moment I saw the lure of things you don’t need but could trick yourself into believing you do. One, the item had some usefulness. It was a hat after all. Two, it had some special meaning. My husband loves his hometown so much and his mother worked for Bud for years. It didn’t matter that you can see Budweiser advertised pretty much everywhere except Babies“R”Us; somehow this Bud hat was special. Did he need it? No. Would he likely wear it in Greenwich Village, NYC, where we live? Unlikely. Did it come home with us and was my husband thrilled? Yes. Was it junk? I am not sure.

  “Junk? Junk is garbage. Junk is stuff you just can’t use anymore. Stuff is around that you can’t use but someone else might,” is what a veteran yard sale vendor named Sheryl told me. And it applied to my purchase. And it would seem to be the case again and again as we went from sale to sale to sale. Although on one table I saw, side by side, a stray rearview mirror inches away from a pair of big, white ladies underpants and a small Ziggy statue. Out of that trio, I’m not sure what was garbage, junk, or just stuff.

  Day Three: Tennessee

  The rest of the trip was a series of déjà vu moments on repeat. Slow down. Pull over. Walk around. Debate about an item. Marvel that someone tries to sell, say, a half-eaten pack of those peanut butter cheese crackers you find in a vending machine (real item for sale), and get back in the car. The crowd got younger and thicker by the last day of the sale, and people were more willing to bargain.

  People sold a lot of collections—lighthouses, bells, and thimbles to name a few. The amount of half-used items—perfume and cleaning products—was really odd. Nothing was quite as weird as the family selling printed wedding shower invitations for a woman named Mary Kay in Cleveland.

  It was clear from my three-day-long polling that the key element of true junk is worthlessness. Stuff seems to be a thing that you don’t want to use anymore but that someone else might, while treasures are any stuff or junk that appeals to you.

  Honestly I still thought of treasures as a euphemism to help rationalize spending hard-earned money on something small and probably useless. I didn’t really believe in treasure until the final hours of the Route 411 Sale. By the time we reached mid-Tennessee I was feeling yard sale fatigue. I couldn’t look at one more picture frame or made-in-China toy that some kid had straddled and probably peed on. With two hours until my flight back to New York, something, some voice in my head, told me to pull off at one last nondescript sale in Englewood, Tennessee. At first it looked like so many of the others. There were Alan Jackson posters and Crystal Gayle eight-track tapes. But off in the distance a bit back from the other mounds of stuff, I saw a small setup that had just a few items on it. It called to me. As I walked over I saw the ninetheenth-century opera glasses first. They were in perfect condition and came with a slightly distressed kid leather case. Also on the table was a carved white mother-of-pearl hairbrush and a matching hand mirror. They were so delicate and lovely.

  What happened next seemed like Jungian synchronicity at work. I spied a pamphlet made of parchment paper. It was aged but in good condition. It was a bound copy of a lecture given at Brown University on November 21, 1920, titled “The Arrival of the Pilgrims” by John Franklin Jameson, PhD. My jaw dropped. I went to Brown University and would be there the following week. Could this be real? Was this a true incidence of meaningful coincidence? I needed to know why on a rural road in Englewood, Tennessee, I was able to put my hands on an antique lecture from the college I attended which was located 939 miles away in Providence, Rhode Island. When I politely asked the owner about the origin of these items, Phyllis said she had decided it was time to do a little clean out and had found some things that belonged to a deceased family member. She told a bit of a jumbled story about a glamorous aunt in the family named Fanny McGregor. The family wasn’t originally from Tennessee and she struggled with the name of the town in Massachusetts where they once lived.

  “It starts with a T . . . Towtown?”

  “Taunton?” I nearly shouted.

  “Yes, Taunton. Cora wrote all this down. It is in her Bible, which I think is in a museum somewhere in New York.” Who was Cora and why would her Bible be in a museum? A few
more minutes of small talk and some quick note taking led to a long session down the Google rabbit hole when I returned home. Cora’s Bible is not in a museum in New York but is now a part of the Old Colony Historical Society in Taunton, Massachusetts, one of New England’s oldest historical societies. A few phone calls and a couple of newspaper searches revealed a story that goes something like this.

  Phyllis’s aunt by marriage was named Cora Gushee. She lived to be 103 years old. She and her husband had settled in upstate New York. She had been the historian of Youngstown, New York, and in fact there is a room named after her at the local civic center. “She was a great lady,” according to the volunteer at the Youngstown historical society who was happy to send me some information on Cora. She was a church elder. She was a charter member of the Town of Porter Historical Society. Early in her life she had been a farmer’s wife, and she continued to ride her tractor in her eighties. She did not have any children of her own but raised her twin nephews when her sister died. And she was the keeper of the family history.

  Cora’s husband, Gordon Clark Gushee, was the son of Louisa Clark, a descendent of one of the oldest families in the United States. The Clarks, then the Clarkes, arrived in 1637. According to family notes, the Clarks had Mayflower cards. Louisa Clark married a bright young reverend named Wallace W. Gushee. He graduated from Brown University in 1891 and remained active with the university. So that solved the mystery of the lecture. When his fiftieth college reunion rolled around he wrote in the alumni journal, “If alive, I expect to attend Ninety-one’s Golden!” He made it. Wallace’s older sister, Fanny Gushee, was born in 1863. Fanny married Archibald McGregor. Fanny McGregor was the bon vivant in the family and spent time in Europe enjoying the finer things in life. Some of the items for sale were hers.