The Sales, the Gun Show & Pet Peeves

Ahhhhh….. the weekend. I was so looking forward to going to sales after a long dry spell. Being out of town or tied down and not getting to go to any in several weeks, I was “chompin’ at the bits”. What a let down!

You all know I prefer estate sales over yard sales. I find them a better use of my time and gas, even though some professionally run sales are ridiculously expensive. I’ve learned to hunt for the things the pricers didn’t value.

There was one sale in a town near here on Friday. It was actually better than I expected. Everything was reasonably priced. There just wasn’t a whole lot I wanted. I did get a primitive (home made), chippy (mostly no paint) table that I don’t have a picture of here. Got some bottles for future projects, a hand, dirt loosener that looks like a mini pitchfork and the cutest metal, puppy, wall lamp. Oh, and a red, plaid golf bag that will hold Christmas greenery.

Saturday morning there were 5 or 6 estate sales advertised in the Birmingham area. Woohoo! Hot dog! But here comes my pet peeve. People, pay attention. An estate sale is where the contents of a deceased person’s house are sold or we can stretch it to someone going into a nursing home and selling everything they can’t take with them. An estate sale is not, I repeat NOT:

1. I’m moving to a smaller home and selling what I don’t want
2. I’m an antique dealer closing my booth and all this stuff originally came from estates
3. I’m cleaning out my 6 year old’s closet and have a couple of Grandma’s things to put in the sale
4. Look at the fall flower arrangements I made!
5. The paper made a mistake (Yeah, right)
6. I’m closing my mechanic’s shop

Ugh. Not one sale that was advertised as an estate sale was a true estate. Not even close. I didn’t enter one house. I drove all over creation, using gallons of gas chasing the estate sale that simply did not exist. I probably missed one or two that was advertised as a yard sale.

I did come home with these:

 

 

This all leaves me still chompin’ at the bits.

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The gun show was interesting. I went with Ricky while he was setting up and for a while on Saturday afternoon. The testosterone was so thick you could cut it with a knife! The assortment of shoppers was like what you’d see in a flea market, just mostly guys. Some women were with their husbands and some were shopping themselves, but it was a predominently a man thing. No surprise there. Some were cute, southern, good ‘ol boys. A few were scary. Many I wanted to buy ’em a new shirt. A shirt that was less than 25 years old. Ya know? I’m not criticizing… just sayin’. The interesting thing was what people were buying. Ricky sells shotguns. Shotguns aren’t as likely to kill a person unless they’re very up close and personal. He sold one gun. No other shotgun sellers did much better. People were buying rifles and ammunition. Rifles kill people!! Ack! We kept hearing people saying they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to buy them any more after the election or they’d be taxed or too expensive. I won’t get into all that. I’m just reporting what I heard. I will say I’ll be so glad to get this @$^%! election over with! I hate election years. Always have, always will. Not a political person at all. I rarely even watch the news other than local news.

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It seems I have so much extra time on my hands (hahahahahaha) I’ve created another web site. What was I thinking?! I can’t begin to do justice to everything I have going on in my life as it is and now I’ve added another. That settles it. Cleaning house has officially gone by the wayside. Just can’t fit that one in.

This is something I actually started several years ago. Our library has the local newspapers dating from the 1920s. Earlier ones are on microfilm. I’m copying articles about the people, chit chat, marriages, deaths, trials and local happenings and putting them on the site. It’s fascinating! WordPress makes it so easy I thought I’d pick up the interest and put it on the web. Now to keep it going. In my spare time. If you want to see and read about my town in the “old days”, the site is Sylacauga History.