The Catholic church down on Republic Road had its annual garage sale this weekend, so I sneaked off on Friday afternoon to see if there was anything for me. I don’t know why, but I’ve been a little down on going to garage sales of late. In the past, I’ve found things I could use in crafts or around the house; I’ve found things to sell on eBay for a bit of walking around money; I’ve found things I collect myself, like old computers and electronics; and I’ve found books and music.
However, I’m not doing the crafts or the eBay much these days, and I’m stuffed to the rafters with books to read. You don’t find old electronics in garage sales these days, as they’ve already found their ways into collections by this point. And the household stuff available is generally ticky tack, and although I’ve been a bachelor and once had a cable spool covered with shag fabric as a central piece of furniture in my loving room, I’m entering the age of my life (that is, married a while) where I’m moving away from pressboard if I can. We’re even down to only two secondhand (garage sale, natch) Sauder printer stands as central pieces of furniture in our house. So the only thing I’m really interested in is maybe some music or records. But I’m still drawn to garage sales for old times’ sake and because, hey, who knows. But I favor the church sales because normal garage sales are rife with kids’ things and things young families want to get rid of. I’m not in a young family, so I don’t need what they have to offer.
At any rate, I did find something:
Among the books, we have:
- A Norwegian-English dictionary, just in case I ever get to greet the members of a-ha in their native language.
- Four books in Andre Norton’s Witchworld series in a box set.
- A book of holiday jokes to scan during fall football games and then to pass onto the joke-loving children.
- Two of the Richard Marcinko Rogue Warrior novels whose names I didn’t recognize.
- The Book of Useless Information, another to flip through between football plays on Sunday afternoons.
- A couple books of manga. I don’t know anything about manga, even how to pronounce manga. I want to pronounce it with a j sound, like mangia, but that’s because I did an open mic night at a little restaurant called Mangia Italiana a couple times back in the day. I’m not sure whether to try it like mango (as Americans pronounce it) or mango (like it’s properly pronounced by Spanish speakers). Given that I spoke Japanese with a Spanish accent back when I tried to learn it from a text-based computer program and pronounced all transliterated Japanese words with Spanish phonemes, I’ll go with the latter until I embarrass myself and say it in front of someone who knows how it’s pronounced.
- Mele Abbey a guidebook for a landmark of some sort to flip through during football games. Hey, it’s OTA time for the NFL. I have to prepare for the season, too.
- The Road to Serfdom by Hayek. For fifty cents.
As to music, I got:
- The Denver Brass, Misbehavin’ on CD.
- The Best of Romance of The Spanish Guitar on CD.
- The Dave Brubeck Trio, Time Out (1959) on vinyl.
- Pearl Bailey, Saint Louis Blues on vinyl.
- A 78 rpm picture record of Joan Edwards singing “More than You Know” and “Go West Young Man”. It lists on eBay for 40-80 dollars. W00t! And it sounds good.
- A couple of Bing Crosby 78s. It’s the binder for songs from the film Going My Way, but of the 3 platters, only one is included, and its spindle hole is damaged and requires repair; another disc is “White Christmas”.
- A 78 song and story book for “Little Toot”.
Additionally, I picked up two videocassettes: Crocodile Dundee and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown along with a book about drawing heroes that I’ve passed onto my children.
The total cost was $17.50. I was tempted to return today to buy the rest of the 78s for a buck (it’s a dollar for a bag at noon), but I’m resisting it.
I pronounce manga with a soft a and a g, rather than j sound.