Earlier in the week Susan noticed signs posted around the entrance of our neighborhood announcing that this weekend would be garage sale day for not only our neighborhood, but all four neighborhoods that corner the Reno and Czech Hall intersection. We don’t get a chance to garage sale as often as we would like, so these neighborhood garagle sales are a good way to get the best bang for your buck, so to speak — you can hit 20 or more garage sales in one day and get the whole garage sale thing out of your system for a while.

For this morning’s garage sales we charged up the golf kart (which is quickly becoming a staple of our neighborhood garage sale experience) and invited mom, dad and Linda over to join us. Mom brought Linda, Linda brought Griffin, Dad brought donuts. As we stepped out into the neighborhood to begin our shopping adventures we found … nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. No garage sales on our street, no garage sales on our block. Per dad’s advice we ditched the idea of searching for garage sales via golf kart or foot and took to our cars. Between the four neighborhoods all we probably found a dozen garage sales and only stopped at half of them. Throughout the years Susan and I have honed our “shop from the street” skills. Sometimes you’ll spot boxes of treasure that need to be dug through, but if we drive by and all we can see are clothes, we’re probably not stopping.

Mason got a few small odds and ends — a couple of small, electronic handheld games (Football and Simon), a plastic golf set (he’s a putt putt man, like myself), and a big cardboard map of the United States with holes in it to hold quarters from each state. Mason was determined to not like the map — I told him it would be fun, but he didn’t really understand what it was. I bought it for him anyway (it was a buck). Would you believe that kid pouted all the way home? At one point he was sitting in the back of the truck, arms crossed and head down. When I asked him what the problem was he said, “I did NOT want that TOY.” Well good grief. At the next stop dad dug out some quarters and Mason found where they were on the map and he started to get it. Then when we got home Granny dug through her purse and Mason got a few more. I think after he was all done he got 12 quarters filled in the map, which not only kept him busy for a while but also paid for the dumb thing three times over.

Whoever organized our neighborhood garage sale needs to head over to Sun Valley next spring and see how it’s really done.