<\/p>\n

As of June 1 Oklahoma has officially reopened, and for the second weekend in a row Susan and I have ventured out on Saturday morning to visit garage sales. <\/p>\n

The weekend before last, the state was still opening up. Being close to strangers (even outside) still felt a little awkward and strange; that weekend, we only found two open garage sales. This past weekend, you would have been hard pressed to find any signs of the recent pandemic. For starters, we found four neighborhood-wide garage sales nearby. We must have stopped at ten garage sales and drive by twenty more, and didn’t see a single person wearing a mask. <\/p>\n

We usually hit garage sales too late and this weekend we started too early. Susan was ready to walk out the door at a quarter to seven, which, after picking up breakfast and coffee at McDonald’s, driving out at a quarter after seven wondering where everybody was. There’s nothing more awkward than getting the stink-eye from a woman setting up tables in her driveway as you cruise by at 4 mph. <\/p>\n

The closer it got to eight, the more sales began to open. At one of our first stops I found three metal patio chairs. The bottom of the legs are a bit rusty and they may not last more than a year, but for $2 each, they’ll hopefully buy me some time until I can save up and buy some better stuff for our new patios. Susan paid $5 for a large box with close to a hundred wooden hangers inside, and I found an overpriced R2-D2 for $3 that I bought because… well, R2-D2.<\/p>\n

The last garage sale we visited was a few miles off the beaten path, but well worth the drive. A large circular drive led to the side of a house where nine 8′ tables full of goods sat on display, surrounded by clothes on hangers and a yard full of treasure. <\/p>\n

The score at that sale was a large canvas print of a hand-drawn sign that said “Barbados,” complete with palm trees and a view of the ocean from the beach. I’ve been struggling to come up with a name for my recently-built workshop, and we decided that Barbados fit perfectly. My workshop is now officially known as North Barbados; the movie theater, South Barbados. For $2.50, I couldn’t turn the print down. Later today I’ll drag out the ladder and hang it somewhere in the workshop. <\/p>\n

While we were loading things into the back of my car I found a television remote and four VHS tapes — all things I bought at garage sales the weekend before. Half the things we buy end up stacked in the garage or donated back to Goodwill. Sometimes it’s about the stuff and sometimes it’s just about the search for stuff, but for me it’s always about the person I’m searching for stuff with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As of June 1 Oklahoma has officially reopened, and for the second weekend in a row Susan and I have ventured out on Saturday morning to visit garage sales. The weekend before last, the state was still opening up. Being close to strangers (even outside) still felt a little awkward and strange; that weekend, we only found two open garage sales. This past weekend, you would have been hard pressed to find any signs of the recent pandemic. For starters, we found four neighborhood-wide garage sales nearby. We must have stopped at ten garage sales and drive by twenty more,… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12610,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12606\/revisions\/12610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}