Thy Neighbors Stuff And Curiosity
By Mr.e

We'd just stumbled out of bed and into a well rehearsed and somewhat oiled Saturday morning routine.

The wife was waking up in the shower, this households feline contingent milling about restlessly while I wrestled with the coffee maker, attempting once again to extract that oh so perfect cup of Java from that not so perfect machine.

Filling the pot with water I looked out the kitchen window to witness some decidedly unusual Saturday morning activity at the house directly across the alley way out back. Were they moving or was this the beginning of a garage sale or had they won some jackpot?

Teased and tormented by these plausible scenarios, I fumbled through the final steps of the coffee tango, resigned to yet another oh so mediocre cup of coffee.

Then I looked some more to see a bed being hauled into the carport, some picture frames being deposited and by golly, the entire family was carrying stuff. It meant only one thing. A garage sale.

Mind you, it could still be pretty embarrassing if it turned out they were only moving stuff out of the house to give the insides a thorough paint job. We'd have some egg on our face if we ventured out the back gate en mass to find out that was the case. Fortunately for us a van pulled up, belching huge clouds of bluish exhaust. An old guy got out and rummaged expertly through the showcased stuff. Bingo!

Screeching brakes were put on breakfast. It would have to wait. We were joining the early vultures at the treasure trove. At this point you may or may not believe me when I tell you that I am not a garage sale junky. I'm not. We're not. I can count the number of garage sales I've been to on one hand and still have a finger left over.

But this one was too close to be nonchalantly ignored as does stuff that happens in adjoining yards and visible balconies. This was as close to an invitation as any immediate neighbors would get. It was a visual signal to gather round and start pickin' over the stuff that was being offered up for a pittance. The message was clear and it seemed deliciously exciting when unfamiliar vehicles pulled alongside the saleable spread of multifarious items; blocking what little view we had.

When living in close proximity with others, I begin to observe and over time am able to assemble a story about the people that live in my neighborhood. Of course vital and often very revealing clues are missing, unobservable and impossible to intuit. The challenge in this case lay with the two houses grandly in our view, across the back alley.

Unlike our immediate neighbors to the left and right, contact with the populace over there was nonexistent. They existed only visually; like an ant farm where some of the tunnels and goings on remain secret and private. Over the course of our current residency at this address I had the opportunity to observe.

A bold opportunity was poking me in the eyeballs. I'd get to see what kind of taste they had. What a person buys he covets; or likes only moments before the fateful purchase is made.

Coffee in hand (didn't want to be making any rash decisions in a sleepy state) we opened the back gate and strolled across no mans land and then deeply into neighbor territory. Suddenly we were surrounded by someone else's stuff!

The rummaging began immediately. "Hey, a chrome waffle iron!" Grab! "Wow, some cool books!" Grab! "A skipping rope!" Grab! Ok, so I had to go back to the house to get some money, but we did eat waffles the next morning. Only burned one, but they sure tasted good.

We didn't stay long but discovered that these neighbors were rearranging their kids rooms and painting. Most of the familiar faces in this neck of our neighborhood eventually turned up out there, during the course of the morning.

The thrill of stumbling across a really cool item at any garage sale is always there. I've got a really cool looking super 8mm film projector somewhere around here. It doesn't work yet, needs some hard to find belts, cost me only $3 but it looks really cool and perhaps I'll get it working one day, if I can find those belts. I've even got some film to run through it; old embarrassing stuff.