Do you get that I buy junk? Stuff. Antiques. Vintage items. It didn't just start last week. Apparently, I was born to it. It seems to run in the female line of my family. My grandmother loved yard sales, my mother loved yard sales and my daughter enjoys them although she isn't addicted, yet. Give her time. She will be. Yard sales weren't prevalent in our area until the early 1970s when I was setting up housekeeping. As far as I know, none of us had been to a yard sale until that time, so just how did all this come about?
The two things I've always wanted to do with my life, the things that stayed with me from early childhood through adulthood, were to teach piano and be an antique dealer. When I started piano lessons at seven years old I knew right then and there, practicing on my little toy piano, that I wanted to teach others how to do that. I was actually teaching by the time I was sixteen and continued until just a few years ago. You'll find me as "ivorytklr" all over the internet. That's my eBay ID, too. I loved the kids, but was so frustrated when they never practiced, showed up without their books or their parents brought them half an hour early and didn't pick them up until half an hour after the lesson was over. I finally took a deep breath, gave it up and haven't looked back. No real regrets.
It was a little later that I knew I wanted to be an antique dealer and much later before I actually became one. I was an only child and a latchkey kid. There weren't many children to play with in my neighborhood and my mother really didn't like me to be outside when she wasn't there to watch me. She was afraid someone would kidnap me. This was in the 1960s in a nice neighborhood, folks. That kind of problem isn't just a recent happening.
I was often bored. We only had three channels on TV and one of those was the "educational channel". I wasn't into soap operas, so I'd sleep half the day during summer vacation and read the rest of the day. One fateful day when I was about twelve years old, I picked up a ladies' magazine that had an interesting article about an antique dealer. Why, I'd never heard of any such thing! My mother liked "new" and "modern". My grandparents just had old furniture from the Depression, utilitarian dishes and new stuff. No fabulous antiques. But I knew the moment I read that article that I wanted to be an antique dealer.
Fast forward to 1973. Through the years I acquired some knowledge of old things. I'd learned about glassware, Victorian, early American style, etc. In '73 I was a newlywed. Married right out of high school. People actually did that a lot back then. My mother decided to clean out my room and have a yard sale. Oh, the things she sold before I rescued them! I did keep my Barbies, but Skipper was sold. Sweet, blonde, Skipper. It took me years to find another I could afford. But I digress. Mom's sale was the first real yard sale in town. There had been the occasional church rummage sale, but people hadn't caught onto putting stuff in their yards and letting other people come buy it, yet. We'd heard that "up north" they did that kind of thing, but here in small town Alabama, it was very new. From that one sale, other people started having them and they spread like wildfire! I'm sure there were some treasures practically given away in those early days. Mom and I started going to them. I'd moved to the big city and was mostly broke, but I'd go with her when I was home for the weekend. Then Grandma started going with us. By the time I'd had a couple of kids, I was living back in the same small town. Grandma had passed away, but my mother and I would "hit the sales" every weekend. Most of the time my daughter would be with us. She attended her first sale at two weeks old. Sweet memories. Now it's just me. Momma is no longer with us and my daughter grew up and moved to another town, but we do try to get together often and keep the tradition going.
In the early days, I'd spend my quarters and dimes that were left over from groceries to buy any old thing I could afford. Not just "any old thing", but any "old" thing. My house was, and still is, furnished in yard sale chic. I also bought for my someday shop, an opportunity that didn't come along until 1998. In September of that year I opened a booth in an antique mall and began selling on eBay.
I love it, but it's all about the hunt for me. I sell so I can hunt some more. I truly enjoy finding things I think someone else might like. I prefer to find my prey in the wild and don't particularly like to shop flea markets or antique malls. That's a bit too much like going big game hunting in the zoo. Too easy. I will, however, shop these places if I have something particular in mind for me. These treasure hunts in the wild often turn into adventures - some funny, some scary, some amazing. That's the focus of this blog. To share my adventures with anyone who cares to listen - I mean read. And if you've stayed with me this long, I promise not to be so boring from now on.
