Yard Sales Are in My DNA
How the FREE Book Box Saved My Life
In Connecticut, where I was born and raised, yard sales go by another name, tag sales. I have lived across the Tri-State region at various points in my life and I still find it interesting that New York and New Jersey commonly refer to these same weekend events as garage or yard sales, but never as tag sales. I began tag sale shopping in the early 80’s, as malls were beginning to cause main street stores to shutter. From early May, to late October, my parents would dedicate their Saturday mornings to tag sale hunts. A weekend tradition that I continue today with my own children here in New Jersey.
We would wake up before sunrise in our tiny, first floor apartment in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After getting dressed, my mom, dad, and myself, would squeeze into his vintage, Volkswagen Beetle. The Beetle had an odd heating system that took forever to warm up. The heat came in two settings, off or intense. I had long legs as a kid, and had to find a way to get my legs across the backseat so I would not end up with a bad ankle burn.
Without the assistance of any map, my dad would set out towards the back roads, and into some of the wealthier suburbs of Southern Connecticut. Our Saturday morning excursions were my first glimpse into another life that I truly could not understand. These huge homes with massive yards were occupied by a single family. In contrast, my parents rented out a small, two bedroom apartment, in a three family house next to the train tracks and across from an old bottle factory. We had a grey, cement porch, asphalt in our front yard, and hedges that provided our only greenery. Our windows and cellar door were protected with black, iron bars and security bolts. In Bridgeport, pretty grass was for parks and picnics, and these homes with all their open space reminded me of them.
After what felt like forever in the cramped backseat, and fighting off nausea from my dad’s stick shift driving, we would end up in towns like Newtown, Monroe, or Westport. If mom spotted a new, tag sale sign on a post, then we would follow the maze of arrows until arriving at the destination. Long tables with pretty tablecloths were arranged in the driveway with all sorts of old household items, clothes, and gobs of antiques. Toys were rarely sold at these sales so early on I stopped hoping to find a Barbie or a Donny & Marie doll. As a kid, I always thought they were more like junk sales and could not understand why someone would bother to sell a box of old buttons, or a broken, dusty lamp. I usually ended up looking through the marked FREE BOX that was often placed at the end of the driveway. It usually consisted of old books, classics mostly, but as a kid who loved to read, they were a treasure trove.
My mom came to live in Norwalk, Connecticut at the age of 18 from Puerto Rico. She was by far the prettiest girl in her town, and by the time the Vietnam War was well underway, she had already experienced great love and loss. Her parents decided it was best to send her to live with her oldest sister and began to work as an office clerk at a large tech company. Even though she was a hard worker and a quick learner, her writing skills were limited and unfortunately became a barrier in her office position. She would later be removed from her clerk position and placed on the assembly line until her retirement.
My parents owned two books, my mom had her Santa Biblia, and my dad had his Webster’s Dictionary. It would take me another five years or so to realize that my father was illiterate. He could not read or write in any language. It took him repeated tries to sign his paycheck each week. With limited resources, he did the best he could to learn new words. Each night he would sit at the kitchen table and he would spend an hour copying dictionary words into a spiral notebook. He would fill it from cover to cover as he worked through each row of words. When completely filled he would start the next one and begin the same cycle. He never asked me for my help in learning the words he wrote down. He continued this each night up until his death at the age of 53. I was in my second year at Manhattan College when he died. I vividly remember the knock on the classroom door that afternoon in early May. I was sitting at my desk taking my final exam for literature when someone had asked for me to step out into the hall. He died before seeing me graduate. I had hoped that maybe in seeing me march he would finally be proud of me. Something he never once verbalized.
Reading became my opportunity to escape the harsh realities of my city, and the harsher realities of my turbulent home life. Even though I disliked waking up early on Saturdays, finding at least one book, made up for the loss of sleep. They usually found at least three “good” sales on any given Saturday and would stuff the Beetle with items that could be cleaned up and resold, or sent back to relatives in Puerto Rico. The hunt for sales ended around noon and we then retraced our steps to make the trek back to Bridgeport. If my parents had enough money left over, then I would be treated to a meatball or pastrami grinder at the local deli.
As my parents unloaded the Beetle, I headed into my room, with my books in tow, and closed the door behind me. After carefully arranging the books on my bed, I would sit there trying to figure out which book to start first. Sometimes the choice was easy, like the time I found Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express or the time I found a copy of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. I found my escape in these books and nothing else outside my door really mattered. Even as the one o’clock, Metro-North train zoomed past our house and caused everything on the shelves to vibrate, I was in another place, far, far away.
