What Goes Around Comes Around

Living on an island means you have to worry about your trash. The recycle center takes glass, newspapers, plastic, and cans for free. Anything else you must pay to get rid of. A small TV? $25. Old computer? $35 and up, depending on size. This is the driving force for yard sales. Spring and fall, there are a plethora of them. It's better to sell something than have to pay someone to take it away, eh? If you can't sell it you'd be surprised at the junk people will exit your yard with if it has a big sign on it that says FREE. I love to go to yard sales, as well as have them. I imagine that some day I will attend one and everything for sale will have once belonged to me!

A version of the following essay was published in Martha's Vineyard Magazine.

My girlfriend Janice saves the papers for me when I’m off-Island. I’m always afraid I’ll miss something that is destined to become Island lore, like one year’s biggest derby fish—just shy of 50 pounds, dragged aboard a boat by a 12-year-old girl. There are things so uniquely Vineyard that you wouldn’t want to miss them.

The papers are in pristine condition, except for the yard sale sections. These ads are circled, crossed out and accompanied by comments in the margin. Janice knows just about everyone on the Island, so she knows where the best stuff will be. The last time I picked up the papers, she was beside herself with glee. A local summer celebrity (I won’t mention her name because we Island people aren’t impressed by such) was staging a yard sale with the proceeds going to charity. The two things Vineyarders love most, yard sales and charities. Naturally, I had to go.

I arrived at the sale about a half hour after it began and all that was left were a few chipped coffee mugs and a pile of dog-eared books. There was a truck in the driveway filled with mismatched furniture. The new owners of this—let’s be honest—heap of used stuff were in seventh heaven. I’m willing to bet they would have turned their noses up at my own, far superior, furniture. I realized then that this celebrity was, like the rest of us Vineyarders, just trying to avoid a large dump fee.

I saw a woman walking around with an item no one could identify. Not even the owner. It looked like a slinky welded to a flat rectangular piece of metal. She forked over four dollars and announced, “It’ll be a conversation piece.” Well, I thought, maybe if someone figures out what it is. How can you have a conversation about an unknown object? I don’t know about you, but six people sitting around saying, “Maybe it’s a . . . ” is not, in my opinion, a conversation.

There was a long line snaking into the house. Don’t ask me why, but I just can’t resist a line. I always join. I guess it's because I have faith in people. I figure if there’s a line, there must be something good at the other end. The crowd was humming like a high-tension wire. I guess it was the thrill of seeing a celebrity in her own house. Now, as for me, I never want to know too much about famous people. It takes away their "aura." Gee—she has a toilet and a garbage pail . . . hmmm.

At last my part of the line made it into the house. There she sat, surrounded by her minions, smiling benevolently. The only thing missing was a throne. On the table in front of her sat a stack of autographs ($5) and signed photographs ($10) that, one assumes, had it not been for the yard sale, would have gone in the trash with the rest of the unwanted items. 
Sometimes I’m wrong. Sometimes there isn’t anything I want at the front of the line. I wondered what this famous celebrity would have done if, in true yard-sale fashion, I had offered her a quarter for an autograph.