Junky yards are a dime a dozen wherever you live (or at least, in neighborhoods not far from wherever you live). I usually assume the best -- that someone is in the process of cleaning up -- because I've been there before. (Still go there sometimes.) But there is one particular category of junky yard that I never saw when I lived in the city: the eternal yard sale.
A couple of years ago, the inhabitant of a nearby trailer decided to have a yard sale. At the end of the weekend, most of the stuff had not been sold. This is when most people would donate the remaining items, or else shove them all into a hidden corner. But this remarkable woman wakes up every morning with renewed hope and faith that someone will stop by and want something. And very slowly, over the past couple of years, the amount of stuff in her front yard has dwindled, though not to the extent that you can't tell it was originally a yard sale.
Here is what I find most perplexing: some mornings, I see her out in the yard, pulling weeds or raking leaves, and I think, huh. Wouldn't a yard covered in leaves be better than a yard covered in junk? So I suppose she is keeping things tidy for the next customer, and the next, and so on, throughout eternity.
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2 comments:
Kinda sounds like she thinks of it as her "shop" or something, when you put it that way. Low overhead costs since it's in her front yard. She was going to be home anyway. I guess she gets to make the occasional money off of it.
Okay, not what I would choose, but I liked your sentence, "[t]his remarkable woman wakes up every morning with renewed hope and faith that someone will stop by and want something." Maybe she is indeed eternally optimistic. Maybe she is lonely and it's a way to get people to stop by.
Ew, has it not gotten all wet and moldy in the recent rains?
My initial feelings about her yard and how she chooses to expend her energy were a bit more rant-ish, as my husband can attest, but she's an older lady, and as I wrote, I found myself wondering about the details of her life, and I couldn't help but feel kindly toward her. It's odd, but it's her life, and she's made it this far.
Fortunately, most of the items left in her yard are made of hard materials -- no clothes and such to get totally icky in the rain. But I imagine everything that's there is a bit worse for weather at this point.
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