Memorial Day weekend sales (or really any holiday weekend) usually equals a few crappy sales and then knocking off early for breakfast. Plus it’s been raining! Sometimes when you expect nothing you are pleasantly surprised when it works in your favor.

Our first stop was an estate sale for an old woman just down the street from me, the listing said she was a world traveler, but aside from a boxes of matches from all over the world there wasn’t much there. She did have this amazing jewel-encrusted Buddha.

One room was filled with Christmas items, does every estate sale need to have one of these? It actually makes me never want to collect anything holiday-related.

It turned out she had been the owner of the Viking Tavern, a great bar directly across the street. Not sure if she pocketed these “light” beers for a later date (um, like before 1978).

We moved on to a sale that I’ve hit a few times before, from this guy that is a sock rep. I have purchased socks from him each time. Last time I purchased some Dahlgren socks that my boyfriend and i still fight over. I was a little bummed that he is no longer a Dahlgren guy, but I still purchased 15 pairs of socks.

Next we ended up at sale that we had been at a couple of weeks ago, and I moaned about having to just do a drive by. But we stopped, and it turned out to be the best sale of the day. It’s true she had her sale before, but this time she was really cleaning house. I picked up a Gunne Sax dress for a buck and a few other items. We started to drive away and I looked up on the porch and noticed it was packed with stuff that we hadn’t even seen! We stopped the car and started digging in piles of CDs for 50 cents each, books, and records for 25 cents. SCORE. We both left with piles of CDs and probably my best purchase: a sealed box CD set called “The Ultra-Rare Best Of William Burroughs: From Giorno Poetry Systems.” $2 – woot!

To counter-balance out that one, we then hit one of the most crusty sales. The sale was filled with stuff and all of it was bad. I am not even sure how people end up with so much garbage. I hate to make judgments, but since so many items end up in landfills it seems like a good idea to stop and think for a second before you buy some piece of crap.

Heading away from that one, we drove past this huge pink bird thing just parked on the street, and had to stop the car. Still don’t know what it is.

After hitting a few more sales we went to another area of town and hit some of the biggest duds ever. We were entertained by this guy’s sign, but his sale was bad.

At one stop we came across one of the better combinations — the taco holder and the bagel holder.

After starting to head home we got lured into hitting what I can only describe as the Wall Drug of yard sales. Anyone that has been to Wall Drug knows that they have these signs every couple of miles … Here are some of the stuff that these people had written on their signs (which we drove past every six blocks or so).

• Let’s Talk About Yard Sales
• A House, A Home, A Yard Sale
• Stop Driving, Start Living – Yard Sale
• The Architecture of Yard Sales
• Super Groovy Yard Sale
• Kick Ass Yard Sale, Dude

Considering it was 2:00 pm when we got there, they still had tons of stuff: tools, tons of t-shirts, and loads of sci-fi paperback books. There was nothing we wanted to purchase.

Jenny drove by some of the signs on Monday and they had added on the word “FREE” — I think by then they were probably desperate to have people just come and take the leftovers away.

Some of the sales were really bad, but the ones that were good more than made up for it and it ended up being a pretty great day.