On Friday afternoon I hit an estate sale near my house. While I love our frenzied Saturday routine of getting in as many sales as we can, there is also something to be said for having just one stop to make and taking your time looking around. This sale was probably better earlier in the day, but there were still some interesting items to be found. One of the first things I found: lawn darts!

Dangerous! Illegal! And pricy, too. As were many things in the house, like this “rain lamp” (where oil drips down the strings like rain).

That flowery wallpaper lined the whole room — this was in the basement, which had holiday crap galore plus an awful lot of booze-related items. Mostly not that exciting, but I couldn’t resist a little plastic bag of goofy drinking kitsch items for $1. (Nice and cheap! It was all over the map — a lot of stuff was cheap, but then it was like they were hoping to get lucky on a few items and priced them way too high.)

There was more upstairs, including this intriguing little box.

“For the girl who gets a charge out of being in style” — what could that mean? I opened it up …

Um. Wow.

That wasn’t the only wacky fun gift item they had.

In case you are feeling as baffled as I was about what those are, they are gold-painted, fur-trimmed clothespins.

It was definitely one of the more entertaining sales I’ve been to in a while — not least when I overheard one of the sellers tell another, “I don’t get people’s names tattooed on me anymore.” And when I got home and dug into my bag of goodies, here’s what I found …

Baggie of monkeys and elephants for the rim of your drink! A wind-up hopping shot glass! Gag ice cubes (that’d work better if they hadn’t yellowed with age)! Cow-shaped indicators for how your steak is cooked — okay, those aren’t exactly drinking-related, and neither is the “round tuit” or the mysterious wind-up black creature that looks like a two-armed spider. (Its arms flop around and make it roll when it’s wound up — my cat was very amused.)

A couple of items deserve a closer look. First up, the “Martini Tester.”

The other side of the instructions read “Not a Gadget — It Works!” I haven’t tried it out yet.

And next, let’s find out what’s in that “Waggish Drunkard” box …

Oh. A little man wearing a barrel. Wait a minute, what happens when you put his arms down?

Whoever had lived in this house clearly appreciated a good gag … or at least a really bad one.