Wild Junk

Tuesday my friend Stephen and his dad and I went to an "I am running away from home sale." This turned out to be quite an adventure and not your usual yard sale.
The man lived in a double wide mobile home that was being foreclosed on and was selling almost everything inside and outside the house. The place was trashed and frankly filthy...it was the kind of place many of my friends would run away from the moment they saw it.

There wasn't much there I was interested in (although I wish I could have gotten the old dresser and night stand he had inside).
But outside was a pile of stuff that had belonged to someone whose RV had broken down. And he just left what he couldn't take in this man's yard. So this man told us that everything in the pile was free. The first thing I spotted was this odd creature staring out at me from underneath the pile. I did not take him home with me, but I did pull him of the mess so I could take his picture.

While Stephen and his dad went to the shed to look at what was in the shed I started digging through the pile. It was covered in snow. Within minutes my gloves were soaked wet and probably worthless. I took them off...and lost them at some point. But I found, and came home with, the oddest pieces of junk. One of the first things I spied was some groovy looking fabric. I pulled it out and saw that it was a hippie looking shirt from the 60s. One of Stephen's friends is in charge of the costumes for the plays put on at the local university and I knew she needed stuff from that era for the next play they'll be doing. So that was the first awesome score I made.
This pile had the most eclectic mix of stuff. There were drawers of clothings, coffee cans filled with nuts and bolts, spray paint, stuffed animals, electric razors, bars of soap, etc. But I found some "good" junk too.

I found a plastic tray that had lots of vintage buttons (I am so loving these buttons), rocks (including a nice hunk of amethyst crystals...this is great since my dad loves stuff like this) , and just weird things like parts for musical gadget piggy banks (put a coin through and it triggers music...because they're old some of them are dying so the music sounds hilarious when it starts to play). When I got home and sorted through the stuff in this tray I also found a Storm Trooper's head. For some reason I thought that was one of the best things in the tray other than the buttons.

I also got a cool old, metal milk crate (which was handy to carry all the junk I got). There was a vintage lamp (that works). Some neat old tins and oil cans. A very old, gold picture frame. An old colander and bottle opener. And a coffee can full of mini liquor bottles...that aren't old...I have no idea what I am going to do with them. And many other miscellaneous things that I can't recall.

Stephen got a crate full of stuff out of the pile too. But he's more practical than me and ended up with things like paint rollers that were still in their packaging. And his crate wasn't an old, metal one like mine.

Stephen gave the guy five bucks for the stuff we took, even though he said it was free. (Stephen's an awesome guy that way and I was thinking of doing the same, but he beat me to it.)

Now despite the fact that it seems like I picked up a lot of absolute junk, I should be able to sell most of it. The milk crate and the buttons alone made the whole trip and picking through some odd things worthwhile.

It was a totally fun day for an oddball like me.