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26
Back Porch
The Great Junk Hunt
by Vernon R. Harris
The most peculiar ailment ever to sweep through Mississippi—indeed, through all of America—is also the most contagious, an awesome virus known as Rummage Sale Mania or RSM. No doctor in his or her right mind ever tries to treat those afflicted with this disorder. The physician may be. in fact, among the most ardent victims of this malady which generates not pain and debility but an alarming state of total ecstasy and a compulsion to walk, under a hot summer sun, carrying everything the arms can hold.
While not generally considered life-threatening, RSM can, in extreme cases of wild spending, induce instant poverty. And the ferocity of Rummage Sale Mania, since there are no effective vaccines to impeded its progress, tends always to escalate. When the fever comes upon them, these hapless victims may be observed driving all over town or even into the next county, eagerly scanning every post along the way for signs announcing a rummage sale as imminent if not actually in progress.
When the sale (any sale) is located, automobiles are abandoned in haste as mania sufferers scatter hastily on foot, each hoping to be first upon the scene. Even good friends, in this frantic race, may become ruthless competitors. As impossible to resist as gravity, this ailment causes countless adherents to neglect routine chores at home, to go without any breakfast in order to get started sooner, and to brazenly strip their piggy banks of every coin. RSM, while hardly ever lethal, can be frightening for its grasp upon the soul
RSM is mostly a seasonable phenomenon, breaking out in the early spring and by summer raging like a prairie fire through tall grass. I became infected when I was already well into middle age and thus was
mercifully spared its ravages in my youth. But for others, like my grandson Matthew, RSM seems to be hereditary
Before he could even walk wdl Matt was out at dawn every Saturday morning, lurching along at my side in out mutual quest for inexpensive treasures. By the age of ten, he had become a very shrewd sufferer, and his finest triumph occurred in a yard where we found a set of sixteen books featuring Dennis the Menace, whom Matt physically resembled and looked upon as a role model. He wanted those books for which the owner was asking fifty cents each, a fair price. But Matt, his business acumen as sharp as a new razor, offered the man four dollars cash for the lot. The bargain was made in an excellent display of juvenile prowess with green money, and Matt’s old ancestor was very proud of his shopping skill.
My own most remarkable victory came later the same day, farther down the street. While idly browsing at another sale, I discovered a leather-bound volume, a literary relic from the year 1873, which contained articles from a women’s magazine of that day called “The Ladies’ Repository.” The price was five dollars, an extravagant ransom for a angle book, but lacking Matt’s finesse at haggling and ashamed to offer less, I handed over the entire sum without delay. My fever was soaring to extraordinary heights that day, and I knew something which the seller apparently did not.
I had found an ancient manuscript as exciting and rare, in its own way, as the Dead Sea Scrolls. I had acquired a prime source of priceless information, a golden key to the thoughts and actions of women more than a century before.
This could lead me, I suspected, to a significant breakthrough to
understanding the often eccentric behavior of women in my own era. With a wife and two grown daughters, all suffering from Rummage Sale Mania. I was desperate for any help I could glean from any source.
A few minutes later at another sale, I encountered a man whom I had known for years as an advanced suffered of RSM and a zealous collector of old books. When he saw my new old treasure, his eyes lit up like lighthouse beacons and he offered me twenty-five dollars for it without even cracking the cover. His fever had carried him, obviously, far beyond reason and completely around the bend. His mania was not alleviated, moreover, when I adamantly refused to sell at any price he could afford.
I let him examine the book and then swaggered away with the wisdom of the ages within my own grasp, not his. When the race is on and RSM is raging, there is little room for mercy, even toward old friends, and none at all for altruism.
The most alluring aspect of the rummage sale for the inspired victim of RSM is the infinite variety of things for sale. In a shoe store, one expects to find shoes. In a grocery, one might reasonable seek orange juice or chicken thighs. Those are simple facts of life, But in the garage or back yard of a stranger, we find wonders too diverse to describe and far too wonderful to leave there. Their arrangement, on the tables or on the ground, is neither alphabetical nor commercially practical. It is, in feet, quite often chaotic.
On one table, for example, the sufferer may discover a chipped coffee cup (priced at a quarter, his for a dime) which can be taken home to join, in a bulging cupboard, the other 127 cups, all distinctively