In Part 1: The Collector, the first article in this series, I shared with you the estate sale adventure that my kids and I had while out sourcing vintage treasures for our shop.
Join us on another vintage treasure hunting adventure with Part 2 of this series of articles…
The Dead-End Road
You never know where you’ll end up when you are attending an estate sale that was advertised in your local, small town newspaper. I hope you don’t end up on a dead-end road like we once did!
The newspaper ad said that the “estate sale” included the house, garage, and outbuildings, and that these buildings were filled with vintage and collectibles – the “something for everyone” type of ad. We have very spotty cell coverage in the rural area where we live, so we were not able to use the map app on my phone to help us find the address (or to preview the place using Google Earth). Instead, we had to navigate the old-fashioned way and followed the directions given in the ad.
We turned off the county road onto what looked like a minimum maintenance dirt road that the house was supposed to be on. The “road” was only wide enough for one car, maybe a car and a half, and had ditches on either side that went into very tall grass and overgrowth. The road had lots of huge pot holes, most filled with water. The road was curvy, so I couldn’t see very far ahead, and I had no idea how long the road was. After navigating the pot holes for about a quarter of a mile, I realized I really didn’t want to go any further. I didn’t know if we had the correct road or not, and my gut feeling told me to just leave. The problem was, there was no place to turn around, and I didn’t think it would be too easy to navigate all those pot holes while backing up to retrace our steps to get back out to the county road. I certainly didn’t want to get stuck or block the driveway. I made the uneasy decision to continue on, hoping for a place to turn around.
After about a mile, we crossed a culvert in the road, took a right turn (the only way to turn at that point), and there was the house! The ONLY house on what ended up to be a dead-end road. We could see the house, the garage next to the house, an open space in the driveway / yard and then the outbuildings across this space. There were old junker cars parked every which way and three guys were standing near those vehicles – just hanging out. I could see a woman sitting inside the garage among the tables of items they were selling. The house and buildings weren’t in the best state of affairs… there were cracks in the window glass and the front door to the house appeared to be missing.
We were the ONLY “customers” at this “estate sale” at this point, and I was not feeling comfortable being there. With no easy way to turn around – a three-point turn to get my truck pointing in the direction of “out” was the only exit strategy available. At a glance, I couldn’t see anything that I considered of vintage value, but I decided I should be courteous to the people that were there, so I got out of my truck and locked my kids inside it. This was one situation when they were not going to get out of the truck with me. I walked up to the woman in the garage, we exchanged “hello’s” and I started looking over the tables and we made small talk. The woman was very cheerful and pleasant, but I was still uneasy about the three guys who were just hovering around (in the middle of a weekday), so I decided to shop quickly to get back to my kids in the truck. I found a really old dictionary on one of the tables, picked it up, and walked to the woman in the garage to pay for it. The woman was very thankful for the purchase I had made – and it became clear that this sale was very important to her financially. We talked for another brief moment, she thanked me profusely several more times, and I walked back to my truck to navigate my way back out to the county road.
The people that lived at this house had a purpose to their sale, and were grateful that I’d made a purchase. I left with mixed feelings – happy I decided to forge ahead, and my purchase (hopefully) helped them a bit financially. But I also felt uneasy with my decision to continue down a road with an unknown situation at the end. The old saying “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover” luckily applied to this encounter. I ended up helping a family in need. But this situation could have easily turned out to have a much worse ending, since I flat out did not have any clue what I was driving into.
The Lesson? From this experience, I learned “situational awareness” – I will never go to another sale out in the middle of nowhere unless I can preview the home area first using Google Earth! At least this way, I will know what kind of area I am getting into to be sure I have a quick and easy way out if I feel my family or I are at risk, and I decide not to stay.
Tune in next Thursday for Part 3 of our adventures!
Good advice, JD. Very glad your story had a happy ending. 🙂
Glad the adventure turned out safely! Probably had lots of treasures there, but am glad you headed for those pot holes again!