Random reminder

Press, 21 August 1979, Page 24

Random reminder

SURPRISE PARTY

Garage sales are the in thing. It seems that a considerable section of the community is involved on Saturday mornings with an early, swift survey of the classified advertisements, and a hastily improvised plan of campaign to cover the field. These will not be earless Saturday drivers. The allure of the garage sale must be immense, because the goods for sale cover the whole span of human life, from the teat to the tombstone. It is possible to pick up, at attractive rates, anything from a grubber to a geometry set, a high chair to hi-fi. So the purchasers do their rounds, strike their bargains, and come home with a miscellany of goods which, one day, may well wind up in another garage sale.

But a garage sale needs preparation. The commodities must be easily seen, clearly priced, and accessible So there was mild consternation in a quiet Christchurch suburb on a recent Saturday morning, when the front door knocks began, at 9 a.m. People kept coming and asking the bemused householder about furniture for sale, and a sewing machine, and golf clubs

and the poor bleary-eyed bemused resident hadn’t the slighest idea what they were talking about. Some of the would-be purchasers had the wrong advertisement: others were able to point out that the address given in the advertisement was indeed the right one. It all fell into place, after a while. The householder has a son, a cheerful character, soon to go overseas. And if the son had decided on a garage sale, and had concluded that his parents’ address was a better one, in terms of sales backing, than his own, he had overlooked the elementary necessity of telling them about it. Moreover, he had failed to front up with the goods by the 9 a.m. starting time. It all led to some splendidly evasive and diplomatic conversation by the man of the house, while his lady made frenzied phone calls in an effort to solve the mystery. It all turned out, and up, successfully. It was not the most spectaculr garage sale of all time: but in retrospect, the very fact that transactions took place at all semmed a minor miracle to all four principals.