World’s Longest Yard Sale

My column for The Leaf chronicle, originally published August 11, 2013.

The life and times of a barely-holding-onto-her-forties shopkeeper can appear, to the casual observer, as a lot of fun. I often have folks in my boutique say things like “I would love to have a shop like this one day;” or, “You must have so much fun!” Most days, I will answer these comments with affirming replies such as, “It’s just a matter of putting your mind to it;” or, “Oh yes! I love putting together the displays and selecting the merchandise.” But more often than not, I am thinking, “NO! Don’t do it!”

As for the fun, last weekend was supposed to be all about the “fun” of finding vintage merchandise for my inventory. My mother is still visiting, so she, my sister, Kendall, and I set out last Friday morning with our destination being the “World’s Longest Yard Sale” along the 127 Corridor. The concept being that folks all along Route 127, which runs from Illinois to Alabama, set-up for a collective yard sale the first weekend in August. The sale starts Thursday and runs through Sunday.

This is something Kendall and I have been talking about doing for years, so we were naturally quite anxious to see if it was everything we had imagined. Due to the fact that we had arranged to meet our other sister, Nikki, and Kendall’s best friend, Jessica, in Frankfort, KY at 5 p.m. we decided to start our yard saling (did you know that “sale” isn’t not verb-able?) adventure in Russell Springs, KY.

After departing the parkway for 127, we stopped at the visitor’s center for an actual map (the kind printed on paper and not just doled out in portions explored via Mapquest.com). The lady at the center assured my sister she had been crazy busy, although she appeared well into her solitaire game on the computer monitor. Regardless, our sense of urgency started to increase, afraid that everyone else already beat us to the good stuff. Upon perusing the selection at the first venues we came upon, we decided we were decidedly later. Even though we arrived relatively early on the second day of the sale we felt like we were arriving at the end.

Most of the stuff was exactly what you would expect to find at a yard sale: clothing (mostly labels from a certain chain that also sells food and hardware); new-ish glassware and dishes, in singles or odd lots; videos and dvds; and, an enormous selection of items jumbled in dusty boxes which were obviously intended for the dump, but were accidently stored in a garage or shed, so they were pulled out for the big yard sale. There were a handful of true vintage/antique vendors, but overall, we were disappointed. We had been led to believe (by people who had been to this event) that we would find something more akin to the flea markets we enjoy so much.

Now, in defense of this enormously popular event, we were only able to explore a small section of the yard sale. It did seem to improve north of Danville, KY, but we only had the time available to park and visit two of the larger venues. The vendors we talked to were a little disappointed, as well; by mid-day Saturday, things were not selling as they had in previous years. One vendor, in particular, though in the “better” area (by our estimation) stated he regretted having moved north from his previous location of Crossville, TN.

(I’m including some photos from one of the better stops we made.)

The good news is we had combined this yard saling (yup, I did it again) adventure with visits to a few of the distilleries along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. That portion of our trip was a complete success and I’ll share a little about that part of our trip another time.