I will never understand the appeal of yard sales or garage sales. It can be big business, and I confess to having had a yard sale many years ago when I was still married. Of course, I was married to a woman who liked to go to yard sales. I also confess that we made about $180 that day. We had mostly used children's clothes and they sold very well. And that's what brings me to my point about yard sales.

I call them White Trash Department Stores. There's usually something for everyone: clothes, furniture, small appliances, tools, toys, etc. Folks my age will remember the old department store chains of WT Grant and Woolworth's as stores that had a small selection of pretty much everything at very low prices. Some people even called them "the 5 & 10" or the "five and dime" to denote the low prices: a nickel or a dime.

Every neighborhood in the country has a house hosting a yard sale on any given Saturday. People put ads in the paper and the ads are analyzed by the yard sale crowd who will plan an entire Saturday around going from yard sale to yard sale based on one neighborhood's proximity to another, thus enhancing the economic practicality of driving around all day buying junk.

Junk. That's all it is to me. I've heard the line, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." I never understood that. Trash is trash. In other words, if it's not good enough for you to keep, why in the hell would I want it? What am I going to do with this item that will make it better than it was for you? And if that is possible, why didn't you do it and not sell it? I just don't need other people's shit in my house. If you don't want it or need it anymore, trash it. Don't clog up my neighborhood's streets with  cars parked haphazardly just to find a used toaster for a dime.