The Last Weekend of September

This post is for the last weekend in September which means we have really fallen behind. An all out effort will be made to catch up within the next week!

We've come to grips with the fact that the summer is gone and autumn is here to stay...for the next few months anyway. This weekend would be the first of many shortened work weeks as we look to exhaust our 2015 vacation days. 

Our saling list for Friday was short. Fridays have become a popular day for sales but they will never be as popular as the weekend days. Still, we had a few options and that was enough to start. Three sales. All nearby. Off we went! 

Sale #1 was in our town and was listed as a garage sale with "collectibles" and "antiques". We pulled up and we recognized the house. We had been here last year. We were disappointed then. We were disappointed again. On to the next sale.

Sale #2 was a sneak preview sale. It actually did not open to the general public until Saturday but we received a call on Thursday night with an invitation to drop by. The sale was run by a realtor who rarely has a sale but took our phone number at her last sale. She liked us and invited us to stop by a day early...and so we did. 

The kitchen was small and old with all wood cabinets. More importantly...

The countertop was boomerang! 

There was little change made to the bathroom since the house was built. Pink bathtub, pink sink and pink toilet

The bathroom floor was great too! 

There was a basement in the house and there, on the wall, was a mounted pencil sharpener! That's always a great sign! 

This must have been their original hamper for their pink bathroom. It was pretty beat up but it was still there.

We love seeing old exhaust fans in the kitchen

There was an upstairs, too, and we spent a lot of time in this house and we had it all to ourselves! By the time we left, we had a box of Christmas ornaments, lots of McDonald's glasses, some more carousel glasses, lots of pamphlets and more. It was a nice stop for us! 

After stopping for a late breakfast, we went to our last sale of the day; one described as a "digger cleanout". It was run by a tag sale company we know and we figured that it was worth a visit. As it turns out, there weren't a lot of rooms to search and there really wasn't much for us but we did not leave empty-handed. We left with an old ashtray and a book of matches from an old Chinese restaurant in our area that no longer exists.

We decided, earlier in the week, that we would go out for dinner on Friday night and, when Friday arrived, we knew where that would be...The Good Steer.

The Good Steer began its life in 1957 as an upscale hamburger stand with roll-down garage doors. The road that the restaurant is on was, once, a major gateway to The Hamptons and was a favorite stop along the way for such celebrities as Bert Lahr, the Gabor sisters, Ava Gardner, Bert Parks and many others. 

In 1965, the restaurant was enlarged and became more of the actual restaurant it is today. The great neon cow sign still stands today! 

The lobby has these two great cows that remind their patrons that they are in The Good Steer! 

They even have their own steak sauce now! 

Getting the onion strings as a side is a must. They are well known for them. It was a great night out and we will visit The Good Steer again! 

Saturday morning arrived and we were ready for more sales. Our first stop was an obvious one. In an ad for a sale just five miles away was a car being offered at an incredibly low price. Rob has been looking for a car to drive back and forth to work that gets good mileage. His car has been hit by our neighbor twice within the last year. We share a right of way driveway and one of our neighbors, in a much larger vehicle, has backed into it. Not once, but twice. The first time, the car took on about $1100 worth of damage and Rob got it fixed with the insurance money. The second hit was a lot worse. The hood of Rob's car would have to be replaced as well as one corner panel. The exhaust system was also cracked, making the car a little louder than he would have liked. He also suspected that the radiator was cracked too. The insurance money would not even come close to covering the repairs and, with the car getting on in years, it made no sense to pour the money into it. The car was still drivable but would not pass inspection which was due by the end of October. The car in the ad was of interest to us. We inquired into it via email with the tag sale company that was running the sale. 

The company was a fairly new one and one whose sales we had never attended but we knew one of owners and she told us that the car was meticulously maintained and had just 56,000 original miles from the original owner. Although the sale did not begin until 10am, there would be a sign-up sheet on the door and we would have to be there first. She volunteered that she did receive a text from someone who said that they would be there at 7:30am. We knew that we would have to be there earlier than that.

So...here was our view of the house at 7 AM. We were here first! 

And here was a view of the car

To make a long story short (oops...too late for that, isn't it?), we test drove the car, went to the bank, paid cash and it was ours! A quick walk through the house also brought us a couple of records, a pair of books and a bobble head. Although, it was after 10am by the time we left the first sale of the day, it was a major success and our next stop was for breakfast before we resumed the rest of our saling adventures.

Our original list of sales had six potential stops but with a good portion of the morning already gone, we knew that we would not make them all. Two of them were at least forty minutes away and one was in a completely different direction than the other sales. We decided to go to just two more which were located about twenty minutes away and were in the same town. 

Our second sale of the day was run by one of our favorite tag sale companies. It was described as "packed house" and some of the pictures in the ad showed potential. The owners of the tag sale company are really great people and we have not seen them in awhile. Even if we found nothing, it would be nice to see them! 

The house had this great screen door which we would have loved to bring home! 

There were two floors to search and, in the basement, we found the mounted pencil sharpener. That's always a good sign! That wasn't all we found in the house. By the time we left, we also found an outdoor patio rocking chair, some records, a New York Mets bobble head, some cool vintage trays and more. They came home with us.

Our last stop was just five minutes away and was described as "entire contents". Without any pictures in the ad, we were not sure what we would find. What we found was an outdoor garage sale with a driveway and garage filled with items for sale. We left with a few records.

Aside from the car, here are the things we found this weekend:

Some records

More records

Some car racing records from the 1960's

A McDonald's record given to employees in the 1970's

A couple of baseball books for Rob. He loves the old pictures!

Some books/magazines

Some pamphlets and an old letter from Campbell's Soup (on the right)

Old souvenirs from the Lake George region of New York

Old souvenirs from Niagara Falls

A pair of bobble heads

An old McDonald's pillow case

Some vintage metal trays, an old ash tray, some McDonald's and Gertz employee pins from the 1970's, a deck of playing cards and a book of matches from Sun Ming (an old Chinese Restaurant which is long gone)

Some old Rheingold Beer trays

An old outdoor patio rocking chair

Some old carousel glasses

A Star Wars glass and lots of McDonald's glasses; all giveaways in the 1970's

A pixie pin cushion, a package of Shiny Brite ornaments and a clown head. Why a clown head? Why not? 

Sunday was spent running errands, doing household chores and finding some time to relax, too. We wanted everything to completely done by the evening because...

It was the total lunar eclipse of the supermoon! With the sky clear and the event happening during a reasonable hour (it started at 8:12pm by us), it was easy for us to enjoy it. It's beauty was something that could not be adequately captured on film, at least not on our cheap cameras, but it was a site worth seeing!

We have a lot of three day weekends left this year and we're looking forward to them. Three days are always better than two when we have them to spend together.