An Evening Boat Trip And One Friday Sale

The second week of August would be a short workweek. We were off on Friday. Counting this week, there are twenty-one weeks left in the year, Between holidays and carefully selected vacation days, only five of them will be five day workweeks. We were pretty happy about this. There would be a lot of long weekends in our future and this would be the first of three consecutive short workweeks for us. Before even getting to the weekend, we had an evening boat trip ahead of us.

On Wednesday night, the two of us took an evening ride to Fire Island. Rob and one of his co-workers were given two tickets apiece by their job for this trip. It was a beautiful evening for a boat trip and, given the very humid weather as of late, it felt pretty good to be on the water! 

The very beautiful Fire Island Lighthouse

The boat docked at Flynn's Restaurant and we were treated to an all-you-can-eat-buffet of lobster, baked stuffed clams, fish, shrimp, salads and vegetables and desserts. We were pretty full after this! 

We think the swan was looking for leftovers. Nothing was left on our plates, Mr. Swan. Sorry! 

When Friday, eventually arrived, we had one sale on our list and we decided to get there nice and early. Rob saw two things in the ad's pictures that he wanted.

The first was this New York Mets Ed-U-Cards game from 1964

The second was, potentially, this shoebox of baseball cards. Most of the cards that Rob saw near the top were from 1969.

So...we set the alarm for 6am and planned on leaving the house at 8am, take the thirty minute drive to the sale and be there an hour and a half before its start. It sounded like a great plan! 

The only problem was that at least thirty-five other people had the same idea. An hour and a half early for a 10am sale and we would not be in this house any time soon. The sale was run by one of our favorite tag sale companies. They have several sales every weekend and have a big following. The sale was advertised as "overloaded house" and "vintage toys". Nothing creates a bigger early line than the phrase "vintage toys". The dealers were out in force. The first person on line was here at 6pm the night before. 

This was a view of the front of the house with part of the line to the left. 

All of the people in this picture were there earlier than we were. Before the sale began, we were instructed that there would be a second line for a specific room in the house where all of the vintage toys would be. Only three people would be allowed in that room at a time. We suspected that the baseball card game would have been moved to that room. We were reasonably sure that both the card game and the shoebox full of baseball cards would be a distant memory before we got inside. 

We were hoping to get inside as soon as possible and to stay in the shade as long as we could while outside. It was 92 degrees the day before and, with the very high humidity, the heat index was 105 degrees. It was supposed to be even a little warmer today. About 45 minutes after the sale began, we were inside.

We saw this mounted pencil sharpener very early into time inside the house and that is always a good sign! 

Maybe we wouldn't find the baseball card game or the baseball cards but we still wanted to find good things! We thought we might ask this little horse for some help but, if we said anything at all, we couldn't hear him. He was a little hoarse. 

One of the tag sale company's employees saw us and told us to go upstairs because the vintage Christmas was up there. It certainly was! We found some nice Christmas things up here and we were the first to get to them! We also found lots of books, a tiki and some other cool things.

We, eventually, got a peek in the vintage toy room but there was nothing of interest to us in there. It had been cleaned out very, very quickly by the toy dealers who we heard were paying upwards of $100 for many of the items (1960's Tonka Toys in their boxes were fetching almost $200 apiece and the dealers were gladly paying those prices). 

We never saw the baseball card game. We never saw the shoebox of baseball cards. We did see a 1960's New York Mets pennant, briefly, as its new owner passed us. We did have a great time, though, and we did find lots of other things to bring home. 

Friday, as it turned out, was our only day of saling this weekend. There were no sales that showed any potential to us over the weekend so we stayed home. Everything we found was from one single Friday sale. Here is what we found:

A 7-inch record

Two Mad Magazines from the 1960's, a New York Islanders yearbook from the 1974-1975 season and an old New York City roadmap from Sinclair

1950's and 1960's books about Indians

1960's How and Why books

More 1960's How and Why books

Some more 1960's How and Why books

A full set of New York World's Fair Attractions cards. 

Two plastic skeletons made in Hong Kong and a Howard Johnson's pin

A Popeye Christmas ornament (made in Hong Kong) and an aquarium tiki from the 1950's

Christmas books from the 1940's and 1950's

More Christmas books from the 1940's and 1950's

Lots of Gurley Christmas candles

Five Holt Howard Santa head mugs, a Christmas tree and a reindeer. Everything is marked Japan

More Christmas things...an elf, Santa and reindeer salt and pepper shakers, a Santa, a plastic Santa, three pixies, a Santa in a sleigh and a Santa with a reindeer. Everything except the plastic Santa is marked Japan.

Well, how could we pass up this 1955 book about a duck? 

We spent Saturday and Sunday running a few errands and doing some chores but, for the most part, we relaxed. It was only getting hotter. On Sunday, the temperature peaked at 97 degrees and the heat index was in excess of 110 degrees! Too hot! Rob barbecued both days not only because he likes to barbecue but also because in was too hot to cook indoors (we have air conditioning in the living room and our bedroom but not in the kitchen). It doesn't mean we didn't make anything in the kitchen though! 

Monica had gotten all wrapped up in watching and reading "The Astronaut Wives Club" this past year and seeing Tang on sale months ago, we bought some. Recently, we found this Tang carafe at an estate sale and Saturday just seemed like the right time to make some! Neither have had it since we were kids. It was much more sugary than we remembered (and we followed the exact fill line directions on the Tang carafe) and we had to water it down a bit. In 2013, astronaut Buzz Aldrin was quoted as saying "Tang sucks". That was a little harsh. It may not have been great but it was okay.