The First Giant Blowout Prager Garage Sale

By Felice Prager

With news of my husband's pending transfer, we knew that our lives were to change completely. We would be moving away from family and lifetime friends and to a world where we would have to start all over.

My husband and I were nervously excited about this major move from New Jersey to Arizona, but our relatives and friends staged an all-out campaign to reverse our decision to accept the transfer. It was verbal warfare, staged deliberately in front of Jeff, our impressionable four-year-old son. In our loved ones' defense, their motives were justified. They didn't want us to move. However, their tactics were insidious and far from subtle. Jeff heard tales of a far-off land where mail was still delivered by Pony Express. The descriptions he heard of Arizona schools were of one-room schoolhouses where work was done on a slate and children had to sit in the corner with a "Dunce" cap if they talked too much.

According to our relatives, Arizona was where water came from wells and out-houses were still modern conveniences. Jeff, who was afraid of the pediatrician, heard tales of doctors who learned everything they knew from tribal medicine men who cured things using hunting knives. My cousin told Jeff that in order to have friends in Arizona, you had to become blood brothers; she was very descriptive. She also told Jeff that it was so hot in Arizona you could fry an egg on the top of your covered wagon. The worst thing she said, and the thing that brought Jeff to tears was when she said, "You'll never ever ever EVER see snow again." We tried to explain to Jeff that our relatives loved us and they were making up these things so we wouldn't move, but we could tell he was not sure what to think. He didn't believe us when we told him we could take a short drive north once we were in Phoenix and play in the snow; we just would not have to shovel it.

Since the movers charged by the pound, we were forced to sell or give away many of our memories. Both my husband and I were serious savers, and letting go of things was often difficult. So we loaded our garage, attic, and basement with our personal collections. The time had come where we would have to address the mess.

My husband, Sam, a professional retailer, has worked in stores all his life, and before the First Giant Blowout Prager Garage Sale, his perception of buying and selling required a salesperson, a cash register, receipts, security cameras, advertised specials, newspaper inserts, and handled bags with store logos on them. However, we had each accumulated so many material objects by ourselves and together that there was no way we would be able to afford moving all of it to our new home on the other side of the country. In addition, we knew most Arizona homes did not have basements, and Arizona attics were used for insulating houses, not for storage. It seemed inevitable that we would be joining the ranks of those who put their junk in the driveway in hopes of selling it to people who knew treasures when they saw them, even when they weren't treasures. We also hoped we could get some extra cash so we could replace some of our junk when we got to our new home in the desert.

Sam never went to sleep the night before the First Giant Blowout Prager Garage Sale. Unlike other garage sales, Sam wanted our driveway to look like a merchandising masterpiece. He used all the techniques he had learned from his college and professional experience. Items would be placed strategically so our customers would be psychologically coaxed into looking at them. Items would be appropriately priced for a quick sale. Sam was so involved in the process, that at about two in the morning, when I was fast asleep, he woke me up and said, "We have holes. I need stuff to fill the holes. What else do we have to sell?" While he talked, he was unplugging the TV in our bedroom. "We can always buy a new TV when we get to Arizona" he added. Here was the guy who didn't want to give away anything that was precious to him, and now he was looking for more stuff.

In my bathrobe, in the middle of a cool spring New Jersey night, I trudged outside to see a driveway that resembled a department store. Items had signs like "Priceless collectible. Yours for only $5!" The $5 had been a $10, but it was crossed out to look like the price had been reduced. Sam had used his neatest penmanship and everything was spelled correctly. This was a major accomplishment for the man who had called me in the past from work with, "How do you spell Tuesday ? I can never remember if it's ue or eu."

What seemed odd was that most of MY stuff was priced ridiculously low and very affordable; Sam's stuff, on the other hand, was priced insanely high. I made no comments. I would address the problem with my own red marker in the morning.

While walking through the garage to go back indoors, I noticed a pile. On top of the pile were two Flexible Flyer sleds we had each brought to our marriage. Mine was the cleaner, less-used one. Sam had informed me at the beginning of our lives together that his was better. His was ugly. The paint was almost gone. On our son Jeff's first sleighing experience, he used Sam's sled. Sam had convinced him "No real man would be caught on a pretty sissy girly dumb sled like Mom's. Real men needed cool sleds. Real men need them to work smoothly and fast." I wasn't going to disagree. Mine still looked as pretty as the day it was purchased for me, thirty years before.

What Sam's sled didn't have was the memory of another use it had.

As a child of the early fifties, the days when few people worked on Sundays and dads were home with families more, we lived in apartments in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The apartments were small and cozy. We did not have a lot of things in this small apartment, but we had each other. The doors to each apartment faced out into a grassy courtyard. Neighbors sat on their stoops and had coffee in the evenings. Neighbors were friends. Today, Fort Lee is a bustling suburb of New York City with high rises and heavy traffic; back then, it was a community where neighbors knew neighbors and children played in the street.

It was a Sunday. A blizzard had been predicted. The radio was on and the broadcaster spoke of the snow in terms of how many feet we would get and whether schools would be closed the next day.

My dad and the other dads in the neighborhood where we lived borrowed our Flexible Flyer sleds and headed off on foot to the only market in town. My dad pulled two sleds, mine and my brother's. Mine was brand new and pretty, free of all paint chips and signs of use. My brother's was a hand-me-down from my dad's younger brother. It was worn in and looked it. My brother liked it better that way. He said it was faster and much cooler than my new one. In fact, when my dad offered to buy him a new one, my brother turned him down.

The market was a little family-run store that normally wasn't open on Sundays, but they were opening so the neighbors could stock up on essentials for the big storm. I remember my dad coming home with at least two dozen cans of Campbell's Tomato Soup, crackers, hot cocoa, marshmallows, milk, and several packages of Hydrox sandwich cookies.

I remember during that storm, the winds changing and the snow blowing so hard and heavy that our neighbors' doors were blocked. When the storm ended, we dug out our neighbors. It created a giant mountain of snow in the middle of our courtyard. That is where we chose to use our sleds during that blizzard. That is where we played King of the Mountain.

I remember my skin being bright red and wet when we went back inside to change clothes and warm up. My fingers and toes tingled. We removed what seemed like endless layers of wet clothes. We did not have a washing machine or dryer in our apartment, so my mother hung gloves, scarves, hats, mufflers, and sweaters over radiators and in most rooms around our small apartment. Space heaters were helping us warm up so we could go back outside to play in the snow again.

On the stove, we spied the hot tomato soup and cocoa my dad had pulled back from the market on our Flexible Flyers. Dad and the sleds were the warmest memory I could find, and I wanted my son to have the same. It made me sad to think that by moving to the desert, our son would never know the sensations of a snow storm or have memories such as these.

Lost in his own memories, Sam said, "We can't get rid of these sleds."

"No, we can't," I agreed.

I never went back to sleep that night. I went into the kitchen and made hot cocoa for both of us.

The garage sale was successful.

We sold things we really did not need. We sold things that in years since we have looked for and then suddenly realized, "We sold that at the garage sale." People wandered beyond the driveway and into the garage. "Is this for sale?" Sam, the retail man, sold what he could.

A young boy and his father were standing in the garage, looking at the two Flexible Flyers. "Daddy, ask him what they cost," the little boy whispered loudly. We looked at each other and realized that in Phoenix, Arizona, we would have no need for sleds. So we sold them. My husband told the little boy that the pretty sled wasn't as cool as the beat up sled. The little boy's father stood there nodding his head in agreement, and said, "That one can be for your sister."

This past fall, Jeff, now a young adult, left for college. In spite of our need for a warm climate, Jeff opted to move to Colorado. While packing his truck with all of his things he would need in a first apartment, Sam looked at me and said, "In Colorado, he could have used the sleds."

I nodded my head. There was no need for an explanation.


Felice Prager is a freelance writer from Scottsdale, Arizona with credits in local, national, and international publications. In addition to writing, she also works with adults and children with moderate to severe learning disabilities as a multisensory educational therapist. For a sampling of her essays, please visit her website: Write Funny! - http://www.writefunny.com

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