Garage Sale Season

I’ve said it many times before but I’m not a shopper. Going to the store is usually something I don’t enjoy. The same is true when that store is other people’s lawns and garages. We’re into the flea market season now. You can’t go very far on a Saturday morning without seeing parked cars along the road and crowds of people heading up a driveway to pick through stuff.

Last Saturday morning my wife and I took our granddaughter out for a walk in the stroller. We hadn’t gone far before we hit our first garage sale. I can’t say I was dragged in because I agreed to it but before I knew it I found myself along with everyone else picking through other peoples junk. I don’t mean to say there wasn’t anything good to be found there but to me it is junk. I have a basement full of crap I’d love to get rid of and probably a lot of it would be scooped up at a garage sale. That’s my biggest problem with lawn sales. I’ve got enough of my own junk and I don’t feel like adding to it with other peoples.

Now I know you can find some gems at these sales. And I like getting a bargain just like anybody else. And I realize a lot of people love these yard sales and plan their Saturday mornings around them. Just so long as I don’t have to go. But I know they’re very popular so here’s what I’ll do. If you have a yard sale coming up in Grand Bay-Westfield or the River Valley area send me an email with the details at midwoodmedia@gmail.com and I’ll post a weekly garage sale update on the blog at rivervalleyrambler.com.

By the way I was in need of a handsaw and I found three of them at that yard sale. I got them all for three bucks and that’s a deal.

New Favourite Place

I’ve heard someone call it ‘her new favourite place to shop’. It’s been a favourite of many from the west side and the river valley for years. It’s Olson’s Meats and Produce on Lancaster Ave. I was in there today, a Saturday and I couldn’t believe the people. They were lining up in the parking lot to find a space to park and they were shoulder to shoulder inside the tiny store. I’ve only been in the place a handful of times but every time I’m there it’s crowded like that. There’s probably a good reason for it.

One can find things in there you can’t get anywhere else. I looked at a package of something today and didn’t have a clue what it was. I think some kind of battered or salted fish, but I’m not sure. Whatever it was it looked good. The cheese selection is great, the meat is fresh and the prices are pretty good. Anytime we’ve been there we’ve found some real deals. This time it was precooked, packaged turkey that you’d pay triple for elsewhere.

I’m not a shopper but I like going in there just to look around. It reminds me of an old-fashioned neighbourhood store, the way shopping used to be before the era of malls. You can actually smell the food in there. And you can get just about anything you want. Easy to see why it can become someone’s new favourite place to shop. Now if it just wasn’t so crowed all the time.