I’ve been attending Sun Valley Garage Sale weekends since the late 70s/early 80s, and writing about them on this blog for more than fifteen years. I’m afraid both of those things may have come to an end.
Pat Deckard was the red-headed dervish behind Sun Valley’s annual garage sales. Pat was a realtor who happened to live in Sun Valley, and whom my family personally had the pleasure of living next door to. I don’t know what all went in to organizing the annual event or how much work it took. All I know is that over the past 40+ years, Pat was able to convince dozens and dozens of people in our neighborhood to have garage sales on the same weekend every single year, consistently, rain or shine.
Pat Deckard passed away last November, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only person from Sun Valley who wondered what would happen to Garage Sale Day.
Last weekend, I got my answer.
In a small private group on Facebook, someone from the neighborhood announced the this year’s sale would take place April 16-17… and then, the week of the event, someone else suggested that the event should be canceled or rescheduled due to weather.
Anyone who remembers more than a few Garage Sale Days in Sun Valley would laugh at the thought of rescheduling the event due to weather. Garage Sale Day has always taken place in April, rain or shine. I’ve been to Garage Sale Days when it was 90 degrees, I’ve been on days it was so cold I thought my hands were going to freeze, and I certainly remember years that it rained. We’ve had everything from a slight drizzle to a full-on monsoon. There were years I could have got rich selling ice cold bottles of water, and years I could have made a fortune selling umbrellas.
I don’t know how Pat Deckard advertised Sun Valley’s Garage Sale Days, but it is no exaggeration to say that people drove from other towns to attend our neighborhood’s sales. In the early 80s, neighborhood sales were kind of a new thing around here. Sun Valley has approximately 150 homes, and during the peak years it feels like at least half of those people participated. Maybe more. The success of Sun Valley’s Garage Sale Day hinged on more than hanging a single banner or sign near the neighborhood’s entrance the day of the sale. Long before the internet there were newspaper ads and word of mouth.
Last weekend, there was no word of mouth. There were no newspaper or Craigslist ads. There were no signs out front and there was no banner. (According to the Facebook group, nobody can locate it.)
It seems like just a few years ago, there were sixty garage sales on Garage Sale Day. This year, there were six. To be honest, I’m still confused as to whether or not it was even a neighborhood garage sale. When perennial favorites like “fishing pole guy” and “hot dig griller” didn’t have their garage doors open, you know something misfired.
It’s not fair to say Garage Sale Day was never about the garage sales. Every year when I was a kid my friends and I would fill our pockets with loose change and make the rounds, even if it was to simply swap stuff with one another. I remember one year I bought a “psychedelic motion lamp” (which was kind of a poor man’s lava lamp) and a few days later while visiting, a friend of mine said, “Oh yeah, I used to own that lamp!” Garage Sale Day was almost like Halloween for us, the way we would come home, empty our pockets, and take inventory of all the things we had acquired.
But for the adults (and my friends and I, when we got older) Garage Sale Day was as much about socializing as it was shopping. It was a block party — no, a six-block party — where everybody was outside, either hosting a garage sale or visiting them. It was an opportunity to talk to the neighbors you only waved to as you drive past their house. It was an entire day of networking, talking, gossiping. It was where you saw people’s babies for the first time, and learned someone had passed away. It was Facebook before Facebook.
When I got older, and all the houses became houses where “so-and-so used to live,” Garage Sale Day was the magnet that kept those of us who lived in Sun Valley returning. I looked forward to seeing not just the people who still lived there, but the kids I grew up with who returned. They were there for the same reasons I was. A lot of us were there to show our kids the place we grew up. “I used to play in that house all the time.” “Those houses there used to be a field.” “That used to be the creek.”
This year, none of that happened. Save for a few stalwarts, there were no garage sales. There were no visitors. Nobody from the old crew came back. How far the mighty have fallen.
The online scuttlebutt is that a second Garage Sale Day will be attempted in May. I hope it happens. I hope somebody who loves that neighborhood the way Pat Deckard did, the way I did, and the way all of us did, picks up the reigns and runs with it. I hope people quit worrying about finding the old banner and make a new one. I hope somebody takes ownership of the event and runs with it.
Not for my generation of Valley rats. For their kids.