I am fooled twice

Getting into the car this morning I was momentarily stumped to see the contents of the glove compartment all over the front seat and floor. The little flip top compartment where we keep the cd cases was open too, as was the slide that covers the change and cup holder. Then it dawned on me that my car had been ransacked again. It's not like we haven't been robbed before, but it has been awhile. Long enough for me to get complacent. Last night while I was sleeping not thirty feet away, some thug was searching my car for valuables. Well ha on you douchbag because I don't have any. After I got through the 'what happened here' phase and the relief that they didn't make a disgusting body fluids mess, I got a little angry with myself because despite past plundering, I forgot to lock the car, thus inviting scum to help themselves. This is reasonable but infuriating. Fool me once, shame you. Fool me twice, you are a giant f*cking a**hole.

Ten years ago when we bought our house we had hoped that the neighborhood would improve and overall it has maintained. I wouldn't walk around the block after dark but I feel pretty safe during the day and we have two big dogs. Go two or three block in nearly any direction though and you are in the ghetto. Two murders and three armed bank robberies since last year. All unsolved and most 3 blocks from my home. The police never catch anyone. It has been suggested by the local newspaper that since all the robberies are similar, and no one has been caught, perhaps they are the same person? Hmmm, possibly, it is admitted. There was another armed bank robbery this morning with shots fired. This one was across town. All the banks near my house must be out of money.

I am thwarted in my goal

Honestly, I am never going to realize my goal of finding the next equivalent of Tammerlane in a box of old papers if you people don't stop selling abject crap at your yard and garage sales. Seriously, lets step it up out there. Alright, all joking but not really joking aside, if I'm going to drive 20 minutes to the literal middle of nowhere based on an ad that promises antiques, books, ephemera and other interesting items, I expect some of that to actually be present. Deerfield, I'm looking at you. What I don't want to see is your kids lemonade stand and a rat infested barn filled with used Tupperware, ripped up Simplicity dress patterns and a single pile of contemporary, chewed on kids board books. That's just cruel.

It took an immediate trip back to the Creekside diner for a short stack of pancakes to regain some enthusiasm. However the post pancake hunt was not roaringly sucessful either. I went to two garage sales in quick succession where the prices were pants on head retarded. At BOTH houses I heard mention that they were going to sell their items on Ebay after the sale. Why go to all the trouble to pay to advertise a sale, set it up, price everything, spend several days in your garage/driveway and then have to pack it all up again if you are not going to price things competitively? You are not an antique dealer/retailer and I'm not going to pay those prices if I'm standing in your carport. Frankly, with the amount of stuff both places had left over on a Sunday afternoon I don't think the strategy worked out.


The one place that did seem to get it was the tail end of an estate sale in its second weekend. I had been before but it was a hoarder's house and packed pretty tightly so in the hopes that new stuff had been churned up, I stopped by again. Everything was at least 50% off and deals were being made. Got a bag of books for $1.50. All interesting and I have hopes for a very old street guide to Venice.

I cast my nets

This weekend was lovely and called for some semi serious book hunting. Pictured is my haul. I did alright for my first time out this spring. There were a few advertised sales here and there around the region to choose from but none of the ads gave me that lucky feeling so I decide to take the shotgun approach and hit a neighborhood sale in a not wealthy, but middle/lower class area with tiny one story starter homes on small plots. Not old Utica. No sidewalks. Detached garages. Decade built circa 1970.
Very generally, the kinds of people in these neighborhoods are not readers. Reading is for children and old women so what is mostly on offer are scruffy kid's books, ratty paperback romances and James Patterson in hardback.
The big draw for most shoppers here is 'kids clothing'. Nearly every house had two or three folding tables set up with eight metric tons of clothing. Under the tables were boxes full of plastic toys and cheap junk. Every garage was packed to the ceiling with stuff which was not for sale. In fact, while browsing along line of plastic kitchen implements in tubs, I got to close to the open garage door of one gentleman who sternly ordered me away. Glancing inside I could see a wall of cardboard boxes marked 'kids clothes-storage'. Who knows what kind of Wallmart dragon's horde of treasures lie within! I shiver to think.

I come to these when I have limited time because I can hit ten to fifteen houses in quick succession. I am hoping that someone will decide to finally get rid of granddad's old worthless civil war reference books or train books or Aunt Mabel's crazy alternative medicine manuals. I'm just sayin, its happened before. However, the books on offer were mostly as described above and no antiquarian gold mines were struck.
I did hit one house that had a box full of recently printed text books and culled out the keepers. These are fairly advanced biology text books indicating that someone was doing some serious book learnin. I probably should have asked after more. Once I talked my way into a house of a nurse who was selling medical books and emerged with several hundred dollars worth of texts. It helps that I don't look like an ax murder. Also I impulse bought two vintage magazine ads which are both seductive and irresistible so clearly I had no choice. OH! and the book on knitting your own farmyard. Not just the animals, not just the farmer, but the houses and landscape too. That one is going to be hard to part with even though I have no intention of knitting, not ever.

In May, as the weather creeps up to above 60 degrees and it edges past likelihood of snow,(although it still might), we enter my favorite season. Summer.

In the Mohawk Valley, the months of June, July and August are liking waking up from a horrible collective nightmare. All the rest of the long year is slogging through snow and frost and sleet and waking up in the dark and heading home from work in the dark. Everyone burrows into their homes. I only go out to go to work or walk the dogs and absolutely no one shovels, not even businesses. A blanket depression settles over the city. There is one thing that keeps me from going totally Donner Party, Hunting For Books.

I spend the winter scouring the internet for books to buy and hoard until I can part with them for hopefully a small profit. It gives me a wild satisfaction and its usually just enough money to support my craving to buy more books. There is no such thing as a garage sale in Utica in the wintertime. Very few estate/moving sales too, but in spring and summer they pop up like crocus ripe with promise. Maybe crocus isn't the right metaphor, because I have seen some weird stuff here. Some creepy stuff, that I now wish I had taken pictures of. Utica isn't like anywhere else I have ever lived.
This immediate area has been culturally and genetically isolated for decades. The '80s and '90s saw a huge population drop and anyone without connection to the area fled. The remaining Utica natives, and by that I mostly refer to the second and third generation Italian and Polish families, have entrenched themselves as an unofficial higher cast. There is a distinct Utica accent, special Utica only foods, easily identifiable Utica facial traits, a fond remembrance of the Italian mafia, supposedly not active here anymore, and a 'friends and family' system of government which I believe is a direct result of the former.
As an outsider but with an Italian last name I can get by, although sometimes I get weird looks and asked if I'm really Italian. Technically neither are they. I don't mention that.
All that was a long way of saying that sometimes I go to a house sale and its like stepping back in time and into another country/dimension. Sometimes I remember to take a photo and I'll be putting them here, in this blog. Also, sometimes I find some really cool stuff and I feel like sharing. I'm also going to be documenting how to speak Utican, eat Utican, and stuff that generally fascinates or repels me about this area. Oh and weird stuff I find in books.
How's about we start with what I hope to be the first in a continuing series I am calling I don't need to spell it to sell it.