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Ed p= gens hl Lot Ride oa 30 ELEN se pith ERE diaag = y I Le "A Family Tradition for 126 Years" PORT PERRY STAR - Wednesday, August, 5, 1992 - 7 This column could be a major coun- try and western song coming soon to a i e box near you. ard sale people got no class Yard sale people even spit on my grass Got more junk than when I set up my table Yard sale people are quirky and unstable. (Okay, so it doesn't have the insight- ful subtitles of My Achey Breaky Heart but you get the picture, eh)? Yard sale people, all yard sale people -- sellers, buyers, lookers, brokers -- should be bonded and filled with elec- tronic ankle bracelets so we know where they are every minute of the day. The traditional Canadian yard/lawn/garage sale is actually an outdoor insult contest in which pieces of Junk and spare change are the agreed- upon weapons of choice. Take me. for instance, your host and principal peddler for today's yard seller. ith a card table, a jar of change and "no experience I will take a decade worth of accumulated junk that I'm too embar- rassed to drop off at the local dump and attempt to sell it to you, a group of strangers, for approximately half of what I paid for it. By the time we meet in my driveway I will have gone through the following stages of stay-at-home marketing: by William Thomas "ONE MAN'S JUNK IS... STILL HERE" 1. I don't care if I make any money as 10g 88 I get rid of this crap. 2. Hey! This still works. 3.1 don't think twenty bucks is too much, the case is real leather. 4. If they don't want to pay full price I'll fix it up and use it myself. 5. "Plastic salt and pepper shakers - $35. Once used by The Fruit Of The Loom Boys to make each other's shorts itch." These are the five axioms of avarice as laid down by pharmaceutical compa- nies who take a pill that costs four cents to produce and sell it to people who are dying for $47.50 plus tax. So that's me, the seller, sitting casu- ally in a lawn chair with a cup of coffee and the morning paper, appearing non- chalant and above all this neighborhood nonsense. I know what evil lurks behind those masking tape price stick- ers. I am a swindler. Now let's take you. You are the pros- pective yard sale customer, a buyer that ought to be very wary, my market, my mark. First of all you arrived at 7:30 a.m. when all the ads specified "a 9 a.m. start" and you knocked on my door and shouted something about a sale. I shouted back something about your moma. I'm sorry. (You startled me. I was interviewing Wynonna Judd as she led a Women's Right To Bare Breasts march across the Peace Bridge and I was having trouble writing because I kept biting off the index finger of my right hand). You returned later, parked in my neighbor's flower garden and after inspecting every item in the yard sale you picked up my card table with my entire sale inventory, empty mug and newspaper and asked: "Would you take a quarter for this?" I said "No" as politely as I could, "but for fifty cents you could get that canoe paddle...right across your back!" Again, I'm sorry. So as a professional yard sale cus- tomer you're rude, cold-hearted and crass. Yard sale people are a pain. You're the reason K-Mart won't hire a sales staff. But that's your job. You're sup- posed to make me feel cheap and slea- zy...after all I'm a swindler. If I didn't want to be humiliated I wouldn't have taken out ads in the newspaper inviting you to come to my house and fondle my personal belongings. You're the type of person whose children will grow up to be scalpers:; mine will supply them with counterfeit concert tickets. It's a very sick world, I'm just glad we could be there for each other. So what do we learn from all this? Well the old adage about human nature and material value is as true today as it ever was: "One man's junk is another man's junk." And who gains from a yard sale? Bob. Bob is.my neighbor and until our ' five-family yard sale last weekend a rel- atively sane human being. Tragically Bob was stricken by the deadly yard sale virus early that Saturday morning. This otherwise shy and quiet man began screaming at and chasing passing cars on Lakeshore Road until fearing for their lives they drove into vacant fields where Bob pushed yard sale merchan- dise through open windows and when the people realized he was not going to physically harm them, they gave him money. Bob sold all of his stuff and a lot of mine. We managed to stop Bob only seconds before he completed a handshake deal that involved his two boys, the family car and seventy-five dollars in cash. Bob has since quit his job with an engineering firm and is selling Vegamatics at the local mall. "It slices, it dices, it husks two kinds of rices!" We think it's just a temporary phase because yesterday his wife found his completed application for the Tom Vu Home Real Estate Seminar. As one of the yard sale organizers, I felt guilty enough to ask Bob about this. He was quite straight forward: "You could make millions and millions in real estate...look at me, a poor Vietnamese peasant only a few years ago...my family iving in this tent...but today, I live in a mansion...drive Rolls-Royces every- where..my family still live in a tent....you too could make millions and millions with no money down." Yard sale people. Bond 'em and bind 'em at the ankles electronically. Remember When 2? Pictured above Is teacher Beth Hooey with her 1928 class at the Old Yellow Schoolhouse. Thanks go out to Isabell Annis for lending the Star this photo. Do you have any great class photos from the past? We'd love to share them with our readers. 45 YEARS AGO Thursday, August 7, 1947 Mr. Harold Archer captured the Cliff Mills Trophy in the open motor boat race during the Lake Scugog Regatta in Caesarea. Mr. Dave Dowson of Scugog won first prize for his horse at Port Perry. The Port Perry Yacht Club staged a sailboat race as one of the highlights of Port Perry's 75th Anniversary celebrations. First place winners were Phil Orde and Stan Brunton. 30 YEARS AGO Thursday, August 2, 1962 During a recent electrical storm eight cattle laying under an elm tree were killed by lightning on the farm of the Gray Brothers. Port Perry Squirts won their fifth straight game on Tuesday. Hitting home runs were Dave Gray, Neil Clark, Al Shaw and Norm Bellanger. Ken Irvine pitched steady ball for six innings. 25 YEARS AGO Thursday, August 3, 1967 Rev. Wm. Fairley presided as moderator for the induction service of Rev. Wm. Black in Port Perry Presbyterian Church. The Whitby detachment of the OPP reported a busy week with no less than 27 accidents involving 56 cars. Ed (Sam) Oyler, reeve of Reach Township, presented the keys to a new Reach Township truck to Road Superintendent T. (Buster) Stevens. Mrs. Rupert Brendon and daughter Sophia, of London, England, have been visiting with her parents Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Brock for a few weeks. 20 YEARS AGO Wednesday, August 2, 1972 A Twilight Meeting, jointly sponsored by the Ontario County Holatein Club and the Ontario PLEASE TURN TO PAGE 8 Letters io the editor Beach gone to dogs To the Editor: "Our beach has gone to the dogs." rh writing this short letter because I want to say, how thor- oughly disgusted I am with the Kinsmen Beach. The last few weeks my son and myself have been down there (which we go almost eve- ryday). It has been disgusting all around the beach and play area - dog droppings, not just small amounts but large! My son started digging in the sand and there right beside him was a pile of the dog droppings. I feel if the owners of these pets can't and will not respect the park, maybe animals should be banned altogether from the beach and park area. Would it be too much to ask the township to keep an eye on these areas. Just remember it's not only our own community that use these facilities, it's out of town- ers as well. We enjoy going to our own park in our own area where we live but, have had to start driv- ing to Oshawa to use Lakeview Park, which is kept up. Their beach is still open for swim- ming. Sincerely, Bev Bray All water flows to lake To the Editor: Re: Bob Almack's letter to Les Selby, Ministry of Natural Re- sources, printed in letters to the editor July 21. The wetland described is in Cartwright Township. There is another wetland starting at Conc. 8 of Scugog (formerly Reach) through which flows the head waters of the Nonquon. A tributary of this stream comes from springs on Lot 7, Conc. 3 which crosses Line 4 approxi- mately halfway between Marsh Hill Road and the Cragg Side Road. Beginning at this location is a Kawartha Region Conservation Authority stream enhancement project funded by the Federal epartment of Agriculture to the tune of $9,200 of taxpayers' money. The landowner is the writer of this letter. He asked the head biologist of Natural Resources ~ at Lindsay to visit the site sev- eral years ago to see if Natural Resources would assist him in fencing off the stream from live- stock so trout could come back. He allowed them increasin programming of water overloa at the time, but it was a com- plete feasible project. Now that money is being made available the project is going ahead. It has been reported to them that trout were spotted last year in a deep pond just north of Line 4, near Lorne Slute's farm. During spring run-off all the surface water from Hanover Hills Farms and most of the sur- face water from the Holtby farm finds its wayinto the stream. Thus, all the surface run-off and probably sub-surface water will find its way into Lake Scu- gog. Marvelous. Dave Morris, Jericho Farms, R.R. 4, Port Perry