When I was a kid, treats and snacks were limited, but I could usually talk my mom into making popcorn at least once a month, usually on a Saturday night. It was made on the stovetop in a big cooking pot with regular vegetable oil and the cheapest popcorn kernels we could buy. It was seasoned with table salt and served in a large tin cake pan. Then I'd settle down in front of our RCA console color TV for a double-header of "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island" or maybe the CBS Saturday Night Movie.
Sometimes my mom would spring for a more expensive popcorn brand like Jolly Time that came with it's own packet of yellow-colored seasoning. I loved that powdery salt. I told myself it tasted like butter (it didn't).
In my teen years, my desire for popcorn as a weekly snack got to the point that my mom finally bought a popcorn popper. It was a simple Mirro brand model; just an electric pot with a lid similar to this one, although ours had a clear plastic lid (this, by the way, was not my find).
I once scalded the inside of my nostril sniffing the popcorn immediately after lifting the lid (I told you, I really loved popcorn); lesson learned.
It made adequate popcorn, but I sometimes burned the bottom. There is no worse smell than burnt popcorn. I longed for one of these (this IS my find):
I know, it's "I Spy,", but that doesn't work for today's blog title. Work with me here, people!
I drove past an unassuming little garage sale a few weeks ago. I almost didn't stop as it looked like mostly new items, but I figured, "Hey, I'm here."
The host was probably in his 40's, so I was surprised to find a vintage 1968 Icee Bear gym(?) bag for sale for $1.
Did you ever have a dream and wake up thinking, "That's a great idea for a blog title!" No? Maybe it's just me. But that's how I came up with today's blog title.
I dreamt long-time reader and longer-time friend FrankO had sent me some items he had found and within lay some mystery to solve. All I can remember about the items were they were a gathering of paper; photos, newspaper clippings, etc. And FrankO wanted me to research and solve something about them. And so, I wrote a blog about solving the mystery of them and titled the blog as I've done here.
As I said, I then woke up and thought, "Hey! That's a great idea for a blog title!" Unfortunately, I didn't have a mystery garage sale find to go with it. But as I lay there unable to fall back asleep because now my brain was in overdrive, I realized, I kind of DO have a garage sale mystery I recently found.
But first, let's talk about that title. What does it have to do with mysteries? At first I thought, well of course, it's a Humphrey Bogart line. I could hear him saying it. Then I realized, it's a line from "Casablanca" where he is decidedly not a detective. The actual quote is "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." But I swear I can visualize a femme fatale walking into a stereotypical detective's office (feet kicked up on the desk) and him uttering a line similar to this.
So where was the detective connection to Humphrey Bogart? Ah yes, "The Maltese Falcon" in which he plays "Sam Spade". But how did this quote get intertwined with Bogart's portrayal of Dashiell Hammett's private dick? I can only guess that some parody I've seen over the years employed it. Carol Burnett? I know Steve Lawrence played a "Sam Spade" character in "Double Calamity" on her show, but I couldn't find any scene that fit my memory. Oh well, some mysteries aren't meant to be solved, only accepted. Now you can see why I have trouble falling back asleep.
Anyway, back to my mystery.
I found this portrait in a box of photographs at a recent sale.
I have a special treat for everyone today. Well, "treat" may be a bit strong. But if you've ever wondered what it was like to garage sale with me, this is your lucky day. Okay, "lucky" may be a bit strong.
Okay, let's not quibble with words. You're wondering, What is Tom babbling about?" I'm babbling, I mean, talking about my first (and maybe last) Garage Sale Finds vlog.
I've been toying with the idea of creating some vlogs of my garage and estate sales adventures for a while now. I've been on the fence whether I wanted to go that direction, but thought I'd give it a shot. I've watched other garage sale vlogs and have thought, "I find better stuff than that".
My next concern was, is it legal? Of course, there are countless Youtube videos out there doing exactly this, but I was curious. From what I've read, essentially, even if you on private property, but are "asked" to enter, you may videotape. Kind of like a vampire. I didn't plan on filming any actual people, so I decided to proceed (more on that later).
So this past weekend, I took my camera with me along for the ride (or walk as the case may be). Videoing the sales was the easy part. Editing them was something else.
My first challenge was, for obvious reasons, I didn't want people's faces to be shown. There are a lot of people at garage sales these days. Not like the old days when I'd be the lone person there. Consequently, they bounce in and out of the video. I tried to point the camera to shoot at waist height, but still ended up catching a lot of people. So finding software that could blur faces was my first task. I ended up playing around with the online video editor Flixier. It wasn't terribly hard to figure out how to use, although the blurring feature is fairly clunky. It doesn't follow faces, so you have to blur out large blocks of video and move the blurring area frequently. I did my best.
Second was adding some narrative to let you know what was going on. I didn't talk too much during the actual video and I didn't feel like doing a voiceover, so I added some text explaining what I was looking at and my thoughts.
One last warning: it's long. It's 17 minutes and 36 seconds long. I'm sure there are long sections I could have edited out, but if you want the full effect of just 1 garage sale (I went to about 5 garage sales and 4 estate sales that day) it's all there. You can always double the playback speed and watch it in 8 minutes and 48 seconds.
Will I do this again? I guess it depends how much everyone enjoys the video...and if I can find some decent video editing software.
P.S. I'll follow up with a later post in more detail of the actual items I bought.
P.S.S. That's my daughter with me in the video. The garage sale force is strong with this one...
This past weekend I attended a rummage sale at a local church, St. John's Evangelical in Mehlville, Missouri. Rummage sales seem the last bastion of bargains. Unfortunately, their primary way of advertising is by signs in front of the church, so I rarely know of them. I just happened to be driving the route past this church last week and saw the sign.
