King Missile, Led Zeppelin, and The Salvation Army

“Then, as I walked down Second Avenue towards St. Mark's Place, where all those people sell used books and other junk on the street, I saw my penis lying on a blanket next to a broken toaster oven.  Some guy was selling it.”

                                                       Detachable Penis – King Missile

            Today we had a garage sale.  Our garage, while quite large, is proving inefficient when it comes to holding all our stuff.  Basically we have more stuff than garage, so we decided that part of our downsizing would include getting rid of things we don’t really need, don’t really use, and more often than I’d like to admit, didn’t really know we still had.      

The day for me started at 5:00 when I got up, pulled all this fine merchandise out into the driveway, and hoped people would find some of it worth giving us a couple of bucks for.  I remember when a good friend’s father had a yard sale in the classified, (pre craigslist you see) and people were banging on his front gate at 6:00, demanding to be let into his yard.  I wanted to be ready.

At six our first customers showed up.  They were the construction guys who were pouring a new patio for the guy across the street.  They bought a couple of things then started up the very large and very loud contraptions that would pump the wet concrete from the curb to wherever the patio was to be.  That lasted for about 2 hours and was like running a boutique in the engine room of the Titanic.

The sale went well.  While we didn’t make enough to retire on, we did make enough to be worth driving over to the bank to deposit and I actually sold a metal bed frame that I’m sure has moved with us at least three times.  More importantly, our garage only looks half full now.  Or half empty depending on your disposition and to many of my friends whether or not their meds are working.

As I was sitting there, waiting for the next customer to show up and contemplating having an “every thing is a dollar for the next 30 minutes” sale, I wondered if yard sales are strictly a suburban phenomenon or do urbanites occasionally throw handfuls of their junk out front and ask for money for it.  Then I remembered a song (quoted above) from years ago that mentioned people doing that exact thing on a steet on the way to St. Mark’s Place which is in Manhattan.  If you can't believe what a guy singing about his penis puts in a song, what can you believe?

            St. Mark’s Place also hosts a building that served as the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti album which in turn could have served as a description of what occupied my driveway this morning.  That graffiti has been cleaned up and all that wasn't sold went to the good people of the Salvation Army, which also was a short-lived band in the early eighties.