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Yard Sales. The placepb Find Good Buys and Potential Mates

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BARBARA METZLER

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CAPE MAY - They are held by Democrats and Republicans, civic organizations and churches, families and individuals; attended by singles and housewives, the newly-divorced and the newly-wed, dealers and stealers. It is a gala event that draws them all — a Saturday morning extravaganza that can bring out the killer instinct in the most retiring 80-year-old and set lifelong friends at each other's throats. They are yard sales, garage sajes and flea markets, the closest thing to a civil war in the last 120 years. Ask a veteran yard saler fgr his strategies and you get an answer

vaguely akin to the makings of a military maneuver: “Get there early.” “Push the other guy out of the way." “Snatch the object you want out of his hand." And the old decoy strategy: “Send your five-year-old to ask the price, instructing him to say he wants it for his mommie and he only has 50 cents. Works every time.” ACCOMPANYING a veteran yard saler on a Saturday morning of bargain hunting requires nerves of steel and at least three cups of coffee. They set out as the sun rises, each ad carefully circled. Yard salers always drive stationwagons, not only because they can holcf anything from a small, broken-down Toyota to a complete set of Shakespeare's work, but because a stationwagon is the closest

screamed my initiator. She slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing another veteran. We f iled out of the car, eaving the engine running. It was only a few kids selling lemonade. • ♦ * Anna May Royale, Virginia Avenue, Cape May, just wanted to get

rid of some of the leftovers of a move from Glen Mills, >Pa. At quarter till eight, s small crown had gathered at her open garage door. She will never leave the door open again. “They were lined up here on both sides of the street,” she said, shaking her head. Nothing had been

priced.

BY to A.M. SATURDAY the Royales had been cleaned out of most of their merchandise. They had made $260 the day before, and all that remained was a toilet seat, a pair of ceramic lamps, “too formal" for shore living, and assorted record albums. "Hon, don't you want to keep this?" Mrs. Royale asked, holding the album “Victory at Sea." She began to hum a couple of notes to remind her husband of its infinite worth, and the album was taken off the “for sale" pile Susan Laird, Washington Street, Cape May, made $50 in the first hour of her

Saturday sale. She also caught the •early morning swoop of bargain birds out for a yard sale worm. , "YOU COULD just sense that they were all kind, of saying, 'Oh, if there's a treasure here. I want it,.' " she said. One man bought ya solar panel for $2, saying that he had no i(jea what he'd use it for. but at least the price was

right.

In Cape May Pojnl, Barbara Shugar of Philadelphia watched over her mother, Lois Burton's, yard sale progress. She told an expert's talc of yard sale re-sale.. Once she had bought a dryer at a yard sale and gotten the same price for it at her own sale, after deciding that she didn'Mike it. And she had purchased (Page 20 Please)

Special Section of the Herald and Lantern August 31 A 1983