"It's 5:30 Little Birdie!" The Hub yelled cheerfully. An alarm was going off. I had been asleep about 2 hours, not even having laid down until 3:00, and was having a dream about marigolds. I located the floor and flung my lower body in its general direction, whereupon Winston gave me an enormous dog kiss, ran around in circles, whapping me energeticlly with his wagging tail thus propelling me to my feet. I found the Prototype 2 Tea Shirt to wear, a pair of jeans, my calculator and a little spare change and was good to go for the flea market.

The Jeep piled high with cast offs, we rattled onto the parking lot of the site looking like a caucasion spin off of the 70's t.v. comedy "Sanford and Son". In fact, we were both humming its theme song under our breath. The fact that I know the theme song from "Sanford and Son" well enough to reliably hum it scares me, especially since I thought that Red Foxx was one of the most annoying people alive during the '70's....

After staggering around aimlessly among energetic Morning People, I was able to find space 4 and we unloaded the Jeep trying to set things up in a way that was both sensible and appealing. Yard sale / flea market merchandising is a tricky business. You have to make stuff look appealing without making it look like you're trying to make stuff look appealing. I got into conversation with Jen, the woman in the space next to me and we helped each other price some of our more vexing items ( a stroller she had paid $100 for, in pristine condition in its box - $25. A really nice fireplace set my parents gave us for Christmas when we had a house with a fireplace- $10. The stroller sold. The fireplace set didn't) She was joined by her friend Michelle, mother of girls and Otis, a friendly great pyranees dog - who was not with her, but about whom we were treated to stories.

The sun came up, the Early Birds came out, the haggeling began, caveat emptor. The Tea Shirts didn't stand a chance with this crowd. Though craft tables were allowed there weren't any. This was the hard core Yard Sale crowd, the shrewdest, toughest most no nonsense market anywhere in America. I bet that, at 7:30 a.m. I could have held up a Tea Shirt and 75% of the people present would have been able to correctly break down for me exactly what the shirt, the dyes, the paint and the hangers had cost with 10 cents. Not that these people don't value creativity.

Indeed, many of them are Yard Salers because they are, by nature or out of need, creative people. There are the full time homemakers in whose hands the dirty and beat up silk flowers someone almost threw out will be re-born as an arrangement worthy of the best department store display, the retired gentlemen looking with avid glee at anything with a plug on the end of it - for only a couple of bucks some half broken thing will offer hours of puttering-in-the-basement enjoyment and the old fashioned satisfaction of getting something to work. There are the retired ladies with eagle eyes looking for quality: anything that, wrapped nicely they can pass on as a gift or use to grace their own table and hold up their heads in front of their friends and family within the means of their social security check....the orthodox women of various stripes in an endless search for sturdy children's shoes, edifying books, and, possibly a modest skirt or hair clip for themselves...a smattering of recent college graduates trying not to look excited when they spot - finally! - a frying pan / toaster/ electric can opener, or some other gizmo it had never before entered their mind might be something they'd miss from their parents house so much they were actually considering NOT going out to a club this week in order to buy one, and , last but not least, a few shell shocked looking victems of the latest economic downturn, unsure of their ettiquette and still reeling from the news that they are no longer upwardly mobile. There you have the picture the Yard Salers.

Painted with a broad brush, they are friendly, courteous, no nonsense and focused. Interest is indicated in the Visible Study: bending over the object, picking it up, a straightforward question: Does it work? Does it need a battery? Is it a Black and Decker? Can I see the back of it? What the hell is this? Salesmenship and Haggeling are both done in respectful, low tones. No seller wants to come across like a used car salesman. No buyer wants his neighbor see him waffle over $1.25. The successful seller sticks to quality oriented facts: Brand new, never even opened the box....Only ever wore those shoes one time to a wedding. They hurt my feet, may work for you, though....Yep, just put a new line in that last night, plugged it in, worked great....Can you believe I washed that dress 50 times? It's cotton-linen you know. Can't beat the wearability. Yard Salers have cash at the ready, small bills, change. They have an open attitude. My husband collects these. God knows why. My daughter might like this. For $2.00 even if she doesn't....

There is a social aspect. Men stand around and shoot the shit about Parts-They-Have-Known-and-Loved. Women gather around someone trying on a dress over her street clothes, offering opinions on if it will fit in real life: they'll TELL you, Sister, that ain't gonna fit! if it's the truth.

I love yard sales. They're the great leveler - the marketplace that the economist Adam Smith imagined where you're only as good as the product you've set out. Some people will buy brand names, but more buy on quality alone. And one man's trash really is another man's treasure. Young Married Dude in space # 7 doesn't know a monkey wrench from an orangatan so he's as happy to get rid of that weird set his father-in-law gave him for Christmas as Young Do-it-Yourself Dude is happy to get the set for five bucks.

Moreover, I did some great networking with other women like me, through Jen and Michelle our site neighbors with whom we shared donuts. Jen reps classy southwest jewelry through home parties. We traded catalogs. Others arrived through the day: Stacey, Pampered Chef rep, Darlene: Princess House. We've all got similar backgrounds, personalities, selling styles....I think of us as the "Weebles". "Weebles" were toys when I was a child, cute little Fischer Price type people with round bottoms. They were marketed with the phrase "Weebles wooble but they don't fall down." I'm firmly in that socio-economic class of Weebles

I'm a minority in that I don't have children - a lot of the Yard Seller Crowd has multiple young children making it impractical for the wife/mom to do a traditional 9-5. Or else Something Happened. It all comes out in a matter-of-fact-not-looking-for-pity-way. "...her mom has alzhiemers"..."my son's on a nebulizer"..."my husband got canned so he went out on his own" ( that last was not me, however, but someone else with a very similar story) Those baby clothes are going to show right back up in another parking lot or lawn this summer until they sell. We do Other Things. My business plan is roundly encouraged, the encouragement peppered with advice. Someone else does child care. I tell her what I learned about incorporating. She says she thinks I could charge more for dog-walking, since she did that before The Thing With Her Knee. "You wanna donut?" " Share my sunscreen." " Here, I got a card." " You gonna do the flower show? I do that one - I 've got these great hostas I dig up and seperate." " Don't do Reece! They charged $25 per space, then said it was too muddy and wouldn't give a rain date or a refund! " That's aweful!"..."It's the Almighty Dollar." Grave nods. Cards and catalogs all around. I'll go find Jen at the flower show to look at a bracelet I might be able to afford. Michelle will call if Otis needs overnights anytime soon. I agree to go in with them on a church hall at Christmas time and split advertising in November, "We'll call it Direct Sales Expo or something like that". I guess this is what men do on the golf course. All I know is I have a lot more names and numbers then I had before! And a lot fewer catalogs.

"What were you talking about?" The Hub asks.

"Good old Girls Network" I inform him.

"Oh" he says, surprised.

The Tea Shirts? Not one sold. No one even looked at them. Everybody said it was the wrong venue. "These aren't toilet paper cover type stuff. You need a craft show" one woman advised me. We did, however, make $80 after subtracting the cost of the site. We spent $35 already for a composter to help out the vegetable garden taking shape in the back - another useful hobby of the Weeble class , I learned. I've done a lot better at yard sales: my record is $300, but that was over two days. But, for the amount of stuff we had and the competition from other yard sales/ flea markets today $80 is respectible. And I sat in the sun, and talked to pleasant people - something I'd do for a lot less money than that!