June 2026, Anyway…
Around here, Summer is a season for garage sales, rummage sales, and yard sales. These events are given little thought by most people; they are an accepted background noise, and a chance to acquire for, or alleviate from your home baubles, used clothing, tools, knickknacks, décor, excess furniture, and all manner of tchotchkes. But garage sales are so very much more than the simple residential retail. They are some of the strongest threads in the remaining fabric of society.
Indulge me to explain.
Real community is based on exchange; that of goods, services, information, traditions, time, attention, and so on. Try to imagine a community in which there is no exchange between it’s members. No news would be shared, no business done, no time given. There would be hardly any interaction at all. One neighbor wouldn’t have reason to even know the other, and be given no real tangible cause to think anything about them. It would be a state of living isolated, yet surrounded by people.
This is the direction society is heading. With each passing year, new services available online supply for our material needs more and more while exempting us from interacting with our neighbors. Where once the person down the street made clothes that you wore, while another made the sausage you ate, and another fixed your shoes, these things are now done by people far away, unknown to you. Do you even know what your neighbors on each side of you does for a living?
Even the exchange of personal news has become diluted by social media. Why meet for cocktails or stand around the cooler? Just send out a reel or post and watch the likes and comments come in.
But the garage sale is the same. People meet, look through the unexpected oddities laid out like a miniature bazaar on each person’s lawn, getting a glimpse into their life. Conversations are started over conversation pieces. No Amazon next day delivery is offered. No door-dash is available. No sales tax is calculated. The exchange is happening directly between two citizens of the town, face to face. That is connection. That is community.
Where speed and convenience of modern business has offered us a million excuses to separate and isolate, garage sales invite us to do the opposite; they ask us to connect, to talk, and to spend time outside of our ‘fortresses of solitude’ we call homes. They are slow, unplanned, and messy, but that is also how one could describe roots. I think we could all use some fresh, young roots being put down in the soil of our town.
This June, take the time to go peruse the garage sales or host your own. Strike up conversations while you are out, for the used snow shovel may have a price tag on it, but conversations are always free, and can often contain more value than you think.
