The Longest Yard
Four days a year, this 450-mile stretch from Kentucky to Alabama becomes the world's biggest flea market

By Leigh Ann Henion
Sunday, April 29, 2007

My fiancé, Matt, and I are standing on a roadside in Kentucky deciding whether we want an old cast iron sink full of mud. For some, this might be an easy choice. But we are playing the is-it-a-piece-of-junk-or-an-antique-worth-saving game. We stare at the sink for a while, trying to envision it surrounded by freshly painted bead board, beautiful. It takes effort to flip it over to see a rust-free underbelly. A spider web clings to a corner. I find the sink's owner sitting on a couch in the cool interior of a nearby barn. "Five dollars for the sink," she says. Sold.

We're at a yard sale, but it's not just any yard sale; it's the longest yard sale in the world. Four hours ago, we started our journey in Covington, Ky. We have seen people hawking antique linens, slate-lined coolers, pottery and paintings. We have seen wedding dresses and estate diamonds for sale a mere 10 feet from a yard full of mismatched cane-bottom chairs. We've met punks with henna-dyed hair selling black mosquito nets, and men in American flag T-shirts selling wooden Santas proclaiming, "Joy to the World." We've been told it is nearly impossible to travel the official 450-mile route of the four-day sale to its southern point in Gadsden, Ala., if we want to stop and shop, but we are on a mission. The fact that it's taken us four hours to go 40 miles is cause for mild concern.

The sink's owner, Debbie Thompson, gets up and walks over to survey what we've purchased from her roadside setup. "I'd better help you clean this out," she announces. She disappears into the old barn and emerges with a plastic jug of water.

The milky-white bottle is sweating in the humid heat of the day. Debbie pulls a clump of soggy grass out of the sink with her hands and squeals a little when she touches the mush. Then she pours water in to clear mud from the drain.

As she swishes her hand in the swampy water, she asks, with genuine curiosity, "What are you going to do with this, put it in your house?"

"Yes," we tell her. "Well, we're getting ready to build one." I gesture toward Matt, "He's a carpenter. We're building it ourselves." By this time, her husband has wandered up.

"So, you're going to build a new house around old things," he says.

"Well, now that you mention it, I guess so," I reply.

Debbie is delighted at the thought. She moves close to my face, and I can see that the heavy dark eyeliner she's wearing is lined with powder blue. "I just think it's wonderful that you are interested in old things. Not a lot of young people are . . . Have you seen the old chicken coops we've got?"

I say: "My grandfather was a poultry farmer, and, well, let's just say that my father doesn't have as much appreciation for old things as I do. A lot of things I value, he sees as junk." I don't tell them about how he bulldozed my grandfather's barn with its 80 years of treasures still inside it.

"Isn't that something," Debbie's husband says. "I suppose sometimes ways of seeing things skip a generation."

As we're getting ready to leave, Debbie takes me by the arm and leads me around to show me her favorite things -- painted steel chairs, graying mirrors. "Don't you just get excited about these things?" she asks. "People back then had a hard time, but they sure made things to last."

When we circle back to Debbie's husband, he is deep in thought. "I'm thinking we may have some things in the house they might be interested in, something we could just throw into the deal with the sink," he says.

Debbie puts her hands on her face. "Oh, I have such a hard time parting with things, but what could we give them to get them started?" She ponders this before rushing off to stores of items unseen. She comes back with an old waffle iron. She opens it and oscillates it, like a kindergarten teacher reading a picture book to children, so that we might inspect its partially rusted metal interior. We respond with smiles and nods, as if it were lined with mother of pearl. "This is original," she says, "from the '50s."

Her husband points to the back of the appliance and says, "You get a new plug and it'll work just fine." I'm genuinely touched by the gesture, but I protest the two-for-five-dollars deal.

"No, we insist," Debbie says, putting her hands out, palms open. Debbie's father, a taut man with tattoos and a voice as gravelly as the ground on which we stand, walks by during the exchange, and Debbie shouts, "Hey, Dad, these young people get excited about old things."

He looks at me standing there, cradling the waffle iron like a baby, and he says, "If they're excited about that, there's something wrong with them." After profuse thank yous, Matt and I jump back into the truck.

"Drive safe," Debbie says.

"Good luck," her husband offers.

"Be sure you get down the road a ways before you throw that waffle iron out the window, so there aren't any hurt feelings," Debbie's father calls out.

Established in 1987 by Mike Walker of Jamestown, Tenn., the World's Longest Yard Sale runs through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, mostly along the rural corridor of U.S. Highway 127. Taking part in the sale is as easy as showing up; no registration is required. There is no way to know exactly how many people visit or how many people set up shop on the shoulder of U.S. 127. The event, founded as a way to revitalize Jamestown's local economy, has become a road trip for seekers of all kinds.

Back roads are not the most efficient way to get from Point A to Point B, and yard sales are not the easiest places to shop. But that's the charm of an event that seems to embody an "it's the journey not the destination" philosophy. Before Walker started the sale, few travelers ever wandered through Jamestown, preferring to travel the faster main thoroughfares instead. Now thousands arrive every summer as they leisurely move down the yard sale path. In addition to buying goods from various vendors, yard sale travelers boost local economies along the route by staying in campgrounds, hotels and motels, and by eating at the mom and pop restaurants that still line sections of the back road.

I'm open to becoming the proud new owner of a few odd items that cross our path as we meander this trail of treasures ourselves, but what I'm really looking for is the unique slice of Americana served at the open-air markets I visited while growing up in the foothills of North Carolina. My farmer grandparents took me to flea markets and yard sales whenever I stayed the weekend with them. I can still remember the rough-hewn tables, red clay creeping up their wooden legs after a heavy rain. There was almost always a steady stream of country music coming from transistor radios, and a contingent of sellers whiling away the day with instruments in hand.

Every outdoor marketplace has its own flavor, its own melange of items that range from knickknacks to treasured antiques. Even where most of the wares are worn, there is the sense that a valuable treasure might be unearthed at any moment. These locales are united by the steady sound of chatter, the energy of a marketplace where the price is almost always negotiable, where everything comes with a history and has the potential to find a new purpose. Sometimes, living in a world of sterile shopping centers and mega-marts, I get homesick for that kind of place.

At first, the World's Longest Yard Sale seems like one big yard sale rather than a connect-the-yards picture, but then come patches of grassland devoid of sellers. Usually, when one yard is full of goods for sale, the neighboring yards will be, as well. But when residential areas open up to fields of crops awaiting harvest, the only things available for consumption are the road's pastoral views.

In agricultural areas, cattle graze in valleys, and rock outcroppings stand watch over fields of corn and burley tobacco. Metal rods sit where locust fence posts have finally given way to rot. Hollow, whitewashed gourds hang in rows, awaiting the birds for which they were crafted into homes. When two-lane roads widen for the business sections of towns, vendors leave little space on the curb. Sale items seem to cover all the grassy patches in the municipalities along our path. Sometimes local churches offer free refreshments, and occasionally they'll run a sale of their own, but they almost always offer sale-related messages on backlit signs. One of these signs advises, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be."

The stretches of road that are the most congested with commerce have vendors lined up as far as the eye can see. Folding tables, tents and makeshift booths of sawhorses and plywood can seemingly transform entire towns into giant flea markets.

You can learn a lot about people, families, communities by what they choose to sell. Here, along U.S. 127, it's as if houses have been turned upside down and shaken, like purses being emptied. You can tell, house by house, what sort of decorations people have surrounded themselves with over the years, and what sort of hobbies they've explored. There are art deco lamps, aluminum Christmas trees, Aerosmith posters and tasteful vintage botanical prints. There are discarded tennis rackets, archery bows and skateboards with hot-pink wheels. Here, you can even learn a stranger's shoe size without it seeming like an invasion of privacy. During this sale, each yard becomes a temporary museum of personal artifacts.

The shared agrarian history of this part of the country is evident in the yard-after-yard offerings of sky-blue Mason jars, decrepit hay thrashers and rustic tools. I imagine the Mason jars feeding family after family with homegrown vegetables stored away to nourish through the winter, the hand tools building house after house along our path.

As the afternoon winds down, we begin to worry that the traveling couple we met at the church giving away zucchini brownies, inspired by an unexpectedly large crop of squash, was right to tell us that we'd be lucky to find shelter within 30 miles of the sale route. The few places to stay along the rural

passageway are most often booked in advance, but we hope for the best. Our camping gear is stowed in the back of the truck cab, but I don't think I could sleep outdoors in this deep summer heat. Concerned about making arrangements, we agree not to stop again until we reach a town, but it is hard. We rubberneck at every sign, every cluster of goods spread under shade trees. There's no telling what we're passing by. It feels as though we're skimming through a book. We'll get to the end, but we're sacrificing parts of the story.

In Liberty, Ky., Matt and I are relieved to see a motel just off the road. We don't yet know it, but the Royal Inn Express is the only motel in town and our only hope of having a place to sleep tonight. The swimming pool out front is disappointingly dry, and the motel's rate has been inflated $20 per night because of its proximity to the sale route.

"I have two cancellations tonight," the man at the counter says when we inquire about vacancies. "That's the only reason I have any room left." The room in question has shag carpet that looks as dirty as my sandaled feet, now the color of red clay dust, and a dormant air-conditioning unit held in place by metallic insulator tape.

The motel employee instructs, as if he's not sure of the answer, "Go ahead, turn it on, and see if it works."

Matt turns the plastic knob and puts the backside of his hand up to the vents. He nods to let me know that the air is, indeed, cool. "Sold," we say, exhausted.

We get off to an early start the next morning -- six o'clock. In Jamestown, Ky., U.S. 127 curves through sandstone cliffs and over river gorges bordered by cathedrals of kudzu. Around lunchtime, the Forbus General Store appears in Fentress County, Tenn., as if an oasis of country cooking in the middle of an otherwise establishment-free zone. We get plates of barbecued chicken from a cast iron cooker just outside the store. The chicken comes with baked beans and coleslaw, and we add tiny pecan pies and Coca-Colas in glass bottles. Matt and I join a host of others, locals and travelers alike, under a tent. The men across the table from us share their trials of finding a place to sleep the night before. They'd resigned themselves to sleeping under the stars until someone offered to rent them a room in their house. One of the men, deeply tanned and wrinkled, took a swig of Coca-Cola before saying, "They told us they'd serve us biscuits and gravy in the morning, and I thought they were kidding, but there they were with breakfast when we woke up. Turns out they might be headed down to our part of Georgia soon, and they might come stay with us."

From what I gather, this sort of story is not all that rare along the route. I've heard more than a couple of vendors say things such as, "I'm gonna go fishing with that guy later this month when I'm up in Tennessee." For the most part, people who hold yard sales or vend antiques or barbecue chicken at community functions are people's people. They're talkers. They tell stories and invite people to come home with them. Names and addresses and phone numbers are scrawled on pieces of scrap paper. In this part of the country, blackberries grow free and wild on the side of the road, but BlackBerrys are few. Out here, it seems, people have a passion for sharing stories -- and anything else that might be duly appreciated.

At our next stop, I'm considering purchasing a metal tabletop, the kind that you find on old canning tables and baking cabinets, when the owner calls out, "You trying to think creative?"

"Well, yes, but I'm not sure I'm creative enough."

He walks over and starts giving his thoughts on what could be done with the tabletop. He's put a larger one on top of an old metal double-sided work sink. "That doesn't really go there," he explains. "We just thought we'd put it there. Then you'd have a place for your potatoes and a place to work." I wonder when I might have a trough of potatoes to prepare and realize it may never happen. I like thinking that I could cook multiple pounds of potatoes for a farm-size table full of loved ones, but I decide not to buy a tabletop. The man wipes his brow with the back of his hand. "I understand," he says. "It's a little too hot out here to really think creative."

We make a stop in Crossville, Tenn., where a gathering of vendors overlooks the Wal-Mart parking lot. They're selling what I've come to think of as expected merchandise -- rusty tools, salvaged antique stained glass, tarnished brass beds. The conversations seem to be at a minimum, so I'm surprised to hear a booming, "Hey, y'all," directed toward us when I pick up an ornate metal hinge. Matt and I turn to see a dark-skinned man with a goatee. "That hinge is in the Eastlake style," he tells us before proceeding to give a mini-lesson on architectural history. He then leans toward us and asks, "You want to see something you've never seen before?"

We nod yes, but Matt adds, "Just know, we're probably not going to buy whatever it is you're going to show us." The man shrugs, no matter.

He leads us into his white tent. The bright light of the day softens, as if we've entered a milk-glass cavern. The man, Michael Williams of Six Mile, S.C., leads us back to a wooden case. He reaches in to retrieve a small brass locket the size of a pocket watch and proceeds to give us a short course in the history of photography. "This is a daguerreotype," he says, shoving the metallic circle into Matt's hand. The daguerreotype looks like a hologram. As Matt moves it back and forth, the image of a bearded man's face fades in and out of view.

When the locket is safely back in the secured case, Michael looks up and asks, "Wanna see an original tintype of Wild Bill?" And so it goes, on and on.

By now we realize we should have reserved a hotel room for the night in advance. Some people do it a year ahead of time. But there's something fitting about physically searching out a place to stay on a road trip like this. After all, yard sales are about scavenging, about finding the unexpected.

Still, we become tense as the afternoon wears on and we hunt for a hotel room. We inquire about rooms at the Ramada, six left, but in our uncertainty about paying the going rate, we leave. By the time we change our minds, 10 feet later, there is only one vacancy.

The hotel parking lot is overrun with pickup trucks. Our own truck now holds various items strapped down with ropes meant to secure kayaks. There are no locks to be seen. All around us, shirtless men come out to retrieve forgotten items from their truck beds, and women come to get their hatboxes full of cosmetics and curlers. Matt wants to watch TV, and I want to write, so I take one of our wooden chairs and drag it across the sidewalk. For a while, I am alone with the hum of the air conditioner and the chirping birds, but before long, half a dozen people who have taken my lead join me on the sidewalk. One by one, they drag chairs out of their air-conditioned rooms, preferring to loiter in the shade of the awning. We wave and smile and swap small stories from the day, greeting newcomers as they pull in.

On our last day, Matt and I stop at a sale in the Head River community near Cloudland, Ga. The proprietor, Suzie Gill, started participating by dragging unwanted items into a neighbor's yard for a two-family sale. Then she moved to her own driveway. In the years after, she built a small wooden building and, finally, a larger metal building, since she needed more and more space. Instead of getting rid of things, she constantly accumulated more.

Her husband, Seth, is leaning back in his chair, hands shoved into worn overall pockets. "Everybody that comes through here has a story," he says. "You learn a lot from people out here. We had a veterinarian from Baton Rouge up here a few years back. I had a bunch of old halters and mule tops I'd found, and I hadn't a clue as to what some of them were."

Seth points toward where his 20-something son is sitting with his girlfriend and says, "He sat down right there on that bench and got out his chew, and me and him had a chew, and he told me it was a harness for pulling a horse's teeth. We had a good laugh about that, and I would've never known otherwise."

Matt and I buy a stack of architectural tiles from the Gills. The tiles are from the oldest Gulf station in Chattanooga, torn down because a road was widened. We stack them in the truck, and I feel a small sense of accomplishment when I notice that we've breached the rim of our truck bed. We are now traveling with a cast iron sink, a vintage iron bed frame, a wrought iron light fixture, a decorative star handcrafted from recycled barn roofing and a small collection of miscellaneous yard tools. Taking stock, I realize we've gone heavy on metal.

As we prepare to leave, Seth tells me we should stop in Dog Town, Ala. He then gives me a brief history of Dog Town, how the area was a place where, long ago, local hunters would sit around a fire and drink whiskey and listen to dogs chase wild foxes.

Suzie, a little embarrassed by the down-home nature of the story, adds, "People from California think we're crazy when they come through here and we tell them things like that."

Down the road, a seller in Dog Town asks me if I'm a collector of something in particular, such as the antiquated medicine boxes and Matchbox cars he's selling. I say no.

"Well, you're a young person," he says, "you should start collecting now, so when you're my age, you'll be able to sit out at something like this and make a small fortune." He smiles slyly and invites me to sit with him while Matt looks for hedge cutters for hedges we have yet to plant.

The seller's name is Woodrow Spencer, and he's been camping in a small RV van since he arrived from Tuscaloosa, Ala., four days earlier. He inflects his words as if everything he says is a sermon. When he shows me his collection of old locks and keys, I say, "Those are pretty cool."

He says, "Cool. That's a new, modern word for it." Then he looks at me, cocks his head a little to the left, and asks, "You got a voice in there?"

It's a strange way of asking me if I can sing, and it makes me take pause. I imagine my voice is held in an old creaky box along with my collection of stories and memories.

I answer, "Sure, I have a voice in here." And so we sing together, Woodrow and I, sitting in metal folding chairs outside his RV on the shoulder of U.S. 127. He's playing a banjo he made completely of metal and wood. We're quite discordant, and, if you heard us from a distance, I don't know that we'd sound much different than the hound dogs that used to howl into humid Dog Town nights.

Woodrow is making up songs as he goes along. He belts out, "We're a sitting on the side of a road . . . " I repeat whatever he comes up with, and the practice reminds me of childhood singalongs. I feel a little silly, but I'm having more than a little fun.

When Matt comes back from his yard-tool excursion, he's holding a rake with cast iron tongs. Woodrow looks him up and down and inquires, "Is this your boyfriend or your husband?"

Matt answers, "Somewhere in between." Woodrow then shoos me away, and leads Matt over to one of his glass cases. They huddle together, and Woodrow talks in a low voice, then he slips something small into Matt's palm and pats him on the shoulder.

Back in the truck, I ask Matt what Woodrow gave him. He pulls an old, empty locket out of his pocket. It's cheap, with glass cut like a prism. It's something I wouldn't pick up if I saw it on the ground, but now it seems like a treasure because of the way it has come to be ours. Matt cradles it in his hand.

"This is the kind of thing that turns a photograph of someone you love into a jewel. It's different than just sticking a photo in your wallet," Matt tells me. "This is something that will last."

Leigh Ann Henion is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Carolina.

She can be reached at lahenion@gmail.com.