32 Miles of Trash and Treasures

Bargain Hunters Crawl for Other People's Clutter in Shenandoah County

They came in vans from Maryland and pickup trucks from Roanoke and Richmond. They came in campers from Pennsylvania and SUVs from Delaware. By the hundreds, the bargain hunters of the mid-Atlantic brought their biggest, roomiest cars to Shenandoah County yesterday for the third annual 32-mile-long yard sale.

Because you just never know. You might find that perfect something you didn't even know you wanted. A plaster owl. A Victorian love seat. An antique bourbon tumbler. And not even have to pay too much for it.

Mile One. Strasburg. Carroll Estepp works at the Exxon, where regular gas goes for $2.67. The bargain hunters were filling up like crazy for the day of "yard crawling" down Route 11. This is the third year of the crawl, an effort to bring more tourists to the valley. And Estepp has seen enough to know he's not going.

"It's too conglomerated. You walk out in the road, and you're like as to become a hood ornament," he said, nodding toward the traffic backing up on the normally sleepy road. "Besides, the only thing I'd want to buy is guns."

Two miles down Jackson-Lee Memorial Highway, near a Civil War marker for the Battle of Fisher's Hill, David Pumphrey and Fred Riggleman of Charles Town, W.Va., patiently waited for the wives. Before long, their silver van was stuffed nearly to the ceiling with a wooden rocker they bought for $30 and an assortment of baskets and dried flower arrangements.

The men were looking for tools. But when they found more dried flowers, wooden paint-by-numbers Christmas ornaments made by children, fake Christmas wreaths, a light socket and Ziploc bags of baby pacifiers for 25 cents, they left the shopping to their wives.

"Look, isn't this adorable!" said Sis Pumphrey, unfolding the blue hand towel with a little angel she'd just bought for $2. But while her friend Nellie ooohed over the find, she sighed. "Actually, what I'm really looking for is something to put deviled eggs in."

Mile 11. Woodstock. The crawl is not one continuous yard sale, but rather pockets of yard sale clusters -- lawn mowers, rusted bikes, clothes lying on bushes up the front walk, chintz sofas, stereo speakers big enough to look like that weird slab from "2001: A Space Odyssey," strange, torturous and unused exercise equipment and more clothes -- separated by cornfields, churches, lumber mills and tractor stores.

Melvin Edmonds, 70, set up his card table of candles, handkerchiefs and a curly fry potato-peeling contraption on the sidewalk in front of Fink's Jeweler. Just as what he calls the town's "noon sireen" went off, he was busily trying to unload an ancient zitherlike instrument.

"You know Johnny Cash's mother-in-law had an autoharp? Well, this is a chicka harp. It's 100 years old. It was my brother's," he said. "There's a lady at Lord Fairfax Community College, I don't know what her name is, but she can tune it."

A man in a baseball cap dutifully listened and tapped on the twangy strings with a warped wooden hammer.

"See, it's all right here. You can play 'Rock of Ages' by playing these strings. Five. Three. Five. Three. Eight. Six. Five. It's $100."

The man smiled. "I'll think about it."

A few blocks away -- past tents of jewelry and tables filled with tiny tin Jell-O molds for $5, dusty toaster ovens and the tired waiting-room chairs of Dr. Edward K. Mulligan -- the mastermind behind the crawl, James M. Barnard, was doing a brisk business around back of his antique shop, Three French Hens. Barnard explained that he and his wife got the idea a few years ago, when they went to the Highway 127 Corridor Sale. That sale, which bills itself as the world's longest yard sale, spans 630 miles and runs through five states.

Mile 18. Edinburg. On Doris Hargis's front lawn, her husband's prized 1950 blue Ford was not for sale. But the ratty-looking 1948 red Ford was. For a cool $7,500. "We've had a lot of lookers today," Hargis said.

On one of the tables set up on her lawn, filled with nutcrackers, Christmas ornaments, stuffed animals and a $10 Confederate soldier print claiming that he was the "equal of 10 Yankees," Brenda Johnson lovingly cradled the plaster owl she had just bought for her friend. "It's to scare away the critters in her garden," Johnson said.

This is the second year at the sale for Johnson and her friends, Anna Evans, Brenda Hash and Amory Honacker, and they have it wired. "When we see a bunch of cars by the side of the road, I drive really, really slow, so everybody else can take a look. If they find something they like, they yell. And if I can find a parking space, I stop," Evans said. "That's why it's called a crawl."

Just after lunch, the group was on its second carload. Johnson was looking for pewter, Honacker for baby clothes for her soon-to-be-born son. And Hash wanted "primitive chicken stuff," like the wooden napkin holder with a chicken painted on the front, for her cabin in West Virginia. But they all had their eyes open for that feeling of "Ooooh, I want that!"

Mile 22. Mount Jackson. In the parking lot of Old Sutler John Confederate store, Stephanie Harper, an antique dealer, was looking for deals. She had driven down from Delaware in her camper the night before and started out at 6 a.m. She had stopped at every single yard sale and, nearly seven hours later, had made it only this far. Ron Fulk, an antique dealer, was doing his darnedest to sell her his wares.

"I've got some buttons dating back to the 1800s," he said, handing her a card of Lady Dainty pearly perfect buttons. "A dollar a card."

"A client of mine who sews would love these," she said and handed them back.

"How about this bullet!" Fulk said. "It's a Civil War bullet!"

Mile 32. New Market. B&K Auto and Truck Repair was the last official stop of the crawl. Bill and Kim Hogle (that's B&K) cleaned out their basement, their attic and all their closets and dumped it all in front of their store. It had been a good day. They had gotten rid of books, albums, tapes and housewares. They had donated their old sheets and linens to someone who said she was from World Relief or something like that and made quilts for the poor. Although they hadn't counted their money yet, they knew they were ahead several hundred dollars.

And just in case nobody bought the rest of their junk, they had their truck at the ready. "We're going down to Harrisonburg," Bill Hogle said. "We're going to give it to Goodwill."