Yard Sale Adventures: Soulard -- Take Two!

We left Signal Hill at 6:40 this morning to get to Soulard by 7. We wanted to GET THE GOOD STUFF, MAN!

But many of the Soulardians were not ready for us at 7. It took them a little while to prepare their sales. Usually you say 8-12 and you are ready at 7, right? Well, these folks said 7-12 and meant it.

Our very first sale of the day was the Mother-Daughter-Extravaganza. They had some excellent clothes and one very wonderful Letter K Beaded Change Purse. Betty was thrilled with it. She bought it for Auntie Karen, who should be reading this blog regularly by the way, because she loves to shop and appreciates special things.

The mothers and daughters pictured below are: Betty and Nancy, Angie and Laura, Debbie and Abigail. (We don't really know if their names were Debbie and Abigail but we THINK that's what their names were. It was our first sale of the day and we didn't write down their names. Sorry!)

Here we are at the Mother-Daughter-Extravaganza. I am wearing the dress I bought. "Wearing" means I put the hanger over my head and made it look like the dress was draped on my body. Betty is wearing the pink crinkly shirt she bought. The other people are just wearing regular old clothes.

Then we followed our map to this sale:

For me, this was the highlight of the day. I found The Fez, the highlight of my shopping day. What's up with The Fez? Is it Turkish or Mideastern or American or what? The shiners wear them. Fred Flintstone wore one. And the Grand Moolah is a big deal, right? Here we go:

The fez people had a shop-full of merchandise. I think they have a regular store or a repeated sale or something. They had a lot of good stuff. They had a doll graveyard:

And a collection of Ken heads which disturbed me:

Here is Rich , the previous owner of The Fez. Six dollars later, now I am the owner of The Fez.

I KNOW he looks better in The Fez than I do. You don't have to say so. But the tassel was so luxurious and silky. It felt really good on my face. I think I might keep The Fez, even though it was intended to be a gift for my brother.

More Soulard: There was a fine sale on 12th. They had a giant wooden parrot and some excellent 25cent snacks. I don't think we bought anything but it was only because we had to PEE SO BAD!

We finally found a sale with an open bathroom. But, BAD NEWS, there was a nasty pair of underwear on the floor and NO TOILET PAPER! Thank GOD Betty had procured some bleachy sanitary wipes at a prior sale so we could not only dry our bottoms but sanitize them as well.

What are the circumstances which led to the nasty underpants on the floor of this bathroom? Somebody had diarrhea and left his pants? Somebody had a juicy fart and couldn't live with the shame? Why has no one placed these underpants in a trash receptacle? I can't stand in judgement because we were SO THANKFUL to have a potty when we needed one. But, seriously, what is going on here?

On to The Hill!

The Hill is a predominantly Italian neighborhood in St. Louis with many fine restaurants. Laura and Angie are in touch with their Italian roots, so they felt very comfortable and at home on The Hill. We found a sale with an enormous collection of quality clothes for one dollar a piece. I couldn't even appreciate the clothing adequately because there was so much of it. I only bought 5 things and I could have bought 20.

We needed a snack. Fellow shoppers insisted we try Missouri Baking Co.

YUM. Go there. Today. Right now.

Close to the baking company we found a pretty little house with a pretty little garage. See how the garage has every other brick or so painted a pretty little color?

The proprietress of this sale was a lovely Italian Nana. Laura wanted to cuddle her on the spot. From Nana we bought a set of 5 Smurf glasses. (4 Smurfs and 1 Smurfette) I think this was my second favorite purchase of the day, after the fez. The Italian Nana had a few duds as well. Here is Betty modeling some cwazy pants:

On The Hill, we met Diane and Abigail. They had a plethora of girlie items including a purse made out of seat belts and some pink, furry leg warmers.

As we tried to find the highway we skivved a sale by the Botanical Gardens. The proprietor was SUPER CRABBY! He didn't take our card when offered and did not appreciate our yardsale enthusiasm. Here is Laura with his test tubes:

And Laura with his Gun Cleaning Kit:

And me trying to make a sound on his wacky African flute thing which I think I was probably playing improperly:

Boo on you, Mister gun-cleaning-test-tube-using-flute-playing-man. You were pretty cute but not at all enthusiastic about the yardsaleblog and its editors.

From The Hill we drove back to Illinois. There was a city-wide sale in Caseyville.

Readers. Caseyville, from my experience, is sad and economically depressed. We shopped their sale way past the prime yardsale hours and found very little to get excited about. Maybe they had excellent stuff prior to 11:30. Probably they did. Their sales were prolific. But we couldn't find anything to buy. We were getting tired. Laura was wilting. I was on some sort of Yardsale-Viagra, but I think that was because I took a tiny nap between The Hill and Caseyville.

The best sale in Caseyville involved this artist and his pens:

He makes beautiful pens from unusual woods. Look for them at the next art fair you attend.

Here is the saddest thing we saw in Caseyville. There's not even an apostrophe. Does this person not actually know how to spell "garage"? This makes me feel sort of depressed.