inexpensive alternative

[berlyn]

In South Texas, a garage sale is more or less an individual or group of friends/relatives selling used items in the garage or yard. We can have one every 6 mo in the city I live.
Estate sale is where you hire a professional (who gets a commission, usaully) to price items, advertise, arrange the help/money collecting, etc... It usually a person who's downsizing, going into assisted living/nursing home or is deceased.
We don't have tag sales. I think it's a Northern term, like pail/bucket or soda/pop/cola.

Berlyn

[ha_asfan]

In Detroit, there are Garagre Sales, Estate Sales and Rummage Sales. Estate Sales, supposedly, indicate that it is indeed an estate being dissolved. Garage sales are more spontaneous "let's get rid of the junk" sales and rummage sales are organizational sales, like churches, schools......there are also weekend flea markets, usually over priced affairs and the best are the "city wide garage sales" which more and more communities are now doing. A small city will take a three or four day period, say, thursday through sunday, 8am till 8pm and sell a minimum fee license to all residents who want to load up their driveways with what they hope will be treasures to those who come to buy. The city wide is the best...with a map and a lot of dollar bills, you can do really well....like my Saarinen table and four chairs for $35!

[berlyn]

Hey guys!!

Who cares where you go, with Chambers 2nd hand is the way to find your "finds"!!
They don't make'em anymore.
Several weekends ago, hubby and I go to a antique store in one of the nearby small towns.
I'd call this place a junk store instead!! Nasty and cluttered!! It was "trails" on the inside through the rooms, with junk piled in piles. It was "overwhelming" & spooky for me. I looked around on the outside and saw a pile of pots and pans on the ground and started rummaging through them. Hubby was on the lookout for snakes and I made sure I could jump back incase of an encounter face to face with one!! I'm a good backwards jumper.

No snakes, but one lid for a single pot for 25 cents!! Now on the prowl for a bottom pot.

Any of ya'll ever "dumpster dived"??? I have a story for that one, actually several!!

Berlyn

[Ms V]

What nearby small town? I am going to be so "out of sorts" if a chambers 'something' is found near me...V

[berlyn]

The small town near me was Halletville, TX. I've been to all the small towns around me in search of anything Chambers related.
The lid was my only find so far.

[lindaw2]

Phoebe,
My sister-in-law also lives in Asheville. Do you know where Riceville Road is? She has ony been there a year. Before that she was in Black Mountain and before that Morganton. She moves a lot!
I am jealous of your weather. Here in Rochester, it is so cold today- wind chill of about 3. Brr. So it is so nice to come home to my beautiful stove and cook something warm and comforting! Which will never, ever be (gag) oatmeal!

[lindaw2]

I should also add that garage/tag/estate sales and consignment/thrift shops are something she loves to do. I will be sending her info on what I am looking for and will keep you posted. Trust me- if it is anywhere in your area, she will be able to find stuff! With her luck? It will find her.

Linda

[Deathbyinches]

I have never told this story and my wife will kill me if she finds out I'm telling it now. The first year we owned our stove, Mr. Simmons was the year we lived in the old Simmon's house. I was 30 and my wife was 26 and we had no children yet.
It had been a rough couple of years of very close relatives dying one right after the other. I was just learning how to cook things on this big honking Chambers stove, and falling in love with it, when I decided I'd cook something in the well. This was way before the Internet, so I had no Chambers instructions and I actually had to dig up a cook book to find recipes to try out in the well.
I had cooked several things successfully and finally fixed some kind of soup with lentils and other things and I really went way overboard and came up with a very rich, thick soup that wasn't very tasty at all. I had added way too many starchy things.
So we both ate a bowl of the mess and decided it wasn't so hot. I left it in the original Chambers well pot meaning to throw it out to the dogs. And I forgot. At some point my very cruel and witchy mother in law called and said she was coming to visit.
Our method of cleaning quickly in those days was to grab up everything in sight and carry it up to the attic to hide until her mom was gone. So up to the attic went this pot of soup (lord I know what you all must think) and the end of the story is weeks later when I went back up to the attic my soup had eaten a hole thru my original pot...just ate it up.
So all these years I've been using some piece of **** pot so poorly made it doesn't even have a name stamped on it. And every time I do I feel ashamed for being such a screw up when I was younger. My mother in law is dead now and so we just don't bother to clean anything......see how much wisdom comes with age?

[BlueBeetle]

Hey Joe, small world. I grew up in Ft. Smith -- went to Southside High. Left for college in '91, and haven't lived there since, though I still have family there.

Chris