My Garage Sale Tale.

What do you think of my garage sale sign? I've used this sign for at least a dozen garage sales and it still looks great, doesn't it? A lot of folks don't make the letters large enough for passing vehicals to read them. My letters range from 4 to six inches tall and I make them wide enough for easy visability.
Good garage sales take a tremendous amount of work and planning. I know, because I've hosted MANY garage sales and I am considered an expert on the subject by ME.

My table of treasures! Never be afraid to put any kind of worthless junk on your table. Remember the old saying? "One persons trash is another persons treasure."
Some people will buy a set of little salt and pepper shakers in the shape of penguins because their grandma had a set like that.
Other treasure hunters have collections of bunnies, owls, elephants or whatever, and if you have ANYTHING that fits into their collection you have a sale. Or maybe they just need a refrigerator drawer.


The obligatory clothes rack made of ladders and a hoe handle. It adds a touch of class to have clothes hanging up like in a store than just piling them up on a table. Baby clothes are the best. You may have noticed that the entire hoe handle is loaded with baby clothes. They go like hot cakes! Even if people don't have babies of their own they love buying the adorable outfits for their grandchildren, nieces and nephews and to dress up their foo foo doggies on special occasions. Ho-kay?


The obligatory table of higher priced, delux items that must be located right in front of the cashier table so you can keep a vigilant eye on the stuff. $5.00 rings, a $10.00 Wizard Of Oz watch, priceless basketball cards for $8.00 a box. One day, some low life guy tricked me into going in the house to ask my wife a question about something and when I came back out he was gone, and so was a valuable Elvis watch in a case shaped like a guitar. Ask me if I was ticked off. Oh, yeah!!


The obligatory book table. Books sell! Especially kids books. At this sale we had a table exclusively for childrens books and it was a big hit!
I didn't know people even read books anymore, with computers, I Pods, I Pads, Facebook, blogs, talking books and good ole T.V.
Some folks collect certain books by certain authors, or romance books, religious books, medical books...books sell!









Be prepared to watch a lot of cars drive by...














And drive by...














And drive by.






Our sweet and awesome customers!

Our coolest item was this sewing chest.





Yes, garage sales are a lot of work but the rewards can be great indeed! On this particular day we made a grand total of $34.00.

God, thanks for Benji!

This is our dog Benji. He is a Yorkie. Can you see how innocent and cute he looks? Yes, he is about as adorable as a doggy can be. There lies the problem. He is so spoiled rotten he gets away with just about anything he wants. He runs the house HIS way and lets us know he's the boss!
I remember when we first met him he didn't even bark. He just rolled on his back and let us rub his little belly. What a con artist. He knew just what he needed to do to suck us into his trap.

He began taking control by pooping all over the house when and where he wanted. No manner of coercion could dissuade him from pooping inside instead of outside. So we started putting "puppy pads" all over the house in hopes he would go on them. What a laugh! He preferred the carpet to do his doo doo, and would frequently eat his feces to gross us out completely! I believe his plan was to make us so frustrated and helpless that we would do ANYTHING to make him stop his bad behavior. ( We finally got trained)



One of his diabolical plans was stealing something from the trash that he wasn't supposed to eat or could choke him, like aluminum foil, and running with it. Well, the only way we could catch him was by giving him a doggie treat. It took us a long time to realize he was playing us for suckers. He knew that if he grabbed something he wasn't supposed to have he would get a treat. By the way, he STILL does that.




Of course, Benji won. He barks at us when he wants his treats, he climbs up on my lap and bites my nose when he wants to go for a walk, and we love him so much because he has this little attitude and personality that is totally unique and funny. He is great with our grandaughters and they think he is awesome. We wouldn't want him any other way. Let's face it, he is not boring! What love God showed in creating dogs for us. God, thank you for our little Benji!

The Little Rascals!

You've gotta admit that this photo looks like something from the "Little Rascals", right? I can see kids that look a bit like Alfalfa, Darla, Butch, Scotty, and even Mickey! (Played by Robert Blake, who was also Berretta)
Anyway, this was the gang in the St. Louis housing projects where I spent my formative years. That is me in front eating something, as usual.


The only reason I showed you this old photo is because I absolutely love old photos! Especially the ones where they don't smile. It looks like they're standing in front of a firing squad in some of those old pictures!, like they're scared to death! Maybe they thought the camera would steal their soul.
The photo to the right is of my great grandma and grandpa who lived WAY back in the Ozark mountains of south east Missouri. They were hard, rough and tough folks who farmed and ran a sawmill. You can tell how hard a life they lived when you realize they were only 29 when this picture was taken. Just kidding.
This is not about them, anyway. I just want you to see the cool old photos.




Here's a good one of my Mom holding my big brother Dave ( Who is 76 years old now), my Grandma and my Aunt Mel. Notice my Mom has a smile on her face?
That was my Mom. Always cheerful, singing, whistling (She could whistle beautifully, that was BIG back then), and laughing. She didn't care if nobody else was smiling, if she wanted to smile nobody was gonna stop her! But, this isn't about my Mom or Grandma, OR Aunt Mel.
This is about the wonderful old photos from the "olden days!"










Don't you love this one? Well, I do. Remember my Grandma in the photo up above? Well, this is my Grandma with the light hair and her sister Alice with the dark hair. Or vice versa. I think that is correct but I'm not really sure. The shoes are awesome, aren't they?
They just don't make people like my Grandma and Aunt Alice anymore. I remember when...
Oh, right, I'm getting off the subject again. This is all about old photographs, not my relatives.









Super cool picture of my Dad in front of an antique car! Of course, it wasn't antique then, was it?
My Dad was the greatest baseball player I ever saw. He tried out for the Cardinals and when they called him back for his final tryout he had broken his collar bone. Then ww2 broke out and he went into the Army and...There I go again! This isn't about my Dad!
I hope you enjoyed the old photos!

Magnificent Mineral Springs Park At Sunrise!

I am blessed to live just a few blocks from Mineral Springs Park in Pekin, Illinois. It is one of the most beautiful parks I've ever seen. No, it is not as big as Golden Gate Park or Knotts Berry Farm in California, but I think it's just as lovely.





I walked to this magnificent park this morning and took a few pictures to share with you. I need to come here more often. I grew up in St. Louis just minutes away from Forrest Park and the Botanical Gardens, and hardly ever took the time to enjoy the beauty within a "stone's throw" from me, to
use a biblical term.


The flowers that grace the park are awesome and BIG! They must use Miracle Grow or something like that because I've never been able to grow enormous flowers like they have at this paradisaic park. Of course, I never put anything on my flowers to help them grow and I usually forget to water them. Oh, and sometimes I accidentally run over them with the lawnmower if I've had too many beers. Let me venture a guess that the groundskeepers here are "tea-totalers because they do a wonderful job!

This is extremely cool! This fascinating park has a great statue of Senator Everett McKinley Dirkson, one of the greatest politicians of all time, who had the greatest deep gravel voice I've ever heard! I thought he sounded like a grown up "Froggy" from the "Little Rascals." Tragically, William Laughlin, the real "Froggy" was hit by a bus while he was delivering newspapers on his motor scooter in 1948. Why was a big star like "Froggy" delivering newspapers?


These are the words that are on the back of the statue. Can you see why he was considered such a great guy? Did the letters just get bigger? Oh, well, Everett deserves big letters. "There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come."
It was not until 1964, that many diverse and powerful forces combined with the personal courage of the U.S. Senate minority leader and senior senator from Illinois, Everett McKinley Dirksen, to pass the most meaningful civil rights legislation in nearly a century: the Civil Rights
Act of 1964.

One of the supreme pleasures of Mineral Springs Park is the abundance of waterfowl. Ducks and geese abound at the lagoon. I especially love the baby ducklings and geeselings! ( I can't spell goslings)
Yes, there is a lot of duck/geese "fazool" on the sidewalk around the lagoon but the park attendants keep it cleaned off pretty good.
By the way, does a duck's quack echo?







The park has a huge playground area for the kiddies, with soft wood chips for them to land in when they fall from the equipment. When I was a kid growing up in the St. Louis housing projects, we had a playground but no wood chips. Just hard concrete to land on. I struck my head dozens of times on that concrete and look at me, I'm phyne! I'm just PHYNE! Tee hee!










I put this photo in to show that it was sunrise at this glorious park.
See that little shining light to the right of the gazeebo and above the trash can? That's the sun.
No! It is NOT a U.F.O.! I think you've been watching the History Channel on Thursdays too much, where they talk about ancient aliens, the Roswell Incident, area 51, the alien spacecraft that crashed landed in Aurora Texas in the 1800's...What? I'm the one that's been watching that U.F.O. stuff too much? No, no! You're the one that brought it up, not me! Hey, let's stop arguing and go on with the abduction, uh, I mean, PRODUCTION of this photo tour of Mineral Springs Park.




There is absolutely nothing sadder than this. A lost doggy poster on a tree in the park. I hope they get Daisy back. This kind of thing breaks my heart. I guess there has been a rash of dognappings in the area and that is about as low as it gets. Most people view their dogs as family members and having one stolen is like having a child stolen. What a sad world we live in.










O.K. A gorgeous stroll around the lagoon and we are back where we started.
In all seriousness, if you are in the Pekin, Illinois area, come visit this "gem" in the middle of town and bring the kids!