I don’t know why I celebrate using a garage sale website successfully, but I do. If you knew anything about my bloodline, you would know that I come from some of the most hardcore garage salers ever. My mother, father, and both sets of grandparents couldn’t dream of a better day than wasting 8 hours looking at other people’s shit. My mother has refurnished her home 10 times over by things that other people would have let the garbage truck take away. The highlight of my families garge sale illness has to be the 8 person jacuzzi they found at a garage sale for 50 bucks. The kicker, it came with nothing. No frame. No pumps. No chemicals. Nothing associated with maintaining a jucuzzi. Now it sits in my mothers fenced in back yard growing weeds around it still six years later untouched since the day several people carried it in the back yard.
I will not lie that I do love garage saling. If my mother could only experience Chicago garage sales because people like to give away some pretty cool stuff. My issue with going to garage sales is time. Who has enough to drive around looking for them? I sure as hell don’t. So a few years ago, I stumbled upon Craigslist. Craigslist is by far the greatest garage sale site on the planet. Not only can you get a free couch today, but also a furnace, blue chair, entertainment center, couch, camping toilet (they do not say whether it has been cleaned, but it’s sitting at the end of the road for some lucky winner), table, alarm clock, clothes, bed, futon, dressers, and all sorts of other stuff. I swear, if I were to ever become homeless through craigslist I could completely furnish an empty home for free in a matter of two weeks.
Anyone that has ever golfed with me know that my golf clubs suck. They were a nice set of left handed clubs that I chose as a sales reward out of a catalog more than twelve years ago. Unfortunately I lost the putter that went with that set in a freak “law of physics” incident where I learned that a rubber golf cart tire isn’t the right surface to angrily bang a putter against in a fit of rage.
Lately this summer during a few of my golf outings, I have had golf club envy and beyond that actually am relatively embarrased by the clubs that I use. Due to my lack of practice and playing time, my game will never get better, but I have to believe that technology has evolved so much in the past ten years or so that a new set of clubs would easily improve my game by a good 10 strokes. I have a putter that has to be more than 30 years old. The putter goes back to the first set of clubs I ever bought.
When I was a freshman in high school, a girlfriends father asked me if I golfed. “Of course!” I said. “I go all the time!” When asked if I own clubs, I followed up the lie with another saying that I did indeed own golf clubs.
He asked me if I would play with him that upcoming Saturday to which I gladly accepted. The problem was that I didn’t own any golf clubs. I had never golfed. I had very little money. My mother was hard pressed to put food on the table each day with the assistance of the goverment’s food stamp program, so she didn’t exactly have hundreds of dollars lying around to give me so that I could back my lies.
Finding a used set of golf clubs was harder than I imagined in the small town of Pekin. First of all I had no money. Secondly, I had no car. Thirdly I am left handed which significantly decreased my chances of finding anything. So I hopped on my bike to ride around town hitting all of the pawn shops. Finally I stumbled upon an antiques shop that had a golf bag full of dozens of clubs. When I realized that there were some left handed clubs in there, I pieced together six or seven clubs and told the owner my situation. I had all of ten bucks on me. Without a price marked on each club, the owner made me a deal and sold me every lefty piece for the ten bucks. He even threw in a 1940’s era ripped golf bag in the deal. So, I was all set.
I practiced enough in the few days to look like I knew how to play even though I had no clue how the scoring worked so it had to have been pretty obvious that I lied to her father. But it was fun none the less.
Now that you have the back story on the putter I use and where it originated, lets fast forward to last Friday’s transaction.
I want new clubs. I can’t validate spending seven or eight hundred on a new set of clubs since I play maybe 5 times a year now if I am lucky. So I have been watching Craigslist latey looking for a nice gently used set of clubs for a good price. On Friday I stumbled upon someone selling a set of used clubs for fifteen bucks. FIFTEEN BUCKS??? I looked at the picture, and the clubs didn’t look any older than what I played with and the Driver alone looked much better than what I have, so I emailed him and luckily I was the first to contact him, so chalk me up as the winner.
After exchanging info with the seller, I decide to head out and drive the 20 miles to his place to pick them up immediately. As I leave the office I am hit in the face with a cutting wind. As I walk across the parking lot in the corner of my eye I see a green paper fly bye in the wind that resembled a dollar bill. So like a kid I switch directions and eye the bill and began running. As I chased this bill flying in the wind I began looking around to make sure that I wasn’t on the laughing end of a reality show called “watch the fat guy chase a dollar bill” and to my luck I didn’t see anyone watching me so the chase was on. I am glad that it was because a good 150 yards later as the bill neared the edge of the lot, I caught up with it and managed to step on it. As I slowly moved my foot off to inspect it, I am shocked to find that it is actually a twenty dollar bill. I inspect the bill before picking it up to make sure that there isn’t a string attached to pull it away or that I am not going to be a victim of the old “poo dollar” trick which I have joined in on many times during college. If you don’t know what Poo dollar is, then I will have to post on that later, because it just brought back some funny college memories out of nowhere. After realizing that the twenty dollar bill was clean, I pick it up and began heading back toward my car. How odd that on the day that I am lucky enough to find a set of left handed clubs for sale for fifteen bucks that I would be even luckier to find a twenty flying bye?
So I pull up an hour later to the sellers driveway where he is working in his garage. We exchanged pleasantries and he pulled out the golf bag and full set of clubs. The driver, 3 wood, and 5 wood are serious upgrades over my current set and the Putter could have been gold plated at this point, so I hand him the twenty I found earlier. He was as excited for getting more than we agreed to as I was for getting free clubs. You could call it a win win. After I gave him the money, I asked how he came upon the clubs to which he said he found them at an auction and no one wanted them since they were lefty. He picked them up for five bucks. I didn’t ask if they guy had passed away because there is something weird about that since there is a slightly used golf glove in the bag that I am still on the fence as to whether I should use or not.
Wow, I just went on for a really long time about Craigslist. I could have just said Dennis and Craigslist sitting in a tree…
This took me back. I will have to share the poo dollar story sometime. Also thinking about the dead mans clubs (that sounds like a Pirates of the Caribbean movie: Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead mans clubs”) brought back the memory of how I got my first tuxedo for free. I guess I don’t have to tell it now because I guess I gave it away already.
Filed under: Golf, craigs list, stupid, trailer, train wreck, weird
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