How One Thing Can Lead to Another

— A Short Story on Yard Sales & Online Police Auctions

Dave Foley

My friend Dave Foley, an excellent and proficient traveling musician, found what essentially became barn world in a deep part of Maine. So he left behind the beaches of Hull, Massachusetts and moved down there. After spending time renovating his new house and moving things around, he settled into a country yard sale.

Gerry Gorham Jr. wrote to Dave and suggested: “You need to write a song about the Red Barn and the blue sky.”

Dave is a humble musician who posted about his experience on Facebook. Below, is his description as he found himself with the possibility of making a sale:

A guy picked up a guitar I was selling at my yard sale yesterday. He strummed it and said “It’s out of tune.” I said, “That’s funny. It was in tune when I bought it.”

He looked at me dead pan and said, “Well, that doesn’t make any difference. It’s not in tune now.” He then started to explain to me how guitars go out of tune.

I said, “It’s a joke buddy. An old joke.” People mistake my jokes for stupidity all the time. Ha-ha!

Here’s my reply to Dave’s Facebook story:

Hey, stuff like that counts in the big world of sales. Way-way-way-a long time back I checked into what was perhaps the first online police auction where they auction off things they confiscate — could be just about anything! Below is a sample of their page:

But on this old guitar they were selling back then, they went to great lengths to point out that a string was missing and that you’d have to buy the guitar “as is.”

Indeed, those were the days for being a buyer!

These days they’ve wizened up to the point where they are as slick as the slickest seller of baseball cards at online auctions. Indeed, the cops have become professional hucksters with what they’ve confiscated!

Now, they won’t even tell ya the string is missing — lol!”