With a lack of original fishing content as of late maybe I should rename this blog from The Average Angler to The Cheap Curmudgeon. I hate to think I'm cheap, but I'm realizing I might be. By the way I run you would think I'm your old Grandpa who lived through the depression. I hate buying new. I hate paying for food, which we basically rent for about 24 hours, and hate to see things old just tossed away in this new everything's-disposable society. Yeah, I guess that's cheap.
So this weekend was a great "Boy I'm cheap" 72 hours. It started with a Facebook Marketplace sale. Nine weeks ago we listed a table we had picked up at a yard sale while down in Cape May. We have a breakfast nook that's sits off the kitchen and dining room. It's a pretty room that I have done some initial work to. Some might say it's another project started and not finished, but there's a method to my old-house madness. Get in there, clean it up, make it livable, and then circle back and complete it during my "restoration". That works for me, but it appears like I'm a 65% job completion rate kind of guy. You see, with that approach, one day, everything will be 100%, well more like 90% done, right before we sell or I croak.
Theresa and I are two peas in a pod. She's my best friend. She's like a best friend, like ride or die, who you could kill one day, or kill someone else for on another. We argue, we hold our grounds, but at the end of the day, and month to month, and year to year, we're left standing together. If you saw us in action, like at a yard sale, you'd think we're on the verge of divorce. We have two distinct approaches when we enter someone's yard, garage, or house. Theresa's the talker, and I'm the hunter. I move stealthily through the wares while Theresa formulates relationships with the sellers, which at times leads to post-sale contacts and relationships. It's just the way we roll.
So we had a table and chairs that we liked in the room. But, we saw the above, and probably spent 2 hours hemming and hawing if this one would fit better. So after we beat the sellers down emotionally, not for the $100 price tag, but with every story we had had about our upbringings, our kids, our house, our careers, and our current table, we loaded it up. Then when we got home; crash, bang, boom. So needless to say we've had the above staged in our living room for the last nine weeks while our original one sits in the breakfast nook.
"Maybe we should just donate it", she said. "What?", and lose the $100 and the possibility of keeping our strong buy-old and buy-proud yard sale and FBM streak going strong? "Neva!". Well, I'll have to admit navigating around it had become annoying and now with the Christmas tree up it looked like we have a hoarding disorder, which we both do. But then this guy Dominic sent a message the other day, "Is this still available?". Bingo...game, set, match.
The only caveat to the get-our-money back sale would be that we would have to deliver it to Bordentown, just a few miles south of Trenton. Not a big deal as we always have a place to go on the weekend like either the Trenton or Columbus Farmer's Market's. I told him we'd deliver it for an extra $20 bucks. So as we were going back and forth and I was trying to determine is this was real, or if the guy was a 35 year-old living in his Mom's basement, or a 70 year old chainsmoker with COPD living in some second floor hovel of an apartment, "new" stuff showed up recently listed on FBM.
"I have a pair of Thorogood Mac toe boots with steel toes for sale". What? Does FBM read my mind or recent internet searches? Is God or Santa answering my prayers? You see, it's been four months of hemming and hawing about buying new boots. I know, you could care less. But that's taken me from FBM searches, to stops at thrift stores, to "Hey I'm just gonna buy a new pair" mindset. Then I look at the websites and the cost and I'm back to buying used like a guy with a birthdate of 1918.
So what's the chance? The boots I wanted. The size I needed, and we were headed to the same town for a FBM delivery? The seller said he wore them twice and went with the steel toe but didn't find them as comfortable as he wanted, and didn't need the steel toe. They were sitting on FBM for a week and he dropped the price from an original $150 down to $100, and then for me, $90. Now Theresa likes new, but she has the used and save-a-buck gene in her DNA as well. But she has a line, no to certain things, and never anything that smells, has a chip, or is rusted. Geez, what an amateur.
So with $120 in our hands after the table delivery, to a wonderful young couple I might add, we headed down Route 130 to the next apartment complex for round two. As Theresa sat in the car I went in for the could-have-looked-like a drug deal. I sat down in the vestibule and tried them on, and they were lovely. With a new asking price of $259.95, for $169.95 plus tax and shipping less, I had hit the Mother Lode or Santa just came early.
Now here's a few things about why I'm cheap on the workbooks. Let's say in the end I went new, so around $275, out the door. They're just going to get dirty, scuffed up, maybe even stained. They won't look like new shortly after I put them on and start my Paul Bunyon or Bob Vila stints around the house. And during that I won't enjoy them, at least for $275. But for $90 bucks I'll enjoy every wear I put into them, even if the previous users scent from his dirty socks still wafts every time I put them on and take them off. I'll wear them proudly knowing I'm cheap.
And as we were leaving town I caught a sign posted up on a telephone pole, "Estate Sale". Oh Jesus this day is just getting better every minute. But this time of year reading telephone poles can be disappointing. Is it live or is it just an old sign from a sale a few weekends back? Nope this was live action and a guys estate sale heaven. The 85 year-old resident was a tinkerer, a craftsman, a real man, and had rooms and a basement full of just about everything I like, tools, trains, Pyrex, and the big item. That big item kept Theresa and I putting on a display of marital dysfunction, almost to the point of pure hatred for each other. It got so bad the woman helping with the sale said, "I'll just live you two alone". But I'll save that story for another day. But if you think I got excited for the boots, just wait for this.
As far as fishing, I might give it a go tomorrow for one last time for 2025, we'll see what the day, and Facebook Marketplace brings.