Sid F'er's Clearinghouse - you may already be a winner!

Sorry I’ve neglected you so long, dear reader. If you haven’t been following along on our ever growing message board, I’ve been busy moving to Chicago. Turns out that U-Haul wanted $600 for a truck from Dallas to Chicago, so being the efficient money manager that I am, I decided I’ll just make a few trips with whatever I can fit in the back of my pickup truck. It’s taking a little longer than expected, but I’m nearly done. If you’re in the area and have a few hours (16), swing by and I’ll give you a few boxes to stick in your back seat. And I know for a fact that all of you don’t have Miatas, so I don’t want to hear it. Lazy bastards.

I decided to use the move as an opportunity to clean out all my crap. When I moved to Texas fourteen years ago I took whatever fit in my Nissan Sentra. So after I loaded up some clothes, my stereo, and some Little Debbie snack cakes, I had to break the news to my girlfriend that there wasn’t any room left for her. She offered to ride in a rooftop carrier, but I must not have fastened it quite as securely as necessary as I believe I lost her somewhere around Joplin, Missouri. Somehow over the last years I’ve managed to acquire mounds of ridiculous stuff such as dishes and beds. And a wife (She's not ridiculous, just a little silly). Mrs. F’er refused the rooftop carrier option and also insisted that we take a bed with us, so I capitulated and ordered a giant 17’ truck. For those people who are spatially challenged, a 17’ truck will hold pretty much whatever you would be able to fit into a parking space about 8’ tall. I like a good challenge.

The first step was to decide what could be tossed. Mrs. F’er obviously did not understand the importance of my Special Export beer truck driver shirt or my Hogballs basketball jersey, so we had a Wings trivia contest. I kicked her ass and the shirts got packed. Next I decided to “help” Mrs. F’er clean out her shoe closet. We had slightly differing opinions on what was necessary and reasonable, so we decided to kickbox for it. I had forgotten that she trained at a kickboxing gym last year, so she started packing her shoes while I put a bag of frozen peas on my face to reduce the swelling.

Next was the garage sale. Our old house was in a prime location – surrounded by illegal immigrants looking for used Molly Hatchet t-shirts and maps of Arkansas so that they can quickly assimilate to their new culture. We had garage sales in the past, so we had the process down. We set the alarm clock for the ungodly hour of 7 a.m. on Saturday, and I feign a severe case of bird flu to avoid getting up while Mrs F’er threatens to sell my beer can collection unless I drag my ass out of bed to stop her. We’re on the far end of our street and have not advertised the sale, yet the professionals are swooping the neighborhood positioning themselves to be the first in line as we place our valued John Denver 8-track collection on the driveway. After most of the crap is displayed, I take my signs down to the corner to direct the rest of the our city to our humble abode. Before the signs are even displayed, cars begin squealing their tires to make the turn down the street before anyone else. It’s like walking into a random bar and finding out the lingerie show is just about to start. That happened to me once and I learned what a lingerie show is. You have a couple very marginally attractive women in lingerie walking around selling raffle tickets for crap you don’t even want to win, but you’re drunk and think you’re going to score if you just buy enough tickets from them so that they can fulfill their dream of buying some wicked platforms and start stripping for the big bucks. I think I won a VHS porn tape that night. I never owned a porn tape before that, but it sucked so bad I couldn’t even include it on the ten cent table at the garage sale. But I digress. By the time I finish posting my signs and return to the house, there is a huge traffic jam with police directing cars and traffic reporters circling overhead in helicopters. I park 3-1/2 miles west of the house in the first available parking spot and hike back to assist Mrs. F’er and fix some Bloody Mary’s. Being the anti-social personality that I am, I usually just hide around the corner until Mrs. F’er hollers for further assistance. My Spanish is slightly better than hers, so I was called to negotiate on the washer and dryer with a local chica. Most of the locals have some rudimentary English skills, but this woman had none. I had sold my Spanish dictionary at the previous garage sale, so I was on my own. After speaking with our customer for a few minutes, I proudly returned to Mrs. F’er and reported that I wasn’t sure, but I had thought that I just might have sold the washer/dryer set for three roosters and a dozen homemade tamales. And there was a better than zero chance that I had agreed to personally fold her laundry for the next 12 months. I was sent back to lurk harmlessly around the corner. Business slows to a crawl by 10:30 a.m., and by noon we’re so bored that we mark everything down to ten cents just to get rid of everything and wrap things up. By 2 p.m. we realize that our stuff sucks so bad that people don’t even want it for a dime (except our wedding unity candle and a dead cactus), so we take the possibly usable stuff to a local charity and the rest to the curb for the next trash pickup.

Next, we sold four of our bikes. One to a friend, one on craigslist, one on a local bike forum, and another on eBay. Of course, we took the eBay money and turned around and bought another one, but we still reduced the fleet by three. The remaining bikes got loaded in the back of the pickup truck, which was subsequently loaded onto a trailer and attached to the back of the truck. It made us look like a really cool bike racing team, or a couple of dorks with a bike addiction.

Finally, Mrs. F’er’s car went on the auction block. I thought about doing a lingerie show and selling raffle tickets for it, but I couldn’t quite fit into my old baby doll PJ’s. So that nixed that idea, and instead we sold it to a dude at the bike shop who promised not to remove the Swinging Lovehammers bumper sticker. If you run into him, tell him the F’ers said hello.

Anyway, to make a long story not very short, in a massive game of Tetris, I managed to pack all of our remaining possessions into that 17’ truck, with a good 8” to spare, pointed the truck north, and rolled out of town with a banjo on my knee. Nobody would take the damn thing at the garage sale.