Let me say that I had no intention of going to any garage sales this weekend. In the fall Waunakee does a second city-wide garage sale day, but compared to the spring weekend, it doesn’t even rate. I know, I spent many a bored weekend sitting in the garage with my own junk to sell.

I was out picking up groceries and outside of Waunakee I spotted what looked to be a busy garage sale at a place I have stopped before. I thought… why not.

There was not much to temp me until I got into the garage, where there happened to be a large (under the bed style) plastic bin. In it was a hundred or so cassette tapes. Some were prerecorded, some were store-bought, and what’s this?… some were blank and brand new.

Good ones too. Now they had my attention.

I started flipping through the tapes and spotted a couple that were pretty good. There was no price on the bin though and there were a lot of tapes that were just out of their cases and sadly had their tape exposed and getting ruined. There were some gems in there though.

I was about to either put the blanks back, or go ask the price when a woman walked over to me and told me I could fill a plastic shopping bag with tapes for a buck and she handed me a bag.

Then it was on.

I started digging through them in earnest. I do have a tape deck in the music room, though none in the cars any more. I don’t know who’s tapes these were, but damn, it was like looking in my own collection. Eclectic to say the least. I walked out with a bag and paid her $2. The 2 blank tapes were worth more than that alone.

My bag.

Did you spot The Smiths? That was the first one I saw.

In all, it was quite a little haul for 2 bucks.

Plus the blanks and a few assorted dubbed tapes like Nine Inch Nails and Beatles that were on nice Maxells, and a Demagnetizer Head Cleaner. Nice.

Tone-Loc cassingle? Yes.

Again, I say who ever owned these certainly had eclectic taste.

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Skid Row and Neil Diamond?

Though I’m not so sure it speaks to THEIR collection as much as it does to mine.

Touche garage sale proprietor. Touche.

… and thanks!