Yard Sale

It is with the same golden-hued filter that some remember catching fireflies in jars on warm summer evenings, or building snowmen in the winter, that I remember Bulk Trash Day in New Haven. Oh, it was glorious. One day a year, the city invited everyone to put out the garbage that wouldn’t fit in a standard trash container, and lo, the treasures that could be found. Every street was a scavenger’s daydream. What could be better than Bulk Trash Day? Buy…

I’ve always been a huge sucker for a yard sale (or “tag sale,” as we called them back in New England). Cruising around the neighborhood on a bike, it’s a low-bar way to have a chat with a neighbor and also a sort of voyeuristic pleasure, like a visit to the museum of someone’s life. There are the tchotchkes from a long-ago trip to Greece, the Easy-Bake Oven harkening back to life in the 1970s, the abandoned exercise equipment yearning to…