Garage Sale Finds
Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI
>We are having some awesome weather, and yesterday at work I was pretty hyped up about the weekend, figuring out all the things I would finally get around to, like cleaning out our shed. I have a week to go fishing by myself at the end of September, so these two weekends before my vacation will be spent puttering around the house and listening to my wife, which is almost as much fun as a week of salmon fishing but not quite.
Awesome weather, clear skies but not too hot and humidity down to about 50%, I'm driving home for the weekend last night and see the garbage sale sign. 2 miles west of the highway. Garage sale signs will normally divert my commute, and I could change my route slightly to actually make this one right on the way home from work. After driving about a mile past the 2 miles stated on the sign, I saw it; an old log cabin with a pole barn behind it; great potential. Walking into the piles of junk was a disappointment though, as there wasn't a tool to be seen. But it's always worth asking, and the reply was "nope, no tools." As I turned to walk away, he said "I do have one plane though, one a' them tool clectors stopped in once and told me it was worth about a hunnerd bucks." Yep, that got my attention all right. If a "TOOL COLLECTOR" had told him it was worth about a hundred, it was probably worth a thousand. I held my breath as he walked back into the barn, and then held it longer as he started looking for the key, and then finally couldn't hold it any more when he opened about the sixth drawer looking for it. He finally found it, reached in and pulled it out, and here it was; the moment of truth. He handed it over, and I held in my hands a type 11 Stanley #4 bench plane , probably one of the most common planes Stanley ever made. The iron was so rusted you couldn't even read the logo any more, but the wood was in decent shape ;) I can imagine all the tool collectors stopping at that sale today and seeing the plane thats worth a hundred bucks; I wonder if anyone will actually buy it? I laughed at myself as I pulled out the driveway.