What's hot, what's not in coulee country

With the recent mid-summer firestorms finally beat down, and now that the heavy blankets of smoke, soot and generally bad air days have left the Coulee, let’s get on with some dog days of summer.

What do we care when we’re driving around in the Coulee and the wind is howling, causing some great old trees to bite the dust here and there, and the sheets of rain, sometimes mixed with hail, is pelting down on us. We’re die hard bargain hunters and with summertime waning, we’re ramping up our shopping mode before the sale season ends so we’ll just go with the flow, weather wise. Seems like the weekend shoppers don’t let much stand in the way of searching for the best deals; and as luck would have it, we’ve had a heck of a ride lately, a bonanza!

Here’s a tricky quiz question for you (so ponder, ponder and ponder some more): What is the cause of an early Saturday morning traffic jam in an Electric City neighborhood? The answer is not so tricky after all, especially if you happened to drive in to one of the bull pens around here recently. I’m not talking about ranch corrals, either. The answer is simple, an estate sale; and the cause is brought on by as many as 50 to 60 “early bird” shoppers leaving their nests at daybreak to be first on site of an advertised estate sale.

With no valet parking here in the Coulee, you park at will and then, the race is on. Estate sales are on the hot list in our neck of the woods.

And just to share so you can be on the look out, here’s the lowdown on a faux pas that took place at an estate sale away from here; this naughty pas is forever lodged in my helmet head (along with that famous “Happy” tune).

Get this. In line at an estate sale’s checkout table, a gal just ahead of me paid for two small cardboard boxes of what appeared to be vintage items. One box had some handmade linens in it with some glass dishes and a great looking lady’s 1940s style hat with an attached veil on top of the pile. She paid for the stuff and left for the parking area. As I was paying for my stuff, another gal came up to the table to retrieve a box of goodies that had been set aside for her, only to find out it was gone. When she said she had a ladies’ hat in the load, I knew where it went. There was quite a clatter at the checkout table, some shuffling around and looking here and there for that missing box, which was long gone. The yard sale sellers did give the buyer a great deal on the stuff she had, but somehow, the missing hat and other items took on a touch of gold. After all, it was really good stuff.

So the moral of this tale is, shop safe and keep an eye on your pile or box filled with stuff you want to leave with so you can leave happy, with no regrets.