Credits Host: Maggie BlahaTheme music: “Thanks for the Memory” written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, performed by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in the 1938 film of the same name
The Church at Ponce & Highland in Atlanta, Georgia, started hosting yard sales on their front lawn to raise money for mission trips. It also just seemed like a nice way to bring the congregation and community together.
Siblings Chuck and Linda Warren took the lead on organizing these sales, not only asking parishioners and people in the neighborhood to donate items, but also going through and offering up their own stuff.
For Chuck, it was an opportunity for him and his wife to do some light spring cleaning. But for Linda, it was a chance to purge all the things that were becoming a burden for her and could one day become a burden for someone else.
I like how the congregation was using a yard sale to raise money for something greater than themselves, but I feel like all yard sales, in a way, are about people helping people—whether it’s raising money for a cause, helping a friend go through a deceased loved one’s belongings, or buying something to take off of a stranger’s hands.
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Episode transcript
INTRO. Maggie: You’re listening to Thrift: What Your Garage Sale Says About You, a podcast that explores the stories behind the things we once loved and are ready to let go of.
THEME MUSIC. (30 seconds)
Maggie: I’m Maggie Blaha, and in each episode of the podcast I’ll be checking out a garage sale in the Atlanta area (and sometimes outside of it) to talk to people about the things they’re selling and buying.
This week, I’m sharing the story of the Church at Ponce & Highland, a small church in Atlanta that doesn’t give itself a denominational label. Instead, they focus on creating a welcoming community for anyone who comes to worship. I talked with 2 longtime members of the congregation who played a big role in organizing the yard sale to raise money for a mission trip to Mexico.
AUDIO CLIP #1
I thought it was interesting that Chuck and the other parishioners looking to raise money for mission trips chose to organize a yard sale to do this. Thinking back to the yard sales my parents used to have when I was a kid, it just doesn’t seem like it would be a very lucrative fundraiser. But Chuck pointed out that a yard sale was a great way for the church to both raise money for their mission and give back to their community.
AUDIO CLIP #2
Chuck turns to other members of his church and anyone in the Poncey-Highland community of Atlanta to donate things that can be sold at these yard sales. And hosting this sale also prompted Chuck, his wife, and his sister Linda to look through all the stuff they’ve been accumulating.
AUDIO CLIP #3
I have to say that, like Chuck’s wife, I did hold on to a lot of my college papers, but my mom has probably thrown them out at this point. Clearly I don’t miss them and didn’t care enough to bring them with me when I moved from New Jersey to Georgia. There is this one paper I wrote in my junior year that I wish I could find and read again; I’m quite fond of it. It was about the narrative structure in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and Paul Fussell’s Doing Battle.
I wish I got the chance to ask Chuck’s wife whether she ever read through some of her old papers. I’m sure she holds on to them for the same reason I still have all my old notebooks and journals and planners from different points in my life: So I can randomly find them when I’m feeling sentimental and visit with different versions of myself.
But maybe that kind of sentimentality is what makes stuff, as Chuck says, a trap. If you have too much of it, I suppose it can hold you back in the past.
AUDIO CLIP #4
That’s Linda Warren, Chuck’s sister. I like how she’s kind of calling Chuck’s wife out a bit for being a packrat. As Linda’s gotten older, her view of stuff has changed. She seems to live by my mom’s philosophy that having less stuff is liberating, but after talking to Linda a bit, I realized that the emotional and psychological root of why some people need to hold onto things and some need to get rid of them is pretty much the same; it just manifests itself differently in different people.
Take Linda’s friend Georgia, for example.
AUDIO CLIP #5
Georgia was holding on to things that once belonged to her mother, which is something most people do. I know my grandma still has closets full of my grandpa’s suits and shoes, and he passed away about 6 or 7 years ago now. Letting go of things that used to belong to our loved ones is painful because we feel like we’re letting go of so much more. It’s kind of like losing that person again.
This experience helping her friend seems to be what led Linda to think that owning fewer things is liberating. She says she realized that someone would one day be taxed with the job of going through everything she owns and deciding what to get rid of, and she’d just rather not put anyone through that.
AUDIO CLIP #6
When I left the yard sale, there wasn’t much left but some odd knick knacks and old movie posters. Chuck was pretty confident they had reached their goal, though all the money hadn’t been counted yet. It’s a nice idea, having a yard sale to raise money for a cause, and it sounds like it really brought the community together.
In a way, all yard sales are about community more than anything else. They’re about people helping people, whether it’s raising money for a cause, helping a friend go through their belongings, or buying something to take it off a stranger’s hands.
That’s it for this week’s episode of Thrift. Thanks for listening!
OUTRO. (5 seconds)
