My Great Garage Sale Bargain

My freshman year in college in north-central Oklahoma, I decided to take up golf, one of the intermural choices. Unlike most small college campuses, it included a golf course. The only thing I knew about golf was you used a long stick to hit at the ball, or I should say, club the ball. I scrimped and saved, ate peanut butter on saltine crackers, to get a beginner set of clubs: a putter that looked more like a driver, four irons: 2,5,7,9 and a driver that could be mistaken for a putter. The golf bag looked a little like the checkered flag at the Indy 500. 

The “greens” on the course should more aptly be called “browns,” because as the song goes: OOOOKLAHOMA where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. The “Browns” got virtually no water and the rest of the course looked blow-dried. The intermural coach gave me a C+ for my golfing acuity.  

Fast forward about four decades, the clubs, almost unused, are still taking up space in my garage. We joined a neighborhood garage sale. I dusted them off, used WD-40 to scrub off the rust, and placed them as the centerpiece of my bargain bonanza: LIKE NEW! $25.  I was sure some dad would recognize them as a perfect starter set for his kid. After three hours of losing many dads, I lowered the price to $15. After another stretch, I lowered to $5.  Finally, toward sunset, I hung a sign saying FREE.  As darkness fell, I hauled them back into the garage.  I’ll never understand why so many people will look a great bargain in the face and just walk away? On the positive side, I pocketed $14.63 on the rest of my stuff.