Published: May 30, 2009 09:56 pm         

Valley yard-salers find success with annual event

TERRE HAUTE — Mother Nature must be a yard-saler.

With temperatures in the 80s and sunny skies, the Wabash Valley’s stretch of an 824-mile yard sale seemed to be going well Saturday afternoon.

About one mile west of Harmony on U.S. 40, Becky Hayes had already taken down seven tables once laden with “toys, knickknacks and stuff” by 3 p.m.

“Actually we had more yesterday than today,” she said of the bargain hunters who had dropped $1,000 on her site over the two days. “When you’re talking nickels and dimes and quarters, that’s a lot of stuff.”

Hayes had heard earlier about the Historic National Road Yard Sale, spanning from Baltimore to St. Louis and running from Wednesday through today. “That’s why we’re up here,” she said of her aunt’s front lawn along U.S. 40.

The sixth year for the national sale brought buyers and sellers from across the country together, and as organizer Patricia McDaniel noted last week, the event is as free as it is grass-roots.

“What’s neat is it doesn’t cost anything to do it,” the business owner said.

McDaniel traveled U.S. 40 from start to stop last year and kept an online journal of her trip, which can be found on her Web site, www.oldstorefrontantiques.com.

A little further west down U.S. 40, just outside Seelyville, Allison Pope had set up shop near the lawn of Latta Apartments and Village Park.

“All kids’ clothes,” she said as people ruffled through her wares.

Pope’s father had told her about the sale along the highway, and by Saturday afternoon she was ready to call it a good idea.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “A lot of traffic.”

The parking lot near her stand was filled with old bicycles, clothes and furniture, as well as tables with signs reading “Everything on this table $1.00.”

And in as much as yard sales are a form of recycling, one participant offered wares of a sustainable nature. Nearby, Lori Hart was selling “natural brown soap” made from used cooking oil that had been converted into biodiesel.

“It’s just like grandma’s lye soap,” she said, explaining its all-natural state.

Hart, who lives near Brazil on Indiana 340, has been a missionary in Zambia for 20 years, part of a group which builds biodiesel vehicles there. “Our real mission is to create jobs for Third World countries,” she said.

But while teaching the Zambians how to make biodiesel from used cooking oil in the name of sustainability, the byproducts of the process lend themselves to old-fashioned soap-making. And as Hart herself drives a diesel and uses the fuel herself, she’s brought some of that learning back with her. “You can’t get that from the pump,” she laughed.