Yard Sale Season Returns FTLComm - Tisdale, March 26, 1999 April is normally the time for garage and yard sales but one of our neighbours has gotten a jump on the opposition this year and is holding a sale this week. At eight in the morning he is going down to the corner of the block to erect his sign that will direct traffic to his yard where he has things to sell. The sale began yesterday and there was a constant flow of vehicles and customers up to his house to look over the offering. Between now and the end of June there will be hundreds of such sales in around the community, multifamily ones, individuals even some folks who buy goods at yard sales then sell them at their own sale. The practice once only associated with a family about to move, has become a recreational event with people haggling over prices, looking for antiques, searching for collectibles and generally enjoying the whole process of being part of the consumer marketing world.

I must tell you a story about this gentleman. Some years ago he died, well he was clinically dead for several minutes from a heart attack and that left him with poor vision and his hearing is less then satisfactory. He was living in Choiceland at the time and his condition was grave as he struggled to regain his health and resume some form of normal life. He was unable to get around with his car as he could no longer safely drive so Choiceland passed a bylaw so that he could use an all terrain vehicle to move around. His recover has been remarkable as he has put himself to the task of making the best of his life and each day from the beginning of spring until the last days of fall he is on his bicycle riding a minimum of thirty miles each day and many days going fifty miles. He thinks of each day as a bonus, a special blessing because his heart attack was so severe that not only did he consider himself dead so did his doctors and now each day he knows could easily be his last, so he lives each day, enjoys each day and is doing very well.

With his and my poor hearing we make a funny pair trying to communicate with one another, but last summer he disappeared for several weeks, I had seen an ambulance up our street and wondered if he had enjoyed his last bike ride but then there he was back on the street and I went out to see how he had been and told him that I thought he was dead again. But he and his partner had been on a bus tour of Quebec and had enjoyed a wonderful time, though he was behind in his miles and was going to have to work hard in getting back up to his forty and fifty mile standard.

(The gentleman in this picture survived until the following summer when he died in June of 2000. He had suffered a massive coronory six years earlier and was clinically dead until medical people revivied him, his short brush with death reduced his vision and hearing but he recovered enough to move from Choiceland to Tisdale where each day he would cycle up to thiry miles each day on his bicycle until he died once again)