Last weekend, we attended a major socio-economic event, a veritable cultural phenomenon: The World’s Longest Yard Sale. This thing stretches 630 miles along Highway 127 from Alabama to Ohio, and you can find just about anything there. Like regular old yard sales, most of it is junk. There are a few gems among the knickknacks, VCR tapes and 80’s posters, though, and we found a couple in our price range. Among other things, we got a hand-painted light switch cover; a John Deere hat; an “antique” concrete leveler; and a 17-year-old book about east Tennessee.

But our favorite finds, of course, were horse-related. We got a great lawn sign. It’s a big hunk of sheet metal, cut into the shape of a running horse with “Welcome” laser cut into the middle. It’s about 4 feet high by 5 feet long:

Isn’t it pretty?

My favorite buy of the day, though, is my new saddle. I’ve been borrowing my friend Shari’s saddle for over a year now and wanted to give it back. We looked at saddles, but most were more than we wanted to pay. Then at the end of the day, at a stand that was selling lemonade, tomatoes and a mish-mash of junk, were two saddles under a table. One was just too worn-out to even consider, but the other was okay. It’s a dark brown western saddle with no silver (I’m not crazy about the silver) and brand-new stirrup leathers and came with an extra strap and roping cinch. It’s pretty worn but not cracked or torn anywhere, and the tree (the rigid foundation that the saddle is built around, kind of like a car’s frame) is intact. Shari looked at it for me and said it’s okay, and that we didn’t get ripped off. The guy was asking $85; Bill, wonder-negotiator, got him down to $60! What a deal!

See you next year at the World’s Longest Yard Sale!