Sunday, 11 Sept. 2005 Barbara’s garage-sale weekend has ended, interrupted by only one F2 tornado.

The sale started months before, with Barbara collecting, sorting, repairing, and labeling. She recruited three neighbors to contribute, thus increasing potential customers. A spirited debate ensued over financing, timing, duration, organizing, advertising and recruiting the required labor. About one month before, the garage’s primary purpose was violated when I was instructed to park our car on the street. In its place grew a flea market filled with small appliances, kitchenware, clothing, books, magazines, furniture, boxes of miscellanea and knickknackery (I know―knickknack looks wrong but that’s how the Oxford Dictionary spells it so I’m stickin’ with it). We begged and borrowed tables to display stuff and hung a pole across two step-ladders with room for a multitude of hangars for blouses, skirts, pants. shorts, shirts and jackets. Each item for sale needed to be labeled with the name of the seller.

I asked myself, Who would want any of this stuff? Apparently, the overall objective of the garage sale was that we should not make any money. Barbara marked most of her items for cheap or free, and marked items went to half price on Friday. A brown shoebox with a slit in the top featured the label “Samaritan’s Purse.” It sat hopefully on one table where it awaited contributions for Franklin Graham’s world relief charity.

Barbara insisted on eight huge Garage Sale signs―they must be created, not purchased―with bold arrows and “Huge Block Sale” printed on them, to be installed at strategic corners in a half-mile radius. Most had a horizontal metal bar that one stood on to press the vertical steel tubes into the ground. Others needed a hammer to drive in the steel pole or a stapler to staple it to a telephone pole.

On Wednesday evening a borrowed frame with a white canopy covered the driveway. We spent nearly two hours hauling everything out and arranging it under and around the canopy, then collapsed into bed, exhausted, by 9:30 p.m.

It started g to rain immediately so we got up and got soaked when we dragged a few things into the garage. But before midnight, an F-2 tornado with 125 mph winds ripped through our neighborhood touching down four blocks away at 105^th and Terrace where it uprooted 30” trees and damaged houses—one was completely destroyed and the walls blown apart. The heavy rains, winds and hail whipped off our canopy and soaked everything beneath it.

I was sad for those who suffered the damage, yet secretly relieved that the garage sale could now be canceled and we could just call the Salvation Army to come and pick up the soggy stuff.

But no; Barbara was adamant. “I already advertised it,” she said. Thus, we arose at 5:00 a.m. and before I left for work, we began carrying things out again, organizing, sweeping up the water, trying to dry out what was waterlogged. We rolled out a wagonful of partially-emptied paint cans. Hung ittle pink baby dresses. Set up five cardboard file cabinets (waterlogged). A box of children’s books (waterlogged). Back issues of Christianity Today and Better Homes and Gardens (waterlogged). Files of materials for teaching kindergarten from Barbara’s schoolteacher days 45 years ago. Broken toys. Empty flower pots (standing and hanging). A wooden drop-leaf table with a broken leg I’d mended twenty years before. Dishes, plates, cups, and boxes and boxes of books, most unlabeled and free for the taking. Then, Thursday night, we had to haul lots of stuff into the garage because rain was again forecast. I was instructed to tour the neighborhood to see if the sale signs were still standing. I was relieved that most of them were.

It rained most of the day, but Barbara stood indomitable, aggressively lowering prices, urging people to walk away with free stuff and happily chatting up the folks who stopped by. She opened her house for bathrooms and drinking water. Meanwhile, most of the neighborhood children had discovered the sale. Jake roamed about, asking where the free stuff was. His five-year-old sister, Lexie, exclaimed “Oh; there’s something for ten pennies!” as she counted out ten coins (mixing pennies and nickels). A non-stop talker, she went on about her family, the neighbors, anything. Then she paused, with one finger on her lips. “I can’t think of anything else to talk about!”  Several of the kids ended up downstairs watching TV.

On Friday, a man turned up his nose at the donation box—“I never give donations; people just come to Minnesota for the welfare.” Our 85-year-old bathrobed neighbor pushed her walker over to check out all the stuff. A native American mother of four stopped by and picked up free toys and books for the kids. A pastor’s wife was here for an hour, regaling Barbara with the problems at her husband’s church. A woman stopped by and asked, “Is all this stuff really free?”

On the last day of the sale, a cool Saturday morning, Lexie appeared again at our screen door. “It would be thoughtful if you would ask me in. It would be very thoughtful.” At lunchtime Barbara dispensed homemade sandwiches and drinks to all her helpers and miscellaneous children When the last customer had left at about 4:00 p.m., we observed that only half the stuff had disappeared. I was disappointed and sad for Barbara who had worked so hard on this sale, ruined by wind, rain, hail, and tornado. And the canopy still needed drying out, the frame disassembled, borrowed boards and tables returned and the remaining stuff disposed of.

But Barbara was ecstatic. ”We made $90.00 for Samaritan’s Purse, $50.00 for Kimberly, $30.00 for Jeny, $15.00 for Brandon and $90.00 for me.” In spite of all the challenges, the garage sale was a huge success

Thus it was that an F2 tornado disaster turned into a smashing triumph―an opportunity for neighborhood bonding, a channel of good will to the whole community and a demonstration of Barbara’s generous heart.