Rummaging Around

Most people have second families. Sometimes at work, sometimes at church, and occasionally they come in the form of a teaming ocean of in-laws. My second family is comprised of about a hundred volunteers for the Visiting Nurses Association Rummage Sale in Far Hills, New Jersey. Many of them are octogenarians whom have known me for nearly twenty years. Once you start volunteering, it’s hard to stop. People get sucked-in, as they say. George in the camera department is ninety-four. He hasn’t missed a sale in twenty-six years.

My mom got sucked in first; then me, then my dad. Rummage, as we volunteers call it, -- because to us it names the destination, the activity, the sale, and the ensuing lifestyle—happens twice a year, always on the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday of May and October. It began as a fair on the polo grounds just outside of town over a hundred years ago, but there wasn’t a rummage table until a few years later. Now there are five circus tents, two long barns and a couple of smaller tents, which together house the 28 departments that comprise the sale.

People come from near and far to attend this twice-yearly event. Folks who used to attend or volunteer and who have since moved away plan their family reunions around the sale. I know a woman who lived and worked as scientist in the Amazon for years who planned her yearly trips back to the states around the sale. She even bought her wedding dress from me in the Vintage Department, which I ran for 13 years—even when I worked and lived in Manhattan; commuting out for 2 ½ hours each way every weekend for “set-up”, the month leading up to the sale.

Set up lasts the month prior and the sale accepts a steady stream of cars packed with donations, 6 days a week from 10am to 1pm. Over 400 volunteers work in the heat and dust, snow and rain, battling sunburn, mud and wasps; many of them every day to set up the sale. The constant movement and buzz of handcarts sorting and delivering the donated items to their respective departments gives the sale the appearance of a smurf village. My friend who works at refugee camps all over the world feels right at home at rummage. Except that we laugh a whole lot more.

Once delivered to the proper department, the item is micro-sorted, then sometimes nano-sorted. Electrical items are fixed, curtains and men’s pants are measured and clothing is hung up according to size and sometimes color. The fastidious-- read: borderline OCD--departments heads count playing cards and lego pieces, group golf clubs into sets, shelve books alphabetically according to subject and/or author and see that every puzzle piece is accounted for. It is a stunning monument to organization and systems. It is also a dysfunctional family.

For as much as we laugh over the ear of corn that was donated encased in lucite, or the souvenir dishtowel from a leper colony in Africa, there are tears. There is infighting and occasional back-stabbing, there are temper tantrums and betrayals. And every season, when our tent city sprouts up from the grassy fields out of nowhere like some bizarre Brigadoon, and we come together to hug and ask, “How was your summer?” or “Did you survive the winter?”, we notice the absences. We learn of sudden and tragic passings and the reluctant confinements to homes and beds. But mostly we learn of the grateful grantings of rest. It’s a curious thing to have ones friends die so often. It forces me to let go of old friendships and make room for new. I’ve gotten quite good at it, sad but true.

This second family of mine threw me an engagement party, then a baby shower. They watched over my son as he toddled amongst the racks and hangers-- a bell pinned to his back so we could keep and ear out for him; watching over him as if he was their own—and took turns keeping an eye on him as he napped in his filthy stroller so that I could hang second-hand clothes. They bolstered me through my divorce and understood when I left Vintage under its pressures to work closer with my mom in the Household Department. They grieved with us when my father died—he had fixed radios in the Electric Department for eight years and then catalogued in Records for five. They fortify my mother and me even now.

It’s a parallel life I lead each Rummage Sale, and my family there is vast and warm. I love them because everyone’s just a little nuts like me. Most of them are good nuts; caring, hilarious and kind. There is the woman who takes home every bread machine and makes bread in it to test it, then brings in the warm, fresh bread to pass around before marking the appliance, “Tested – okay!” I’ve missed only three sales in eighteen years; when my son was born, when my divorce was imminent, and when I began my graduate school studies. This spring’s sale is taking place this weekend. I hope I’m there for fifty-one more.