The reporter pulled up in front of the place he’d been looking for. It was a big old Victorian house. In these little New England towns along the Connecticut River there were many such houses. They were built in the days when there were massive lumber drives on the river. Lumber barons, paper mill barons, and the owners and managers of all kinds of mills as well as all the merchants who started businesses there could all afford such big houses in those long gone days. They were adorned with steeply slanted roofs, big porches, bay windows, and some even had a turret at one of the corners. Inside there were always lots of rooms, lots of bedrooms for families with lots of children.

In the 1980s and ‘90s with the mills and  the prosperity they had brought now also gone, many of the big houses were chopped up into apartments, and many had become rundown as the local economy suffered as well. This house, however, looked pretty good. Word was that it was still a single family home, one of probably just a few on the quiet tree-lined street.  In the front yard of this house there was a big piece of plywood with hand lettering that proclaimed “Giant Yard Sale.” At the corner where the reporter had turned into the street there was a similar sign with the same lettering and a big arrow pointing to the way he had come. The street was only wide enough for parking on one side, a result of the neighborhood being laid out in horse and buggy days. And there were a lot of cars parked along that one side of the street. The driveway was full of tables piled with household items for sale, and full of people looking them over.

A man stood next to the reporter.

“You live in this neighborhood?” the reporter asked him.

“Yup,” the man answered. He eyed the camera and notebook the reporter carried.

“I’m from the paper,” the reporter said. “What do you think about the yard sale over there?”

“Been going on all summer,” the man said. “I done yard sales of my own, but I never done one every weekend of the summer. They must be trying to sell everything they own.” He gestured to the house behind him, obviously the one he lived in. “No one realizes how much shit builds up in these big houses here.”

“Is it affecting the neighborhood?” the reporter asked.

“Too many cars,” the man complained. “Even the tourists see that big sign on the corner and think something special’s going on.”

The reporter scribbled in his notebook.

“How are they ever going to sell that place?” the man asked. “Who wants to look at a house with all this stuff going on?”

The reporter looked back across the street. He hadn’t noticed that there was also a “For Sale” sign in front of the house almost hidden by the yard sale sign.

“I didn’t realize the house was for sale too. I was just going to do a piece on the town’s longest running yard sale.”

The man didn’t seem to hear him. “They’ve got all these grown kids of theirs living at home over there. Every one of ‘em’s got a car. With all those tables in the driveway they’ve been parking out on the street. My wife’s friends gotta park down the street when they stop over. Her knitting group had to move to someone else’s house up the hill.”

A customer passed by carrying an old time hobby horse to his car.

“Do they sell much stuff over there?” the reporter asked.

“Naw.” The man shook his head then gestured to the guy who was now putting the hobby horse in his car. “Guy musta got a good deal. I don’t know him. I see people I do know from town stopping by every week. They must be checkin’ to see if the prices are comin’ down.”

The reporter kind of squinted at the tables. “What all have they got on sale over there?”

“Hell if I know,” the man said. “I never been over.”

“Never?”

“Naw. My wife went over. Bought a damn ceramic garden gnome. Spent five dollars. I told her it’d be money better spent on lottery tickets. They’ve had some big prizes lately.” He gestured toward his own house. “At least I got her to put it in the back yard.”

“Can I put that in my article? I’ll just refer to you as a nearby neighbor.”

“Oh no,” the man said. He backed a few steps away. “I don’t want to be in no paper.”

The reporter laughed. “Okay,” he said.

“They aren’t bad folks over there,” the man gestured to the house across the street with the crowd. “It’s just, they might get upset, me saying somethin’ bad about their gnome, an’ all.”

“Thanks, anyway,” the reporter said.

The man looked at his watch. “Gotta go. Gotta get me a beer and get ready. The big Magabucks drawin’s gonna be on TV.”

“Good luck, then.” The reporter said to the back of the man as he hustled away toward his door.

The reporter turned back and studied the house with the yard sale for a few moments. He raised his camera and took a couple pictures of the house with its signs and the tables and people in the driveway. Then he moved down the street and took a few more from a different angle. Then he crossed the street and went into the driveway.

There were three or four people looking over a table of assorted household goods, old tools, lamps, books, old bottles, CDs, even cassette tapes and records. A middle-aged woman stood on the far side of the table. The reporter realized she was watching him with an air of bored curiosity.

“Jane Edwards?” he asked.

“You’re the guy that writes in the paper,” she said. It was stated as a fact, not a question, not an unusual occurrence in such a small town.

“Everybody knows you folks have lived in this house for a long time,” the reporter said.

“We bought it from old man Crowley after we had our fourth kid,” Jane said. “You doin’ some story on us?”

“You’ve had the longest running yard sale any one in this town can remember.” The reporter started to note the fact she had bought it from the Crowleys in his notebook.

“Biggest mistake we ever made buyin’ this place. We’re movin’.”

The reporter looked up from his notebook.

“It’s because of the kids,” Jane continued. “We’re movin’, an’ we’re unloading all this shit they keep leavin’ here… .” She caught herself. “I know you can’t write that. Stuff -- we’re unloadin’ all the stuff they’ve left here.”

“I’ll quote you as saying stuff.” The reporter started writing again. “You mean all this… stuff is theirs?”

“Pretty much all of it,” Jane nodded. “They all grew up and left. But every one of ‘em’s moved back and left again at one time or another. They get married. They get divorced. They get married again. They bring girlfriends and boyfriends, and they all want to move back into their old rooms. Some of ‘em brought back kids of their own too. This lady from the State came by here. Thought I was runnin’ an unlicensed day care center.

“So you’re moving to get away from your kids?”

“To a much smaller house,” Jane said firmly. “Where just Fred and I can fit. We’re lookin’ at a place over by the gas station. You know, that remodeled carriage barn?”

The reporter nodded.

“Either that or a trailer. Maybe a double wide, but the new place can’t have more than two bedrooms. And one of ‘em’s gonna be my craft room. I do ceramics.” She gestured to another table. “I made every one of them garden gnomes over there.”

“Looks like good work,” the reporter smiled.

Jane went on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “None of the children are gonna stay with us anymore. They’re finally gonna find out what it’s like to grow up and live on their own. Fred and I’ve worked hard all our lives. You’d think we’d have saved up enough to buy ourselves a new car, or go on a big cruise, or somethin’. Do somethin’ nice for ourselves for a change. But no, we’re still feedin’ and housin’ all these losers we’ve raised.”

“Look,” she said. She leaned across the table and took the reporter’s arm and turned him to see where she pointed down the length of the tables. “Not one of ‘em is out here helpin’ me. I gotta kick their butts -- you can say butts in the paper, can’t you?”

“I can quote you saying butts,” the reporter smiled. “I believe butts are okay.”

“-- out of bed whenever I need any of them to help me. And they all keep pullin’ their cars into the driveway an’ leavin’ them in the way of the customers. I get so tired of tellin’ them the same thing over and over again.”

She was interrupted for a minute by a customer, and the reporter made some notes while she made a sale.

Then the reporter summed up what he had. “So, all summer you’ve been trying to sell off all this stuff so you can move into a much smaller home. And you need a smaller home so your grown up kids won’t keep coming back to live with you?”

“I’m sure if we lived here long enough they’d all come back and never leave. Even now, we’ve got so much stuff of theirs they’ve left here, it’s shameful.”

“I’ll just say you’ve accumulated a lot of stuff over the years.”

“Kids need to learn how to grow up today. We tried our best, but not one of ‘em ever really learned responsibility. Every one of  them got in some kind of trouble. What would they have done if we hadn’t been here to pick ‘em up and take ‘em in? Not a one of them wants us to sell this house either. You can ask every one of them that, and I know that’s what they’ll tell you.”

“So, now they’re going to have to all be on their own?”

“You damn well better believe they will.”

A pick-up truck suddenly swung into the driveway and stopped just short of the first table. A young man jumped out from behind the wheel. “Momma, momma!” he shouted. He waved a lottery ticket in the air. “I won! I just saw the drawing over at Pete’s house. I won the Megabucks! I’m rich!”

Jane, her prospective customers, and the reporter all stared at him. No one could think of what to say.

The young man stopped jumping up and down. He looked at his mother. “The first thing I’m gonna do is buy this house from you. Then we can all live here forever!”

Then he turned and ran toward the side door of the house. “Jim, Andy, Sue!” he cried. “We’re rich! We’re stayin’ here forever.”

“You still can’t leave your truck here in the driveway,” his mother called after him. “It’s in the way of my customers!”

The young man kept going, as if he hadn’t heard her. She turned back to the reporter. “I’m still movin’,” she said. “Me an’ Fred are still going. I’m not stayin’ to see ‘em all sit here on their butts all day.”