They came up from the South. They came down from the North. They came in from all directions to the sleepy little town of Gadsden, Alabama. The motivation for their motoring - the 450 mile yard sale. For four days only, the back roads between Alabama and Ohio were a bargain hunter's bonanza.

Nothing celebrates the spirit of capitalism in its purist form like a good old American yard sale. Nowhere else can you trespass on thy neighbors grass and haggle over bric-a-brac. Nowhere else will you find an assembly of items that just don't coordinate with each other spewed all over someone's well trimmed grass. At no other time will you have an opportunity to purchase items that might have made it to Salvation Army if it were not for someone's tireless persistence to make a dime on their unwanted wonders. At no other time can one view a literal mountain of garbage other than this one week in August.

The 450 mile yard sale began 13 years ago as a way to get people off the highway in order to take the "buy-ways". The road to riches begins on the Lookout Mountain Parkway in Alabama and weaves it's way to the right into Georgia before connecting into 127 in Chattanooga, Tennessee and continuing north through Kentucky into Ohio.

Many people may not be familiar with Gadsden, Alabama and with good reason. There is not a damn thing worth seeing there. When entering the "City Of Champions" one may begin thinking the highway was not so bad after all.

It feels like Christmas to the local motels. There hasn't been so much action in the tiny hot sheets since… well, since last year's 450-mile long yard sale. At 7a.m. The Gadsden Inn & Suites front lobby, which also serves as a breakfast nook and tourist information booth, is buzzing with strangers and stragglers looking for their shot of morning java before they hit the road. The maids hustle to clean out rooms for the sudden influx. The parking lot starts to look like a merry-go-round. Cars circle with passengers who all have the same puzzled look on their face that says, which way to the goods?

A middle-aged Texas couple with a talent for tack has instinctively come in search of finishing touches for their new home. Hitched to the back of their Dodge is a homemade wooden trailer ready to be filled.

On the way from downtown Gadsden to the base of the mountain, where things get started, con artists try and get a piece of the pie. They put up signs reading "450 mile yard sale begins here" and point the way down side streets to ramshackle dwellings on dead ends. One instantly knows the point of departure. There is a straight line of bumper to bumper traffic beginning at mile marker one.

It is not just the houses that have yard sales. The whole road is a yard sale. Where there are no houses, nomad vendors set up pup tents. The trail becomes an orgy of curious rubberneckers. At top speeds of between five and ten miles per hour, completing all 450 miles seems an endurance test.Only the strong shall survive. The weak sadly call it a day and are left to wonder if the deal of the century may have gotten away just over the next hill. The rest of the 30,000 shoppers are happy not to have ended up driving behind one of the many U-Hauls that block the view of what treasures lie ahead.


Anything you would expect to find inside an Alabama trailer is up for sale to the highest bidder. Empty liquor bottles seem to be a big commodity. Every yard has a box or two. Broken lawn furniture, Bibles, cars (engines optional), chickens, puppies, military paraphernalia, and a plethora of baby clothes (having been handed down several generations) all make for good pickin's.

To understand just what would lure so many to an event like this, one has to understand the personality types that are at work. All share a common thread of being cheap, that is a given. But there is another human dynamic in motion that is the core of yard sale culture. It is the relationship between buyer and seller. Knowing you found something unique is one thing, knowing you got it for dirt is bliss. In some people a chemical euphoria erupts. The need to get away with more steals quickly becomes a vice that keeps pulling them back to the bargaining table. Before too long they are bona fide junkies. On the cusp of this seeming chaos is the deal.

The seller comes from a hard stance that someone wants what he has to sell. He knows if a hot plate from Niagara Falls was once inspiration enough for him to pull out his wallet then, someone else out there will be taken aback by the same joy. There is an unspoken creed among sellers - never throw out what you can make a buck on because one man's junk is always another's fix.

The buyer works on an entirely different set of motivational factors. He is not about to get taken. He is a bargain hunter and will push the seller to the brink of the garbage can before he pays too much for used hot plates etched with a freeze frame Niagara Falls.

The seller combats in sly tactics. He drives a hard bargain. He is tempting and there is subliminal advertising in his voice.

"Had that there a long time. Might be worth something - never know."

The buyer keeps his cool. He knows the etching patterns of Niagara Falls hot plates. He has done his homework and is well aware that they have all been run off the same Japanese conveyer belt since 1962. None have distinguishable markings for the seller to tell if this is a true treasure he has on his hands. This is not the first of such hot plates and will probably not be the last the buyer sees.

"Well, I don't know. There is this little chip in the corner here, you see?"

The buyer makes a fatal mistake. Never point out a fault in the seller's goods. It serves no purpose but to bring on a wrath of stories he just simply does not have time for if he wants to make it to the next yard. Before he knows it the buyer is going on for two hours with stories about his kids, cousins and great grandpappy and all to get to the bottom line that the chip in the Niagra Falls hot plate is there "'cause the old lady got a bit too lippy".

The road is long and littered with many such yard sale stories. In the end the buyer and seller usually meet on middle ground. They must feed off each other if both are to survive.

"Take a quarter?"
"You bet."

Update 8/03:
The Fentress County Chamber of Commerce, who takes their yard sales very seriously, informs Back on Tack that salvaging along the 127 Corridor runs August 2nd through August 10th, 2003. Jamestown, Tennessee prides itself on being the birthplace of the "The World's Longest Yard Sale."

The 2004 sale is slated for August 7th. Reserve your U-Haul early.

The 450 Mile Yard Sale
Lookout Mountain Parkway
Gadsden, AL