As my wife, Donna, and I were hauling assorted items out of our house and garage in North Carolina the other day, I couldn’t help but try to recollect if anyone I knew growing up in Easthampton ever did what we were doing: preparing for a yard sale.

I lived in two apartment houses on Main Street until I was 18 years old and went off to college. No yard sales held by my mom and dad — they didn’t have yards!

But I did recall what an old friend of mine reminded me of when I told him we were about to stock our lawn with stuff we wanted to get rid of, and make a few bucks to boot. Jim Soja, who was one of my friends in Easthampton back in the day, now divides his time between living in our hometown and residing in Taiwan with his wife Michelle, who’s Vietnamese. He and she have never seen anyone hold a yard sale in those two Asian countries. But he remembered another friend who we’d grown up with in our town.

Randy Wright’s parents were selling their house in the east side of town. They had the kind of sale Donna and I were getting ready to have. But Randy’s event was called not a yard sale, but a tag sale. And Soja, who lived a few street over from the Wrights, spent some time in the yard, witnessing, and never forgetting, how Randy’s behavior reminded him of a Sotheby’s auctioneer strutting his stuff. Or a used car salesman trying to talk folks into buying a Chevy.

But getting back to our yard, and what we were filling it up with. Among the items we stuck on the lawn were some old pots and pans, an electric heater, a bicycle air pump, a ceramic planter, two rugs, several baseball caps, a straw hat, eight paperback books, a hardcover copy of a Bob Dylan memoir and a toilet seat.

We put the stuff out there around 8 a.m. Then waited for customers to arrive. Waited. Waited. Waited. But nobody came. At around 8:45, Donna said, “I’m going to run a few errands, you can man the fort till I get back.” And off she went.

And wouldn’t you know it, a few minutes later business picked up. A guy pulled up, got out of his car and started to browse. He ended up buying a paperback John Grisham novel, for which I charged him one dollar.

Another guy pulled up and walked my way. ” How much is this frying pan? ” he asked. Donna and I hadn’t put prices on anything. But I said, ” How about two dollars? ”

He said, ” I’ll give you a buck.” And I took it.

A man and his wife wandered around. Guy asks me, “What do you want for this planter?”

“Three dollars? ” I said. He said, “How bout two bucks? ”

Sold!

They left and another guy, about my age, pulled up in a pickup truck. Longish hair. Bushy beard. Blue jeans and a T-shirt. I said to him, “You look like you might be a Dylan fan, wanna buy a book written by him?”

“I’m not much of a reader,” he said. And walked back to his truck.

Another customer! Business was starting to boom. In more ways than one. Guy, sixtysomething my guess, said to me, “Ya got any ammo for sale?”

I replied ” Nope,” and added, “but I do have a grenade launcher and two AR-15s in the back of the garage.”

His eyes lit up and a smile came to his face. Then I said, “Just kidding.” And he walked back to his car.

Donna came back a few minutes later. Asked, “Make any money? ” I told her I’d made about eight bucks in all. Sold some stuff, including the planter and heater.

“What did you charge for them?” she asked, giving me that look she gives me sometimes, when I have faux pas(ed) my way into a corner.

I told her how little I got for the heater and planter. She’d hoped to get about ten bucks for each. She rolled her eyes and walked back into the house. And I stood there thinking, “I’m no Randy Wright! ”

Terrence McCarthy, an Easthampton native, is a writer who now lives in North Carolina.