Warmer weather means gardens, birds, spring cleaning, walks, fishing and more. For many, scores of garage sale ads make up for a long winter without a reuse or recycle fix. There’s a whole group of folks whose guilty pleasure involves sorting through unwanted belongings, hoping to score treasure.

As a kid, I attended church rummage sales with mom or gramma. These involved tables full of well-worn clothing or outmoded hats. Unlike our daughters and grands, I didn’t anticipate weekly scavenger hunts where I might find already broken-in jeans, cowboy boots, denim jackets, camo, hunting and fishing supplies (including a Herter’s crow call), a favorite game piece, a specialized cooking utensil, or funky décor to sizzle up outfits and rooms.

While garage sales potentially interest anyone, they’re perfect for dressing children. Considering kids outgrow clothing before it wears out, these weekend sprees offer a budget Godsend. Expect to find quality jeans, tops, shoes, and coats for pennies on the dollar. Of course, you have to factor in added expense for toys your kids latch onto while you upgrade their wardrobe.

As a result of these trips, our girls had more playthings than they needed. Ditto for the grands. Their moms find clever sandboxes, motorized bikes and cars, doll houses, and more for prices that don’t break the bank. Oftentimes, these items are in excellent condition and can be resold when the sprouts outgrow them. It makes financial sense to practice a reduce, reuse, recycle policy.

That said, my favorite part of garage sale-ing is discovering treasures I didn’t know I needed. Some shoppers hit the streets each Friday and Saturday with a specific list. Others count on serendipity to bless their adventure. With our kids are grown, I’ve joined the second group, which adds a new level of anticipation to the experience.

I’ve picked up clam shells big enough to serve as bathroom sinks and a conch larger than a basketball. One now showcases rocks, the other necklaces. This decades’ long addiction helped me build an extensive shell collection. These finds pushed it over the top.

In addition, cool kitchen gadgets and cookware from American history wait to be reused. I didn’t even know about springform pans for making cheese cake til I found one at a garage sale. Now, it’s a kitchen essential. Recently, I picked up a never-used ceramic tart pan for a dollar. While I use it only once or twice a year, it didn’t cost an arm and a leg so there’s no guilt.

This doesn’t cover vintage finds that include everything from Civil War letters to handcrafted lace doilies to WW II Ration books, stamps, and magazines. These discoveries make a history lover salivate. You never know when you’ll score the find that fills a hole in your collection. As a bonus, you often get the item’s background story.

I hesitated to share my love for this guilty pleasure for fear it might increase competition. However, the growing numbers of advertisements lead me to believe good deals await anyone willing to hit the road to find them.

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.

My wife and I often pass the hours spent in a hunting blind by making up animal conversations for various situations.

On a fall turkey hunt years ago, we had our hunting blind set up near an old feedlot. The owner had round bales stored there and a tractor path wound around through the bales. The turkeys followed the tractor path through the bales and into the pasture surrounding the old feedlot. We put a couple hen turkey decoys just across the fence into the pasture and settled in to our blind. The resident cattle soon came to see what was up, and became enamored with the decoys.

You could almost sense their thoughts, so we named the cows Clara, Elsie, Audrey and Bessie, and imagined their conversation something like this; “They look like turkeys, but they sure don’t move much,” Clara thought starring at the decoys. Elsie added “Turkeys stink but these things smell like tractor tires or something. Let’s all run at them and see if they scatter and make those same funny noises turkeys make when we almost step on them.” Audrey weighed in “No I’m pretty sure they aren’t real turkeys – if they were they’d be eatin’ corn out of our poo right now.” Bessie said “Girls I’ve got an idea – let’s all back up and try to pee on them and see if they run like they usually do.”

Perhaps the funniest animal conversation we ever conjured up came about at an old farmstead where we hunt deer. The abandoned farmyard sits back a long lane and we park our pickup there and walk to the nearby deer blind. We know deer routinely wonder through the farmyard and around the old buildings, so we tried to imagine how they would react to our truck sitting there if they wandered through as we sat in the blind. Here’s the scene: One morning as we sit there in our deer blind, two deer, Bucky and Chloe wonder through and come upon our pickup in the drive.

“See Bucky,” Chloe states “I told you I smelled them again.” Bucky rests his chin on the hood of the pickup and replies “Yup, sure enough. Hoods still warm, they’re here somewhere.” “What doofuses,” Chloe retorts with disgust as she turns and begins to walk away. Meanwhile Bucky jumps up and sprawls out across the hood of the pickup with his front legs sticking out in front of him and his back legs out behind him, rolls his eyes back into his head and hangs his tongue out the side of his mouth.

“Chloe hears the commotion, and just as she turns around Bucky calls out “Ohhhhh Chloe, they got me!” “You get off there this instant,” Chloe scolds. “That’s not funny at all anymore, especially after you got shot in the butt last season!”

The nursing/retirement home where I used to work has two dementia units and I often marveled at the strange things the residents there with dementia would say and think. Making up animal conversations may see pretty weird and even goofy, but I can only hope that filling my mind with silliness like that now will help me ramble on about silly stuff like that when I get dementia rather than being mean & nasty and cussin’ all the time!

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].