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Report from The World's Longest Yard Sale, Near Jamestown,TN

After years of trying, I finally made it to the World's Longest Yard Sale, which stretches from southern Ohio down into Tennessee and below into Georgia.

My sister Signe and I tooled down 81 south from Alexandria, VA, down into Tennessee. Our goal was to hit Highway 127, the rural road where the yard sales are, just south of Jamestown and move north into that town for the night, which is the capital of the Highway 127 sale.

We stayed the first night in Knoxville, TN, and had dinner near the University of TN area. We sat in a charming outdoor cafe and watched the students, couples, and various cars of all makes and ages roll by,

Above: Signe standing on the street in Knoxville, TN, near where we stopped for dinner.

Left: a kind lady offered to take a pic of the two of us at the restaurant in Knoxville. It's a cliche, but it made us think about the adage that Southerners are friendlier than people in some other localities.

We got to bed early so we'd be up and cracking for the sale in the a.m.

When we got to the turnoff to 127 off 40 west, suddenly we hit the yard sale traffic. Cars came to a virtual stop as the line of cars on the exit merging into heavy traffic on 127 waited their turn. We decided to turn left and start our sales adventure just south of there, as the traffic going south was much lighter.

We parked in a furniture store parking lot, where there were several sales and tents set up all around in the adjacent fields and business lots. We headed into our very first sale!

Signe spied some nice striped sheets for only 25 cents. But she waited a bit to buy them, and they were gone later! You've got to strike while the iron is hot, I guess!

But..she did find this fab Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt, which said "Support Southern Rock" on the back. I was envious of her find until I learned she bought it from me..how nice! ;) (And did you know Lynyrd Skynrd was named for one of the band member's teachers, one Leonard Skinner?).

Signe proudly displays her World's Longest Yard Sale find.

Signe paying for her t-shirt find, her first World's Longest Yard Sale purchase.

It was Saturday, August 8, and did I mention it was HOT? It was already in the 90s in the morning, at the time of this photo, and it just kept getting (or feeling) hotter as the day went on. Vendors with tents were definitely at an advantage, as it became too unbearable not to be in the shade.

We had parked in front of this furniture store near Jamestown, where the lady inside gave us some hot tips on the famous sale people come from far and wide to see:

<----  Signe in front of BaLou's Furniture Gallery, where they were kind to let us park, and gave us great yard sale tips!

- Two must-see stops: 

1) The old country store in Clarkrange, just after the stop for the town. It's on the right if you're heading north.

She said there was an old soda fountain where they had milkshakes and other treats, and vendors set up outside, too.

2) South Fentress Park, a large field/park with lots of vendors and tents, and where HGTV films.

(Check out my YouTube videos of both locations).

I picked up a couple of My Little Pony dolls for a quarter each at a sale close to where Signe got the t-shirt.

Next we went over to the other field where the vendors seemed more like professional dealers.

The lady in the furniture store had warned us about this -- that the 127 sale in its early days had been more like real "yard sales," with good deals and low prices..and now there were a lot of sellers asking close to store prices. I had also heard this from readers of my yardsalers.net newsletter and via word of mouth.

One of the first lots had a number of metal/tin sculptures in the classic Americana country style..things like a metal rooster, However, prices here were boutique style, around the $100 realm, so we didn't linger long. (I also saw some nice chunky turquoise and coral jewelry..priced around $175..I wasn't in the market for that kind of price even though no doubt it's a fair retail price. Hey, we're at a yard sale!).

One thing that was particularly fun was a huge long bin of nothing but collectible salt and pepper shakers:

World's Longest Yard Sale Day Two

by yardsalers.net and bidbits stringer Jeff Wilson

I attend yard sales as much to meet people as to buy things, and today was a banner day in that regard—and also for finding things which, while I don’t need them, I sure as heck wanted.  At eight o’clock in the morning I was holding a conga up in front of a woman and asking her what she wanted for it.  When she said ten dollars I grabbed my wallet.  A few blocks later I saw four matching Electro-voice speakers marked two bucks each.  It’s odd enough to see two such speakers for sale, but four?  I had to ask, as I handed the woman eight dollars, if there was a quadraphonic receiver somewhere that I’d overlooked, but she assured me there wasn’t.

This was in Northside, with 127 running right through the heart of it.  Northside is a seller’s paradise — people flock to the sales, and their interests are so broad that a lot of money changes hands.  It also works out well for shoppers.  Northside has a great mix of people—young hipster married couples buying their first houses, working class blacks and whites who in many cases grew up there, gays, lesbians, etc.  Surprises abound—and good vibes.  At one sale Priscilla played classic old R&B records on her stereo while I was digging through 45s, and she was nice enough to pose for a photo.

Next I headed south.  After some sales in the Main Strasse neighborhood in Covington, Kentucky, the world’s longest yard sale picks up again about ten miles later, near Florence, Kentucky.  Although it was the third day of the sale, traffic was still bumper to bumper in many areas.  Parking was not only difficult, it was potentially dangerous, especially when traveling to and from your car.

But it was worth it.  On the third day of the sale I saw more interesting things on the lawns of the homes I visited than at the early end of most sales when I headed north.  In some boxes of records that quite possibly hundreds of people had picked through I found a sealed copy of a record by a poet and peace activist from the late sixties named Daniel Berrigan. 

So often record buyers are looking for the Beatles, Kiss and Elvis that they ignore a record that’s extremely rare (I didn’t even know it existed) and collectible, which means the world’s longest sale is still worth visiting on the third day.  (It’s also worth noting that because of their jobs many people don’t set up until Saturday).  Asking who had owned the record, I ended up meeting a man who had attended the civil rights marches in Mississippi in 1964.  Even if I had found nothing, that would have made it worth the trip.

Sales were clustered so close together on 127 that I rarely drove more than a quarter of a mile before I saw another sale.  The sales off the main drag were also worth visiting.  At one sale where I asked for records an older man led me into a barn where I blew the dust off some jazz and country 78s on the Gannett and Okeh labels and some 45s from Cincinnati, which are of great interest to me. 

So, my advice to fellow yard salers: hit the main drag, it’s worth it; but also go off the beaten path.

If you’re headed south from Cincinnati on the World’s Longest Yard Sale, one of the nice things is that getting home is easy.  At mid-afternoon I decided I’d had it.  Asking directions, I was told that if I turn left on one cemetery and left at the other cemetery, that would take me to I-75 North.
It worked, but I wasn’t done.  Late in the afternoon on the third day of the sale, the Main Strasse district in Covington was still hopping, with shoppers everywhere.  As you may have guessed, I shop mostly for records, and classic rock was selling hotcakes that afternoon and had been since Thursday.  One dealer told me he sold boxes and boxes of Beatles records for five to twenty dollars per record.

I think the World’s Longest Yard Sale could be as worthwhile in Kentucky or anywhere else.  It just needs more exposure.  Even the sellers in Kentucky felt that there was less press than in previous years.  More communication on the net from places like craiglist.com could turn that around.