When I married for the second time almost two years ago, I married into a new set of traditions. I have embraced most of them.

Like the Saturday morning trip to Tasty Donuts. This is not a weekly tradition, but nonetheless a frequent one. I find this particular tradition quite agreeable because I like donuts.

We are sitting on the back porch. It’s early. We’re about halfway through the first cup of coffee. I look at Marion and raise an eyebrow. She smiles and raises both eyebrows.

“You know what I’m thinking?”

I ask knowing that she already knows.

“You’re thinking about donuts,” she says.

“I am.”

And we’re off.

We stand at the counter drooling. We point. The fella behind the counter fills our order with apple fritters, sprinkles, maple sugar & bacon, red velvet, regular glazed donuts, and other various high-sugar content bakery items. The box is almost empty before we get back to the house.

The annual fishing trip to Florida in March is another tradition into which I have been adopted with a great deal of enthusiasm on my part. This tradition combines things like good friends, good food, and lots of fishing. The open water. The tug on a line. The late night games of dominos.

But today I’m thinking about perhaps the most notable tradition. The annual trek along US Highway 127 for the World’s Longest Yard Sale. Marion has been working the WLYS for 10 years now. This will be my third year. We head out tomorrow.

I have always loved kicking around estate sales and garage sales. Back when I was a kid, my dad would take me to the Railroad Salvage sales in Atlanta. Discounted goods. Abandoned inventory. Damaged items. Everything imaginable spread out before your eyes. If you were willing to dig through the piles, there was a deal waiting. All you had to do was find that one thing that called out to you.

So, although I’m still relatively new to the WLYS, I’ve got some veteran picking blood flowing through my veins.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been binge-watching old episodes of American Pickers as a sort of workout for getting ready for this trip. I don’t have the cash they have to throw around. I won’t be buying any big ticket items. But I’m honing my picking skills, learning to bundle so I can negotiate a better price, developing an eye for patina and how to tell the difference between a reproduction and the genuine article.

Just today I had a friend tell me, “I’m glad y’all are going and I know you’ll have fun. I’m just glad that I’m not included.”

Junktiquing does not appeal to everyone. I get that. By the time we’re done we will have walked miles beneath one tent city after another that are thrown together in one cow pasture after another. There’s a lot of the stuff we’ll see that is pure junk to me. I’ll probably walk by a hundred tables full of glassware, plates, and old Tupperware containers that I don’t care anything about.

If that’s all there was, I wouldn’t be going.

Although I do have on my shopping list a full set of matching flatware for my kitchen. My knife, fork, and spoon drawer is a hodge-podge of mismatched stuff from over the last 45 years. Most of it is scratched. A few spoon handles are bent. If I set the table for more than four guests, chances are that everybody will have a different kind of fork and at least one crooked spoon. Not that I’m into fancy, but even an old guy like me wants to show a little class every now and then.

I’ve tried to put my finger on what is so appealing to me about doing this sort of thing. Looking through someone else’s discarded stuff. I’m not a collector. I don’t have a shelf full of old cameras that don’t work. I don’t have a closet bulging with more 1930’s oscillating fans than I know what to do with. I’m not hording junk.

Mostly I’m looking for old stuff that I can use. I picked up an old biscuit cutter from the 1950s that I actually use when I roll out the dough. I do have a 1930s oscillating fan on the wall in my shop that I can turn on and listen to it hum. I like the things that remind me of the old days.

I picked up an old brass floor lamp last Saturday at an estate sale in Palmetto. It’s ornate. It’s got the downward facing socket at the end of the arm that arches off the upright stanchion. The patina is perfect. I have a spot in my music room that needs a good light. So, at the WLYS I’ve got to find the globe or shade that threads onto the end of that socket to complete the light.

I may find it. I may not. But that’s the kind of thing that makes a trip like this a treasure hunt. Somewhere out there is a shade from the 1930s that’s waiting for me to put it with my lamp.

If I have a weakness for anything on the junk trail, it’s my tendency to buy old tools. There’s something about an old Stanley hand plane that tickles my innards. I have rebuilt several that I use in my shop. I have more beyond repair that are just sitting up on a shelf. I have too many old Disston and Sons hand saws from the late 1800s. I have old molding planes that I don’t even know how to use.

So, I have to watch myself.

Marion’s weakness is quilts. The old hand stitched ones. She says they each have a story to tell and that she’s saving them from becoming scraps. She already has two cabinets packed full and several shelves stuffed with quilts at home, but I’m certain we will come back from the WLYS with a few more to add to the collection. I won’t tell you the number, but I’ve counted them. She has way more quilts than I have hand planes.

I could buy some of this stuff on Amazon. They’ve got matching flatware and lamp shades galore. But there’s no charm to it when I press a digital button and place an electronic order that shows up on my doorstep the next day with a Made in China sticker on the bottom.

I’m looking for little pieces of my heritage. The things that remind me of my mama’s kitchen, or of the days when Dad and I hunted and fished together. I’m looking for the artifacts of American craftsmanship that create in my imagination the story of the people who once used that tool to make a dining room table.

I also realize that I’m adding to the stuff I already have which is more stuff than I really need. But I look at it this way. When I die, my kids are going to have one heck of an estate sale. They’ll make a little extra cash. And it won’t be from Tupperware.

It’ll be the good stuff.