Manly garage sales?

I live in a town so small, you can drive from one end to the other in ten minutes--not counting traffic. Traffic is what you get when you have high density development without infrastructure.

Not to be all evil about the great city-state of Seattle. I mean--really, who knows where Washington is? I say Washington, people think "DC", I say Seattle, people say, "Oh? You live in Seattle?"

Yes, I do. Otherwise known as "somewhere in the NW".

For some reason cities in Seattle spawn little cities and I live in a city that was once part of another city like the city above us used to be a part of that city until "it" split off. I'm waiting for the day the city above that--which in all its random confusion, is still part of the parent city--splits off too, along with the water supply.

A decade or so back, the city above us went belly-up and let developers put up mini-mansions. Four-five bedroom two-three story houses with two car garages, straight up, straight down, postage stamp yards and toilet paper reach over. Five to an acre.

But King county--in its infinite wisdom--held on to control of land in the center of this now independent city and recently sold it to developers who promised no more than eight houses per acre. Which translates into another three thousand people cramming the little two lane road running through all three cities.

My house is so quiet, I can hear frogs, but out on the main thoroughfare it's rush hour from sunrise to sunset, creeping along with all the speed of continental drift.

I can usually get where I'm going if I go down one lane, up another, around this huge bend, down another hill and over the bridge, through the subdivision from hell. Graffiti, barbed wire, broken fences, cops on every corner--arrests, speed traps, more speed traps, packs of teenagers like wolves and ubiquitous "family day care". It's pretty like a postcard, with trees tall enough to touch the sky. Funny how I never thought trees and gangs went together.

On weekends, garage sale signs spout like weeds. This week they were heavier than usual. Garage sale here, garage sale there. Moving sale. One said, "Just married. Extra household of stuff."

But the one I really liked was written in black sharpie on white posterboard. Man's Sale, it said.

I laughed and kept driving.

Right around the corner, there was another sign. THE MANLY SALE! And another--"For MACHO manly men"

Every block, another sign, bigger and brighter than the one before. With big black arrows the size of watermelons.

They were manly signs. No squinting allowed.

By the time I got to the end of the signs. Men THIS way!!>>> I was dying of curiosity.

There were empty tables and macho debris, but for the first time ever--I'd seen a ad campaign for a garage sale.

And it'd worked.