My girlfriend Janice saves the papers for me when I’m off-Island. I’m always afraid I’ll miss something destined to become Island lore, such as last year’s biggest Derby fish – just shy of fifty pounds, dragged aboard a boat by a twelve-year-old girl. There are things so uniquely Vineyard that you wouldn’t want to miss them.

The papers are in pristine condition except for the yard-sale sections. The ads for the yard sales are circled, crossed out, and accompanied by comments in the margin. Janice knows just about everyone on the Island, so she knows where the best stuff will be. The last time I picked up the papers from her, she was beside herself with glee. A summer celebrity – I won’t mention her name because we Island people aren’t impressed by celebrity – was staging a yard sale with the proceeds going to charity. The two things Vineyarders love most: yard sales and charities. Naturally I had to go.

Yard sales can become an addiction, just like gambling. My mother had a friend who shopped yard sales to stock her own yard sales. She made money at it too. I wonder what the record for resale of an item is? I have seen perfectly groomed men and women buying used clothing. Me? I’d wonder if the former owner was dead. You can pick up some nice bargains, but you have to be a discerning shopper. Sometimes that box of old junk jewelry from Grandma’s house has a real cameo or piece of silver in it.

There is a science to yard sale shopping. Rule No. 1: No matter how many sales are scheduled on any given weekend, you do not have time to go to more than two. Preferably two that are close together. Keep in mind that anything worth purchasing is going to be snatched up during the first hour of the sale. If you arrive too much later than that, whatever is left will be halfway to the thrift shop.

Rule No. 2: Arrive thirty to sixty minutes before the opening of the first sale. (Forget the ones that say No Early Birds. The early birds get the best stuff.) Just feign ignorance. “Gee, I could have sworn the paper said nine!” Don’t worry, it’s a yard sale; these people want to unload their junk.

Rule No. 3: Even if the price is right, haggle. The fun of a yard sale is getting something you really don’t need for the littlest amount of money possible. Don’t forget, anything left over will go to the dump where the owner must pay to get rid of it. Please do not hand the seller a $20 bill, however, after getting a price reduced from one dollar to fifty cents. Bad form.

Needless to say, in spite of knowing the rules, I didn’t follow my own advice. I arrived at the celebrity yard sale about a half hour after it began, and all that was left were a few chipped coffee mugs and a pile of dog-eared books. I suppose that the big draw – possibly because you got to go into the house – were autographs ($5) and photographs ($10) of said celebrity. The people standing in line must have been tourists, because, as I said before, no self-respecting Islander would have been excited by such a thing.

I saw a woman walking around with an item no one could identify. Not even the owner. It looked like a slinky welded to a flat, rectangular piece of metal. She forked over four dollars and announced, “It’ll be a conversation piece.” Well, I thought, maybe if someone figures out what it is. How can you have a conversation about an unknown object? I don’t know about you, but six people sitting around saying, “Maybe it’s a . . .” is not, in my opinion, a conversation.

I came home empty-handed; I don’t usually. Yard sales are part of the culture of Martha’s Vineyard. I’m convinced that some day I will go to a yard sale and everything for sale will have once belonged to me.