A lesson from the gumball philosopher

If I had to rank the best garage sales in America on a scale from one to 10, Medina would be an 11.

Or maybe that’s just how memory works.

I grew up chasing those neon poster-board arrows stapled to telephone poles. Saturday mornings meant piling into our Chevy Celebrity station wagon with my mom and my brother, windows cracked, radio low, scanning front lawns like explorers hunting for buried treasure.

Medina had a rhythm on those weekends. Folding tables. Cardboard boxes. Men sitting on lawn chairs guarding power tools. Women with coffee mugs telling you the backstory of every ceramic angel.

And the toys.

One year I found Snake Mountain, Skeletor’s purple fortress from He-Man, sitting between a box of VHS tapes and a bunch of crockpots. I already had Castle Grayskull, handed down from my cousin like a sacred relic. Snake Mountain completed the universe. I paid in nickels and quarters. It felt like I had robbed the Louvre.

But now I’m the adult with the garage. The homeowner. The accumulator.

And I don’t feel the same about garage sales.

Are there things in your Medina house that arrive without announcing themselves? Or maybe, for many of us, things that have been there for a long time that we haven’t even noticed?

How is that even possible?

Nonetheless, these “things” sit in corners, garages and basements long enough that you stop seeing them. They become part of the architecture of your life. Until one day, maybe it’s the light, maybe it’s the coffee, you notice them again and think, What the hell is that, and why is it here?

For me, it was a broken gumball machine in the garage.

My wife loves old things. Fixing them. Repurposing them. Giving them second lives. This gumball machine had been there almost a year. It did not work. It took up space. I could not even park the car. So I grabbed it and put it by the trash.

She stopped me.

She said she felt bad throwing it away. Said there was a story there – who built it, who used it, where it came from. I said I just wanted my garage back. We compromised. She put it on Facebook Marketplace for free for 24 hours.

That was the deal.

Ten minutes later, someone said he would be there in 15.

A rickety station wagon pulled into the driveway. The gentleman and I lifted the gumball machine together. We talked dimensions. Closed the trunk. Shook hands. And then he did not leave.

It seemed like he had something important he wanted to tell me.

So I asked if he was going to flip it.

He said no. He had a philosophy.

For 10 years, he told me, he lived boxed in. A house. A car. A job making boxes in a factory. Working just to keep the box he lived in. So he did the opposite. This year he bought a small trailer. The only box he owns.

He drives around, picks up people’s trash, turns it into art and gives it away.

“You don’t charge people?” I asked.

“I believe our world needs less debt and more gifts,” he said.

He told me living this way had made this year the best year of his life.

Then he drove off slowly, the gumball machine rattling in the back, waving as the sun went down.

I stood there realizing I thought I was throwing away trash.

What I did not realize was that he was the gift.