Even when it rains, shoppers at Mount Carmel’s Baptist Church can stay dry while shopping for yard sale bargains
The folks at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Lone Oak have been preparing for the U.S. Highway 127 World’s Longest Yard Sale for months, so there’s no way they’re letting things like this week’s intermittent cloudbursts interfere with raising funds to support their youth groups.
Inside and out, the church is filled with donated merchandise ranging from furniture – some of it antique – to tables stacked with crockery and knickknacks, to pet supplies, to holiday tins and decorations.
Should shoppers get hungry, the church can handle that, too.
Volunteer cooks daily prepare everything from chicken salad sandwiches to baked goods to cold drinks that are available to buy and eat anytime between early breakfast to late lunch.
It’s a win-win for buyers, who travel here from states throughout the nation, and for sellers. Virtually every visitor leaves with a purchase, but even those who don’t find anything generally leave happy.
After all, they know, the shoulders of U.S. Highway 127, in both directions, are lined with thousands of yard sales – 690 miles of them.
At its southern end, the sale – which stretches all the way from Alabama to Michigan – begins at Noccalula Falls Park in Gadsden, Al.
From there it heads north across Lookout Mountain until it reaches Chattanooga and begins following the path of highway 127.
Created in 1987, the yard sale was the brain child of former Jamestown, TN official Mike Walker, who was looking for a way to draw travelers off the interstates and into rural areas.
Originally designed as an opportunity for people who live along U.S. 127 to haul out the discards in their homes and sell them to eager bargain hunters, the sale has become a nationally recognized annual event which officially begins on the first Thursday in August and lasts four days.
Today, however, a huge percentage of the sellers are dealers from other areas who rent space along the route during the sale and set out their wares. From these spaces, they hawk everything from vintage toys to old license plates to Depression glassware to flea market staples to rusty farm equipment.
Still, many homeowners also seize the opportunity to stage a yard sale that is virtually guaranteed to draw dozens – perhaps hundreds – of eager shoppers.
For people who want to shop at the U.S. 127 Corridor Sale, hard-core shoppers have lots of advice:
* Get a good night’s sleep. It will be a long day.
* Stock up on cold drinks; the sale passes through areas where stores are scarce and temperatures can soar into the mid-90s. Many shoppers travel with ice-packed coolers filled with their favorite soft drinks and lots of water, so they don’t wind up dehydrated.
* Wear cool, comfortable clothing and shoes.
* Bring small bills – lots of $1 and $5 and $10 bills. That way, if a dealer comes down from his original $5 price, there’s no need to pay with a $20 bill.
* For fragile purchases, bring along bubble wrap or newspapers or other wrapping material, to ensure all those new treasures get home safely.
* Be patient. There will be lots of traffic and drivers who don’t know the way around.