[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Highway 127 Yard Sale is a seven-hundred-mile junk-extravaganza. The event starts in Gadsden, Alabama, and hikes straight up the crotch of Godless Michigan.

Thirteen years ago my wife and I went, armed with a map and a clunky Oldsmobile. We stayed the first night near Mentone, Alabama. An old woman opened her farmhouse to yard-salers for ten bucks a night.

She had twenty-four cats and a donkey.

The following morning, I awoke to cats nestled in my armpits, and a donkey at the window.

Jamie and I were already starting to bicker. We squabbled through two hundred miles of antiques. That night, we collapsed at a motor-inn in Melvine that smelled like a pot of collards.

I found poop in my bed.

By the next day, Jamie was sick of my smug little face – she told me so. We argued all through Tennessee. Crosstown, Grimsley, Byrdstown, and finally settled in Albany, Kentucky. There, Jamie bought a fondue pot.

Thank God for that.

We needed one.

When we got to Union, Kentucky all hell broke loose. I got sideswiped by a transfer truck. It amputated my side-mirror. Our Oldsmobile resembled a tired Budweiser can. A few miles later, a tire blew out. No spare. We spent the night in the car with the windows open.

That night it rained.

Like holy hell.

Outside Cincinnati, Jamie threw my suitcase out the window. She locked me out and inched our car toward the Michigan state line without me. Finally, in Hudson, Michigan, our Oldsmobile transmission went to be with Jesus.

So did her fondue pot.