For a fun Labor Day trip this year, we had a garage sale and used the earnings to pay for the entire trip to Oklahoma City.
Were we crazy to have the sale and take the trip on the same weekend? Probably. But it was crazy fun. Would we have enough money? What would we do in Oklahoma City? We’d never visited the bombing Memorial or Bricktown, so planting ourselves in downtown for two days would be perfect.

Our only rule: when the cash ran out, we’d come home.

Our children, age 8, 11, 14, had lots of ideas. Anna, 11, would make cookies and sell them. Jacob, 8, would attach a sign to his bike and ride around the neighborhood, telling Saturday morning strollers we were open for business. Ashley, 14, would agree to let Anna comb her room for garage sale gems.

Our garage sales usually net about $250, and the point is more about de-cluttering the house than profiting. Is it really profit when you paid thousands of dollars to buy the now-junk in the first place?

How do you get people to your garage sale? In the old Burma-Shave road-sign style, we used the same color of neon poster for all our signs and direct traffic our way.

By noon Saturday, we had watched a grown man roll our toy wagon away, helped a woman load up our old charcoal grill, and sent many a happy grandmother with clothes for the grandchildren (and a few for herself).

We left for Oklahoma City Saturday afternoon with a shoebox full of cash—about $250.

Just for fun, we took the shoebox into the three-star hotel and plopped it on the counter. When it came time to declare our “form of payment,” we pulled out the cash and started counting. Jessica, the hotel desk manager, smirked slightly then couldn’t contain herself and smiled broadly at our box of cash. When we told her what we were doing, she hammed it up for a photo.

It took us literally ten minutes to miscount, count, then recount the cash because we had mostly ones. We recalled the debit card commercial where the cash-using customer at a restaurant slows the clickity-clack progress of an entire café.

Our evening of fun continued in Bricktown, where we strolled along the canal and ate at one of the fun and friendly restaurants in the old-made-new warehouse district of downtown Oklahoma City. We fielded questions from the kids: Who was Mickey Mantle? What’s a Redhawk, and do they play the Tulsa Drillers? Dad, can I push you in the canal? No! Not until I find the source of this water.
We walked everywhere we went during the two days and we felt safe in the well-lit Bricktown area, even at midnight.

Sunday morning at the Memorial was a contemplative time of prayer and reverence. We rang bells for peace for children. We marveled at the rows of chairs for each victim on the immaculate lawn that led to the reflecting pool which sits on the old footprint of the Murrah building. And we were moved by the activity across the street at the Old St. Joseph’s Cathedral, where a statue of Jesus is weeping. But just behind that statue a new sense of joy has risen at the church that was badly damaged by the bombing. Members of the church were throwing a carnival for the public, and we spent time there eating tamales and fruit while enjoying the music and festive air.
The kids found many fountains in the city—at the entrances of Bricktown, Myriad Gardens, and the public library. They played in them all, celebrating a successful trip. And when the cash was about tapped out, we headed home.

Greg Taylor is author of High Places: a novel and several other books. www.gregtaylor.cc.