Yard decor set up for sale during the National Road Yard Sale along U.S. 40 on May 29.
Arianna Hunt | TheStatehouseFile.com
For 21 years, the Wednesday after Memorial Day has been the special starting date for the U.S. 40 or National Road Yard Sale, stretching over 800 miles from Illinois to Maryland.
The event feels like an I Spy page featuring clown collections, china dolls, wedding dresses, frog band statues, salt and pepper shakers, antique furniture, cuckoo clocks, wooden dumbbells from the 1800s and much more.
Also known as the Main Street of America, at its peak, U.S. 40 connected America coast to coast from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California. Today, in east central Indiana, it’s dotted with little towns that haven’t changed much since the 1950s, separated by cornfields and hallmarked with at least a few antique shops, semis flying through on two and sometimes four lanes.
For years, this first federally funded road helped pioneers explore the unknown. Now, over five days, the road connects its travelers to the past in more ways than one.
Knightstown, Indiana—38 miles east of Indianapolis
Carrie Simmermon started collecting 16 years ago when her ex-husband bought a “skid load of stuff.”
“I have five kids, and so when … I was pregnant with [the youngest], my ex-husband bought a skid load of stuff. That’s how I started. And I just kept buying and kept buying and buying and buying,” she said, standing inside a checkered tent that her friend let her set up outside her house on U.S. 40 in downtown Knightstown on Thursday.
After years of collecting dresses, furs and tens of thousands of brooches, she is finally ready to part with her assemblage with the help of the yard sale.
“After I got divorced, I had went through a lot of depression. And I would like to say, because of that, is why I bought all this stuff. But now I feel finally, after 12 years of divorce, I’m ready to get rid of it,” she said.
Out of the furs, dresses, board games, dolls and toys, her biggest collection is her pins.
“[I have] probably close to 100,000 pins,” she said. “I would say so because I even have more at home.”
Out of her thousands of brooches, her most prized treasure was found in a box of mixed things.
“My favorite find that I found was a Tiffany. I have a Tiffany brooch. That’s 18-karat gold, and it has either garnet or ruby. I’m not sure. But it’s like a flower, but it’s my favorite,” she said. “It’s hit or miss though. Like you can buy a box and you get nothing, and then you can buy a box and you can get a bunch of stuff.”
Right down the street, Kaetlyn Bolton and her husband had their sale set out in the yard of the house they bought two years ago to escape the city life of Indianapolis.
The yard sale brings community to the small town, population 2,150, which is one of the things Bolton loves the most.
“Everyone riles around the 40 sales. Usually all the antique malls open up and they all have their stuff out in the windows. And so last year, you actually had us next door to the Victorian house, that house set up,” she said, gesturing down the street. “Then if you went down the side street, we had the two neighbors behind us set up. Like it is a huge thing.”
The couple has participated in the sale every year since they moved to Knightstown, most famous for the “Hoosier Gym” used in the 1986 film “Hoosiers.”
“It’s just a fun time though, because even on the Facebook page … the Knightstown chatter page, [people are saying,] ‘Hey, who else is setting up? Who all set up?’ And then you have the people going back and forth, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this … Can you hold it for me?’” she said.
Dunreith, Indiana — 10 miles east of Knightstown
A town east, the Dunreith welcome sign was entrapped within a rather large “tent city” on Thursday.
Brittany Underwood has patrolled the U.S. 40 yard sale for the past 12 years. This year, with four children in tow, Underwood explored the Dunreith stalls.
“You just never know what to get to find. So, one year I found a camera backdrop that was originally $175 and it was brand new, and I got it for five.” she said.
“Ooooh there’s a bubble gun!” Her daughter Willow uncovered the toy with soap still inside.
Across the field, piles of dolls lined a tarp, protected from the anticipated rain by a large tree overhang.
Amber Leffel, from Carthage, has repaired dolls for over 20 years, starting as a child by learning from her grandmother who had a doll hospital. Last year, she stopped repairing dolls but still pursues her passions in things like needle felting, doll collecting, paper dolls and drawing.
“Well, my grandma had a doll hospital since I was 5,” she said. “So, I’ve just learned about dolls and how to repair doll, so that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.”
One man’s trash, another man’s $800: Leffels biggest find came from the unexpected. In a trash pile, she found a doll that fetched 40 times more than her asking price.
“One time I went to a sale and a lady had a trash pile up, and I picked it all up off the trash pile. It looked pretty bad, and I was like, this might be a good doll,” she said. “So, I took it home and cleaned it up. I put it on eBay, … and it went from $20 to $800 in three minutes.”
David Wilson hadn’t been up to the U.S. 40 sale in 20 years but got brought back so he and his fiancé could find things to decorate their farm fence with. Although not a farmer himself, Wilson rents his property to dairy farmers.
“We went down to Knightstown and came this way,” he said. “We’re actually headed up to Muncie to my mom. She’s 96 years old.”
His favorite find of the day were the three dogs he encountered.
Meanwhile, Lynette Eppley was selling some of the stock from her and her husband’s New Castle thrift and antique store in New Castle. Shortly after opening it, her husband had to go on dialysis.
“We just started in September, and then he took a real change,” she said. “We have a little shop in New Castle and then my husband went on dialysis three days a week and kind of really messed things up. And I take care of my 90-year-old mother as well, and so it’s just too much, so we decided we would try it out and see if we could get rid of some inventory.”
Protected from the sun by their tent, Eppley enjoyed her time with her grandson in the unseasonably cool weather.
“I think the weather is fabulous, so for me [my favorite part], it’s just being able to sit out and relax and have nice weather and nice people.”
Arianna Hunt is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
