Now, That's Some Linear Shopping-- Part 1

Linear shopping, as in a shopping mall of sorts hundreds of miles long. As in shopping along a US highway over one of many states.

A four hundred mile garage sale in other words.

There was an interesting article in the May 2010 American Profile Magazine "Highways & Byways" by Vicki Cox. Most of the photos were taken along the Lincoln Highway's Buyway that was held August 5-7 last year and is being again planned for this year.

Van Wert, Ohio, is at the center of two buy-ways, the Lincoln and the Highway 127 Corridor Sale.

"Yard sales, garage sales and flea markets are an American phenomenon rooted in the economic downturn of the 1930s. 'Having survived the Great depression, people hoarded things,' says Bruce Littlefield, author of Garage Sale America. 'By the '40s and 50s, they realized they had too much stuff and had to let some go.'"

The Highway 127 Corridor Sale is considered the original multi-state highway sale, starting in 1987, the brainchild of Mike Walker, a Fentress County, Tennessee, official trying to get folks off the interstates and onto America's scenic back roads. It extends 654 miles from Gadsden, Alabama to West Unity, Ohio.

More to Come. --RoadDog