- April 23, 2024
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The 1930s Westinghouse two-door refrigerator sitting in the back of 321 Storage and Bunnell has been in the Van Buren family for ages.
It held the champagne John Van Buren and his wife, Sharron, drank to celebrate their marriage, and it sat in the rear of the Picnickers restaurant, which they opened together after moving to Florida in 1976.
But Van Buren and his son Michael, a sergeant with the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, have now placed a tag on the bottle and set it out for sale in move both say Sharron Van Buren, who died in October, would have wanted.
For years, Michael Van Buren said, his mother presided over an annual tag sale for raise money for the Daytona Rescue Mission’s initiative to buy Christmas dinners for needy families and, this year her family is continuing the tradition in her memory.
“This is just to continue her legacy of helping the less fortunate, “ Michael Van Buren said. “It’s what she would have wanted.”
This year, he said, the money raised in the sale will be split between the Daytona Rescue Mission and the Grace Community Food Pantry in Bunnell. The family hopes to exceed last year’s haul of $2,000 and hand each charity at least $1,000.
Preparing for the sale, Michael Van Buren said, has been an undertaking: about 20 family members and volunteers have pitched in for about a week to sort through the items, set them out and tag each one.
On Saturday morning the family was hard at work, and even the kids pitched in: Michael Van Buren’s son Mark, 9, sorted shoe boxes full of baseball and basketball cards while his sister Sara, 5, bagged jewelry.
The items for sale fill four storage garages and a few trailers, and run the gamut of price and type: everything from old glass bottles ($1) to an antique china closet ($500).
There are hats, vinyl records, furniture, clothes, Christmas wreaths and ornaments, paintings, shoes, teddy bears and dolls, baseball cards, teapots and china. Items are packed in, and more items will be added every day, John Van Buren said. The family couldn’t fit everything in the display area.
Since the sale started years ago, he said, the items have come from both the family’s own closets and leftovers from their businesses.
“Sharron used to have a thrift store at Picnickers Shell Town, and we’d buy storage units and had trailers full of stuff,” John Van Buren said. People would often show up for the first day of the family’s Black Friday tag sales an hour before they opened, he said.
And Sharron Van Buren would watch as the money came in, Michael Van Buren said. “She’d keep track as people were buying stuff. And she’d say, ‘Ah! We just fed five more.’”
Go garage sale-ing
The Van Buren family’s annual tag sale will be 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. starting Friday, Nov 29, and ending Wednesday, Dec. 4, at the 321 Storage at 321 Briarwood Path in Bunnell.
