Uncle John’s Van

08/15/2026

08/15/2026

BREAKING: Pennsylvania Garage Sale Opens At 7 AM, Local Man Arrives At 6:42 To Negotiate Over A 75 Cent Extension Cord

Another Pennsylvania garage sale is officially underway, featuring approximately $14,000 worth of household possessions being sold for a combined $63.

Available merchandise reportedly includes a crockpot nobody remembers buying, three Christmas decorations from 1997, a cordless drill with no charger, 46 mismatched drinking glasses, a DVD copy of Twister, one suspiciously heavy box labeled “FREE,” and a lamp that has survived three moves, two divorces and the closing of every nearby Kmart.

The sale was scheduled to begin at 8 AM, but this information was ignored by a man in cargo shorts who arrived at 6:38 and began inspecting the merchandise while the family was still carrying it outside.

“Would you take 50 cents?” Sir, it is marked $1.
Meanwhile, somebody's grandmother has been sitting behind a folding table since sunrise with a coffee, a metal cash box containing $37 in singles, and absolutely no intention of negotiating on the Longaberger basket.

By noon, three people have asked if anything is for sale inside the house. By 1 PM, a woman has returned for the ceramic rooster she’s been thinking about for two hours. And somewhere across Pennsylvania, a husband is being told, “We absolutely did not need another crockpot.”

08/14/2026

08/12/2026

Winkys Hamburgers restaurant located in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh on February26, 1965. Winkys headquarters was based in Sewickley, PA. The company was founded in 1962 by Harold & Bernard Erenstein. At its peak in 1977, Winkys had 42 locations in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1982.

Winky's started as a sideline of the Jiffy Steak Company, a meat company that the Erensteins had originally started in the back of their family's grocery store in Ambridge, PA after the end of World War II. By the 1960s, Jiffy was distributing fresh and frozen meats in 31 states. In 1961, they had noticed that a new hamburger chain located in Virginia was purchasing an unusually large amount of hamburger patties on a regular basis. That chain was a McDonald's franchise. The brothers decided that they could do the same thing in Western Pennsylvania.

The first Winky's was opened in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania in February 1962, offering 15-cent hamburgers. What gave their restaurant chain an advantage at that time was that their chain had their own meat supply from Jiffy Steak. By 1965, Winky's had 14 locations with 4 under construction. Although most of the locations were company owned, the company began to offer franchises. Within two years, the company had 32 restaurants around Pittsburgh with 9 under construction and were in discussions in trying to expand nationally through franchising.

At its height in 1977, the company had 42 stores in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. A downturn in the local economy forced the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1982.
Photo from https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092612415258)