Flea Market

Yesterday, I went to see one of my best friends.  We had lunch, and afterwards, we wound up at a HUGE flea market.  It's one of the biggest ones I've ever been to in this state.  I guess we picked the perfect day and time for it, too, after noon on one of the hottest days of the year inside a large metal building with many fans, but no form of air conditioning whatsoever.

The first indication that this place is going to be interesting can be seen when you drive up.  There is a Model A Ford parked casually on what used to be the loading dock of this old warehouse.  Then, when you get out, the sound of some guy singing covers of old 70s rock to his guitar hits you.  And so does the heat.  Like a sledgehammer of wet nastiness.  We stumbled more or less blindly up the concrete stairs into the relative coolness of the shade past a rack of motorcycle helmets, a church pew people were haggling over and a coffin that was propped upright and headed for the entrance.  I was thinking, "Oh yes.  There might be some good junk in here. Very good junk, indeed."

There are only two kinds of flea markets in the world, you see.  There is the kind where people buy a bunch of cheap plastic crap from China, little statuettes of clowns and bad tools, stupid things that have redneck jokes on them, and stuff that is not even clever enough to be called risque but can only be called tacky, and they fill up space with it.  That is the first kind of flea market.  I hate that kind.

Then there is the second kind.  This kind has good old junk.  It has stuff that might not be fancy enough to make it into an "antiques shop" but is certainly vintage.  It might be a little bit banged or dented, but it still has charm.  You can usually find all the kinds of things I like, stuff with character and history, at a good flea market of the second type.  Of course, you will also find a large collection of used electronics from the 80s (well, actually from every time period) and God knows what else, because that is the true fun of a real flea market.  There is something for everybody.

This one was the second type.  There were the obligatory book stalls filled with old westerns, Harlequin romances, and serial spy thrillers.  There were booths so packed with collections of stuff I have no idea WHAT all was in them.  There were people who "specialized" in only vintage kitchen or only vintage linens.  There was enough "repurposed" furniture and "shabby chic" to fill a house, even one the size of mine, with.  Not all of it was to my taste, but there were some really wonderful pieces there.  If I had had a truck and some more money in my bank account, one or two of the big pieces would have come away with me.  The prices were good, and the people were willing to "horsetrade" as my grandmother would have called it.

I wasn't much in the haggling mood, though.  It was just too damn hot.  I kept feeling like I was going to melt and slip through a crack in the concrete floor.  We'd pause to stand before one of the huge fans, letting it blow  warmish air over us.  Even though the fans were mostly as tall as I am, when the temperature outside is over 100, there is still only so much it is going to be able to do....

My friend found several things she liked, and I wound up with some neat pieces, too.  I got a lamp that struck my imagination, and of course, I found the obligatory silly hat.  I found a little green ink bottle shaped like a school house, a 1950s reproduction of something older, if the dealer knew his stuff.  My friend found an old coffee pot with flamingos on it, her particular passion.

And then we stumbled across the back section, the salvage portion.  It was mostly furniture in need of help and stuff you might want to weld, paint, or restore, but I was in heaven.  That is my kind of junk, you see.  I love architectural pieces, use them as display pieces by themselves sometimes.  There was an entire sign from an old movie theater that said, simply and elegantly, "Cinema" that took up a space as long as my entire living room.  The old light bulbs dangled forlornly from their sockets.  It was fantastic.  I wanted to photograph it instantly.  There were about five tables, including a very small desk with with a lid that opened and a place for the inkwell, that I would have bought instantly if I hadn't been acutely aware of my budget and how much abuse I'd already done it this month.

I couldn't resist the enticement of a pair of worn brass bookends, though, and even though I thought the price a little high, I took them up to the counter to ask if maybe they might come down on them a little.  I had two interesting bottles in my hands and the bookends, and I waited for the guy to finish up with another customer, and I asked him about them.  He came down off his first price to the price I was hoping for, and I told him I'd have to go get more cash from the ATM because I didn't have enough left to get everything I had on the counter.  He just laughed and said, "Well, tell me this.  Are you going to come back again?"  I looked at him like he was insane.  "Yeah.  You don't have to worry about that."  I was thinking to myself, "The real problem for me is going to be keeping myself out of here now that I know this place exists...."  And he came down again on the price of all of it again GREATLY.  This is the kind of place that I like to shop....

Out we stumbled again, past the coffin, past the pew, into the waiting glare and humidity juggling lamps and juice glasses, teapots and blue bottles.  My friend backed up to the loading dock and we waited for one of her purchases to be put in the back of her van while we gasped, angling the air vents toward ourselves in a desperate attempt to get it to cool us down faster.  After the loading was done, we took off to find something to drink and a place that had good air conditioning, both of us feeling more than a little limp.  It had been a good day, though.  It's a really awesome place.  I'm just not sure I want to go back until I'm sure that when I come out I won't feel like I've been gently simmered and brought to boil.