DREAMLAND DRIVE-IN FLEA MARKET
When Kathe and I first got married and had almost no money we would buy our childrens’ clothes, as everyone did, at the Asheville Mall, often at Sears. Just below the Asheville Mall, beside River Road, was the Dreamland Drive-In outdoor theater with a huge screen and posts with where the speakers were hooked that people who place in their car as they watched the movie on the big screen. But gradually in the 1970‘s and the 80‘s the drive in was used for a flea market during the day and a drive-in theater at night. But finally people stopped going to drive-in theaters and the flea market took over. I used to drive by it occasionally on a weekend when it was crowded and was always a little irritated at the haphazard way that people parked along River Road and the way that people crossed the road without looking, their arms full. To tell the truth, I was inwardly dismissive and patronizing.
Until the day that for some reason I stopped and parked and went in to see what was going on. And instantly I was hooked. It was a little like being back in India again with where sellers of cheap plastic goods line the streets of Chandon Chowk in old Delhi and hawk their wares. There were no price tags and you had to bargain, which I loved doing, and sometimes I found something inexpensive and beautiful that I really liked. There were people who made a living selling goods that they had paid little for or which were perhaps stolen but there were also a great number of people who were trying to clear out the house and to get rid of things that they didn’t use. And some of the things were real treasures. I was hooked and it was not long before I was more than hooked, I was addicted. Some of my addiction was pure greed. I could buy a toaster that looked brand new in the flea market for $4, a toaster that cost $18 just up the hill in the Mall. The difference between the two toasters was only that the toaster in the mall was in shiny packing under bright lights and the toaster at the flea market was without packaging and sitting unlit on the tarpaulin. I gradually came to understand that packaging is the most important part of the cost of many items and that the place where it is displayed is second in importance with the value of the actual object third. And of course there was not sales tax.
I also began to realize that without fixed costs it was very hard to tell what anything was worth, the sellers didn’t know, the buyers didn’t know. Value was all in the eye of the beholder with a lot of bluffing on both sides. My method of purchasing things was purely visceral. If something struck me I would feign mild interest, bargain half heartedly and then walk away without glancing back. If I could walk half way down the next aisle with the object still nagging at me then I would circle around back and this time try harder and, if the feeling of lust continued, pay whatever the seller was willing to sell it for. There was no alternative actual value. If the need to have it didn’t continue through the next aisle I would forget about it.
But it wasn’t what I bought so much as the process of feeling my way through the market, bantering with people, feeling my way to the magic object, that made me feel so alive. I found myself humming gospel songs as I entered the flea market and then feeling a little dejected when I left. It was a much milder form of the delight that I got when traveling to India or Sri Lanka, and the downer I had when I returned to the ordinary USA.
The flea market was open on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning. Kathe had to be at work at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 6 and I dropped her off and then came straight to the flea market before things were picked over.
That was my addiction for maybe 8 years and in that time I filled our carport so full that it became an eyesore. Kathe finally had it enclosed on one of my trips to India. And then Lowes bought the land and the flea market closed. But by that time there was no room in the carport and my obsession had begun to wane.
In later years Kathe and I went to yard sales on Saturday morning looking for things that touched us in some way and we continued to buy things, but not at such a pace. Our house if full of beautiful things, an Art Deco theater seat from a west coast movie theater, a collection of doorknobs, framed paintings we liked, a miniature African giraffe, lamps with beautiful shades, glass candlesticks of all kinds.
But as old age set in our enthusiasm began to wane. There were also bumps along the way. The house had always been Kathe’s domain and my sudden interest in being an interior decorator miffed her a little. She let the theater chair in and the glass doorknobs and an embroidered “Rest In Sweet Heaven”, but when I put up on the wall my pride and joy, a six foot electric pink and blue Jesus on a black background, when Kathe was at work, I had crossed the line. Down it came, banished to the enclosed carport and finally expelled and given to Susie to put in her barn from which it later vanished. Some things were of real value such as a $20 miniature sewing machine that we determined through a search to be worth $600. Some things we were able to sell at our own yard sales. Some things we threw out.
But for me the great change happened when I discovered digital photography in 1998. Objects of all kinds and people of every kind touch me with their presence. But now I can take a photograph. I can keep the aura of the person or the object without having to possess anything. Photography saved me from my addiction.
And now, some of the stuff is still there as well as other things we have accumulated over the years. But Kathe is gone and I soon will be, too. We can’t take it with us. Everything now has to go. I have to downsize and downsize and downsize.
And that brings me to the point of today’s post, which was to have been Small is Beautiful. But I have digressed for so long that I will have to write that post tomorrow.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 