Used Fleas - Chapter Six - The voices that never stop
I find myself searching, searching, longing and searching for an answer to all of the mysteries of my life. What the hell happened that ended me up here in a flea market in my late fifties?!
There is a logical side to me that never completely leaves that is always yelping out in its tiny persistent voice that where I am right now is exactly where I should be and that I should be damn lucky I’m here at all.
There is that other side of me though. The Mr. Hyde that just cannot get his head around what his life consists of and of course this is where adventures like Annie Cosmic come into play.
Annie Cosmic is a part of every woman that mattered to me and yet Annie is also that escape from this mundane ridiculous life. The adventures that Annie and I go on are as real as this floating haze of junk and people that I am to believe is real life.
There are just days where I can daydream at the market and I can see myself stabbing all of the customers and vendors to death with implements of antique. I am naked and ravaged and running through the market howling a banshee scream that comes for the very core of my consciousness and I am eradicating my world of all of this idiot vermin.
See, this creates a problem though because these people are truly a big part of my life. These people that I can sometimes seem so cruel about are what are giving me a reason to get up and keep moving forward, at least for the most part.
The association that we have with all of our fellow earth travelers and our plant and animals companions is what builds the person that is standing before you, standing before me, as I stand here before you. I put these energies in my life for as many reasons as there are energies. Some are for nothing more than pleasure. Some are for protection, some are for love and some are for lessons. The true goal of being an earth traveler is that I am searching and must find the link to consciousness, if I am to achieve enlightenment that is what will have to happen.
Who the hell ever thought it would happen at a flea market in Lima, Ohio around this gathering of goofs and weirdo’s and frankly I am the king of goofs and weirdo’s. I am the grand foole. I am here to entertain and enlighten.
I don’t know why we as earth travelers think we have a right to figure out what happens in our lives, or to put it another way, you would think we would have figured out by now that we don’t have anything to do with the path except for continuing forward. Seems simple enough but we can’t seem to even do that.
Judging my fellow earth travelers is usually nothing more than me seeing in an individual something that used to be a part of me or still is a part of me and that just pisses me off and I want to find fault with that other person, oh, especially if it’s a behavior that I am no longer dealing with, negative behavior, well of course it would be a negative behavior, anyway, it makes me feel better about myself and at the same time makes me intolerant and impatient.
Yea, yea, get a grip. There are no Zen masters in this world of ours. We all feel the same things. We all want to feel better about ourselves and sometimes the only way that happens is when we feel better than others, but, that also means there will always be those we feel less than too. You can’t have one side of that cookie without the other side.
What does all al this have to do with a story about flea markets you may ask? Well I’ll get to it eventually or maybe I won’t. I’ll bet I get to something though.
Imperfection is everywhere.
Beautiful imperfection.
Ugly imperfection.
There is also the empathetic part of a person that plays into all of this. I watch with a broken heart the pain and confusion that my fellow vendors and customers go through and for a time it makes me very sad but that can change very quickly to a sense of frustration because I just don’t get why you would want to continue to feel that way even though I have done that to myself.
I watch and ache for the one that moves with such pain and effort, the one that is ashamed of what has become everyday life.
I listen with a taste of disgust to the story teller that lies about everything. If this man tells you it is daylight, please go check. He is probably lying to you.
I have for a while watched the one that comes across as a victim, comes across as the one that would bend over backwards to help you when in truth she is a vicious animal always ready to pounce and to feast on the weaknesses of others. She is a bitter and angry attacker hidden behind her white hair and sad eyes.
I can’t figure out the shyster. He’s the only one making money and yet he is a prick to the customers and has absolutely no respect for his fellow vendors. His life is dictated by the almighty dollar which is really the case with all of us but he doesn’t even try to hide it. He seems to be quite satisfied, even filled with pride that he finds a poor soul to take advantage of and then makes a profit off of that misfortune.
I suppose what they are, what I am also is a mirror to each other’s soul. Take a look my friend but don’t think you will like what you see.
She is as close to a hippy woman as I have seen in a while. She believes in the earth and natural healing and she believes in love and gentleness and she knows that the white man and his government is the true evil of the earth and yet there is a flaw in this almost perfect scene. Her beliefs are based primarily on her own fears. She is afraid of our government, afraid of losing make believe rights that she thinks she still or ever had. She is afraid of the doctors and their medicines and the hospitals and their sharp implements of death. She is afraid to tell you the truth, of standing up for her own rights. How can this be?
My entire picture of what the hippy movement which has been my life begins to fall apart at the edges. Is my entire belief systems no different than anyone else’s and it is all based upon my fears? Do I want love because I fear I have never been loved and I want peace because I fear what is not peace? Can this not be as simple as, it’s a better way to live?
Eddie is a strange customer that comes in almost every weekend and he never, never spends more than a couple bucks each time but I have to be very aware that he does keep coming back and he spends that couple of dollars.
Eddie wears sandals and socks year round. Not cool sandals but the house slipper sandals with the open backs and what this strongly suggests to me is that Eddie isn’t interested in style. He is interested in comfort. Eddie always has grey slacks on and a solid color pocket shirt.
In the pocket of Eddie’s shirt there will always be envelopes with money in them and lists on the outside of the envelopes and when he finds something he likes he goes to a specific envelope and takes out money.
Eddie’s hair is thinning and he wears it combed back and he has begun letting the back grow which has grown into two little curls on both sides. It looks very strange but still looks ok for Eddie for some reason.
Eddie likes paper. He likes old stamps or menus or photos or newspaper clippings or anything that you can think of that is related to that.
I have always had bunches of that kind of stuff usually because it’s part of the books that I get in.
Eddie will look through these things for hours and will never buy more than a couple at a time. He talks to me a little bit but not much. Eddie doesn’t really have a very good grasp of social networking.
Eddie is an enigma to most of us. Rumors have circulated that he is an EBay whore that is in the market looking to buy our stuff cheap and sell it for big money on EBay. This means that a lot of vendors don’t like Eddie. They don’t trust him. I figured with all the envelopes and different money and notes that he buys for a group of people. Finds what they are looking for, buys it cheap and sells it at a higher price. Makes perfect sense to me. We are all doing the same thing in this business. Never understood why vendors get pissed when someone else is doing exactly what they are doing.
Buy for less and selling for more is what we all do. This system doesn’t work if that isn’t what is going on. If I buy something for a dollar and sell it for a dollar then I won’t be doing this for long.
We offer a place of convenience and entertainment for those eccentric souls that have interests and needs.
After getting to know Eddie just a little bit though, over a couple years and a couple markets I have a tendency to believe that he is just a very lonely man who is hoarding things and has designs to make money on all of the items he purchases but just can’t seem to find the direction or motivation to do so. I think a lot of what we are all trying to figure out as schemes on Eddie’s part are really compulsive and obsessive behaviors. Eddie seems to have a life that is drenched in regret and envy.
Interestingly enough though is that this man that no one thinks anyone gives two seconds of thought about people spend a lot of time trying to figure out.
I am beginning to understand that people talk to me because they know that I don’t judge them. I am screwed up and so is everybody else and that is what makes us all just amazingly beautiful people.
If we could do away with the terrible forces of guilt, shame, remorse and rage, oh what wonderful times we would all have. We could laugh at each other and with each other and we could love and be loved and live in peace and not be afraid of anything. We could be more like our plant and animal companions.
We all must find our connection and we all must do that in our own unique and individual ways. This path is a journey that is paved with one lesson after another and we must take every single one of these avenues to their adventure and live it to the fullest. We must, we have to if we want to continue forward on this trip to find consciousness, to find the connection to the infinite all.
There is a logical side to me that never completely leaves that is always yelping out in its tiny persistent voice that where I am right now is exactly where I should be and that I should be damn lucky I’m here at all.
There is that other side of me though. The Mr. Hyde that just cannot get his head around what his life consists of and of course this is where adventures like Annie Cosmic come into play.
Annie Cosmic is a part of every woman that mattered to me and yet Annie is also that escape from this mundane ridiculous life. The adventures that Annie and I go on are as real as this floating haze of junk and people that I am to believe is real life.
There are just days where I can daydream at the market and I can see myself stabbing all of the customers and vendors to death with implements of antique. I am naked and ravaged and running through the market howling a banshee scream that comes for the very core of my consciousness and I am eradicating my world of all of this idiot vermin.
See, this creates a problem though because these people are truly a big part of my life. These people that I can sometimes seem so cruel about are what are giving me a reason to get up and keep moving forward, at least for the most part.
The association that we have with all of our fellow earth travelers and our plant and animals companions is what builds the person that is standing before you, standing before me, as I stand here before you. I put these energies in my life for as many reasons as there are energies. Some are for nothing more than pleasure. Some are for protection, some are for love and some are for lessons. The true goal of being an earth traveler is that I am searching and must find the link to consciousness, if I am to achieve enlightenment that is what will have to happen.
Who the hell ever thought it would happen at a flea market in Lima, Ohio around this gathering of goofs and weirdo’s and frankly I am the king of goofs and weirdo’s. I am the grand foole. I am here to entertain and enlighten.
I don’t know why we as earth travelers think we have a right to figure out what happens in our lives, or to put it another way, you would think we would have figured out by now that we don’t have anything to do with the path except for continuing forward. Seems simple enough but we can’t seem to even do that.
Judging my fellow earth travelers is usually nothing more than me seeing in an individual something that used to be a part of me or still is a part of me and that just pisses me off and I want to find fault with that other person, oh, especially if it’s a behavior that I am no longer dealing with, negative behavior, well of course it would be a negative behavior, anyway, it makes me feel better about myself and at the same time makes me intolerant and impatient.
Yea, yea, get a grip. There are no Zen masters in this world of ours. We all feel the same things. We all want to feel better about ourselves and sometimes the only way that happens is when we feel better than others, but, that also means there will always be those we feel less than too. You can’t have one side of that cookie without the other side.
What does all al this have to do with a story about flea markets you may ask? Well I’ll get to it eventually or maybe I won’t. I’ll bet I get to something though.
Imperfection is everywhere.
Beautiful imperfection.
Ugly imperfection.
There is also the empathetic part of a person that plays into all of this. I watch with a broken heart the pain and confusion that my fellow vendors and customers go through and for a time it makes me very sad but that can change very quickly to a sense of frustration because I just don’t get why you would want to continue to feel that way even though I have done that to myself.
I watch and ache for the one that moves with such pain and effort, the one that is ashamed of what has become everyday life.
I listen with a taste of disgust to the story teller that lies about everything. If this man tells you it is daylight, please go check. He is probably lying to you.
I have for a while watched the one that comes across as a victim, comes across as the one that would bend over backwards to help you when in truth she is a vicious animal always ready to pounce and to feast on the weaknesses of others. She is a bitter and angry attacker hidden behind her white hair and sad eyes.
I can’t figure out the shyster. He’s the only one making money and yet he is a prick to the customers and has absolutely no respect for his fellow vendors. His life is dictated by the almighty dollar which is really the case with all of us but he doesn’t even try to hide it. He seems to be quite satisfied, even filled with pride that he finds a poor soul to take advantage of and then makes a profit off of that misfortune.
I suppose what they are, what I am also is a mirror to each other’s soul. Take a look my friend but don’t think you will like what you see.
She is as close to a hippy woman as I have seen in a while. She believes in the earth and natural healing and she believes in love and gentleness and she knows that the white man and his government is the true evil of the earth and yet there is a flaw in this almost perfect scene. Her beliefs are based primarily on her own fears. She is afraid of our government, afraid of losing make believe rights that she thinks she still or ever had. She is afraid of the doctors and their medicines and the hospitals and their sharp implements of death. She is afraid to tell you the truth, of standing up for her own rights. How can this be?
My entire picture of what the hippy movement which has been my life begins to fall apart at the edges. Is my entire belief systems no different than anyone else’s and it is all based upon my fears? Do I want love because I fear I have never been loved and I want peace because I fear what is not peace? Can this not be as simple as, it’s a better way to live?
Eddie is a strange customer that comes in almost every weekend and he never, never spends more than a couple bucks each time but I have to be very aware that he does keep coming back and he spends that couple of dollars.
Eddie wears sandals and socks year round. Not cool sandals but the house slipper sandals with the open backs and what this strongly suggests to me is that Eddie isn’t interested in style. He is interested in comfort. Eddie always has grey slacks on and a solid color pocket shirt.
In the pocket of Eddie’s shirt there will always be envelopes with money in them and lists on the outside of the envelopes and when he finds something he likes he goes to a specific envelope and takes out money.
Eddie’s hair is thinning and he wears it combed back and he has begun letting the back grow which has grown into two little curls on both sides. It looks very strange but still looks ok for Eddie for some reason.
Eddie likes paper. He likes old stamps or menus or photos or newspaper clippings or anything that you can think of that is related to that.
I have always had bunches of that kind of stuff usually because it’s part of the books that I get in.
Eddie will look through these things for hours and will never buy more than a couple at a time. He talks to me a little bit but not much. Eddie doesn’t really have a very good grasp of social networking.
Eddie is an enigma to most of us. Rumors have circulated that he is an EBay whore that is in the market looking to buy our stuff cheap and sell it for big money on EBay. This means that a lot of vendors don’t like Eddie. They don’t trust him. I figured with all the envelopes and different money and notes that he buys for a group of people. Finds what they are looking for, buys it cheap and sells it at a higher price. Makes perfect sense to me. We are all doing the same thing in this business. Never understood why vendors get pissed when someone else is doing exactly what they are doing.
Buy for less and selling for more is what we all do. This system doesn’t work if that isn’t what is going on. If I buy something for a dollar and sell it for a dollar then I won’t be doing this for long.
We offer a place of convenience and entertainment for those eccentric souls that have interests and needs.
After getting to know Eddie just a little bit though, over a couple years and a couple markets I have a tendency to believe that he is just a very lonely man who is hoarding things and has designs to make money on all of the items he purchases but just can’t seem to find the direction or motivation to do so. I think a lot of what we are all trying to figure out as schemes on Eddie’s part are really compulsive and obsessive behaviors. Eddie seems to have a life that is drenched in regret and envy.
Interestingly enough though is that this man that no one thinks anyone gives two seconds of thought about people spend a lot of time trying to figure out.
I am beginning to understand that people talk to me because they know that I don’t judge them. I am screwed up and so is everybody else and that is what makes us all just amazingly beautiful people.
If we could do away with the terrible forces of guilt, shame, remorse and rage, oh what wonderful times we would all have. We could laugh at each other and with each other and we could love and be loved and live in peace and not be afraid of anything. We could be more like our plant and animal companions.
We all must find our connection and we all must do that in our own unique and individual ways. This path is a journey that is paved with one lesson after another and we must take every single one of these avenues to their adventure and live it to the fullest. We must, we have to if we want to continue forward on this trip to find consciousness, to find the connection to the infinite all.
Used Fleas - Chapter Seven - There are no secret formulas
The flea market business is not like any other business, hell it’s not really a legitimate business. I will say right off the bat that I am a cynic when it comes to all of this so what I am about to explain is my opinion and frankly I think it’s right.
Most of us who are doing flea markets don’t have what it takes to run our own businesses especially the upfront capital or credit that it takes, but beyond that we are also not the most disciplined people in the world. Vendors don’t always show up on time if they show up at all and we can be very emotional people from amazing scenarios of drama to frightening examples of rage.
Many vendors are liars, conmen and conwomen, thieves and perverts. We are not really all that different than any schmuck who owns their own business except that we don’t really have the discipline or focus it takes sometimes to get the job done.
Ok, I’ll be nice. Many of us are retired; handicapped, looking for extra income, lonely and really looking for something to do that may make a few bucks and be fun. We’re really no damn different than most human beings. We will try to get away with murder and if we can’t then we will try to behave ourselves.
The other reality is that it’s a new world out there now. Our government had crawled in bed with the corporations, rich and elite and it’s nothing new but what is new is that they don’t care if we know now. The whole idea of being anything you want to be as an American is of course a complete line of bullshit now.
This however is where the human condition becomes something beautiful. When we are pushed to the corners and don’t feel we have anywhere else to go we will get real damn creative and we will find ways of sustaining ourselves without corporations, governments and puppets.
We on some interesting sub-conscious level are realizing that we just make more stuff. That is all we do as human beings anymore. We just keep making more stuff and the majority of the stuff we don’t need or want. The new appreciation of flea markets, all the picking and packing and everything else involved with used and recycle stuff is all of us finding different ways to have the stuff we want and to bring more stuff to others also. I frankly think it’s wonderful that we are at least not making as much stuff; at least I hope that is the case but it really is still the same thing. It’s still about owning stuff.
One of the things that happened in my life that literally saved my life was that I decided one day to just get rid of e everything I owned. I gave my TV’s away. I shut off my cable. I threw away my VCR player. I sold my VCR tapes, my CD’s and DVD’s, I threw away all of the broken down ridiculous furniture, I emptied my shelves, closets and cupboards and sold it or threw it all way. This was a process that took a few years and a couple moves. I was a junk collector, a hoarder before anyone knew what hoarder was.
I currently have my computer and the Internet. It gives me everything I need and I have a lot more control over what comes across the screen. I have a wonderful old desk, a couch, a chair, some pictures on the wall and a couple lamps and my bedroom and that is it.
When people come over to visit they are overwhelmed at the simplicity of it all. They are disturbed that I live the way I do and they feel a need to do something to help me out. I don’t need helped out for fuck sake! I love this minimalist life of mine.
I am back to reading two or three books a week. I watch movies online when I feel like it. I listen to music twenty-four hours a day. I keep up with weather, news and friends and then I go out into the world and live. It’s absolutely wonderful!
The flea market became the perfect addition to my life this time. I can gather all this stuff up and put it in my booth and sell it. I can enjoy it while it’s there and then when it’s gone I get more stuff but I don’t have to be falling over all this shit in my home. I even took all my books and put them with the rest at the market. I bring home a couple books I am reading and I then take them back and get a couple more.
The biggest difference I find with the flea markets and who knows, it may be this way with all businesses now, is that it is virtually impossible to guage your business on who comes in or how many come in or when they do. It’s just impossible to figure out anymore. We have all become very fickle shoppers and we do not follow the brain washing as much. We have become more focused on what we can afford and if we really need it. I think. I’m not sure really. What I am sure of is that the weekends that I think will be busy are slow and the ones that should be slow are wall to wall people.
Of course as we all find new and more creative ways of sustaining ourselves without the government, the government starts to notice that we are making money at this and they get their great big greedy hands in the mix and start stirring up the stew so that they get a big plate full that they don’t deserve.
That’s ok, we are resilient people. We don’t give up and we will always just keep getting smarter and more creative and we will always do whatever it takes to make sure that the government is for the people and if it’s not we will find something else that works.
The last weekend at the old market was a slow one. The angry German decided to take her family and go camping after she informed everyone through her usual weird and cryptic way that she is getting out of the business. She tried to drag Tanny into a ridiculous scam deal to take over the market but Tan finally saw the insanity of it all and told her no.
The vendors are always in a better mood when we know that the angry German is going to be gone. That’s not a good thing. When the one in charge is gone we feel a sense of freedom and happiness. Of course the looming idiotic conversations that continued as to who was going to take over and what would happen and if it is so and so most of the vendors would leave just made me very sleepy for most of the weekend.
Age can be such a beautiful thing. The older I get, yea, yea, I got aches and pains and fears that I didn’t used to have but I also don’t give a rats ass as to what drama is going on at the flea market. In the past I would have been the one raising the hell and getting everyone all shook up but not anymore. As long as I can keep making money, keep paying my rent and not be completely annoyed by whoever is in charge then I am a happy camper. If the place starts costing me money or stressing me out. I simply pack up and go my own way. I also give my happy pills most of the credit but I also know that I can remember the day, the specific day, time, time of year, all of it when I realized that nothing, absolutely nothing in this world and beyond is worth getting stressed out about.
Simple formula; tell the truth, tell it quickly, don’t mince words and state your position immediately and you may piss someone off for a bit but they’ll get over it and it won’t come back up later as a raging monster out of the top of my head because I held onto it.
Most of us who are doing flea markets don’t have what it takes to run our own businesses especially the upfront capital or credit that it takes, but beyond that we are also not the most disciplined people in the world. Vendors don’t always show up on time if they show up at all and we can be very emotional people from amazing scenarios of drama to frightening examples of rage.
Many vendors are liars, conmen and conwomen, thieves and perverts. We are not really all that different than any schmuck who owns their own business except that we don’t really have the discipline or focus it takes sometimes to get the job done.
Ok, I’ll be nice. Many of us are retired; handicapped, looking for extra income, lonely and really looking for something to do that may make a few bucks and be fun. We’re really no damn different than most human beings. We will try to get away with murder and if we can’t then we will try to behave ourselves.
The other reality is that it’s a new world out there now. Our government had crawled in bed with the corporations, rich and elite and it’s nothing new but what is new is that they don’t care if we know now. The whole idea of being anything you want to be as an American is of course a complete line of bullshit now.
This however is where the human condition becomes something beautiful. When we are pushed to the corners and don’t feel we have anywhere else to go we will get real damn creative and we will find ways of sustaining ourselves without corporations, governments and puppets.
We on some interesting sub-conscious level are realizing that we just make more stuff. That is all we do as human beings anymore. We just keep making more stuff and the majority of the stuff we don’t need or want. The new appreciation of flea markets, all the picking and packing and everything else involved with used and recycle stuff is all of us finding different ways to have the stuff we want and to bring more stuff to others also. I frankly think it’s wonderful that we are at least not making as much stuff; at least I hope that is the case but it really is still the same thing. It’s still about owning stuff.
One of the things that happened in my life that literally saved my life was that I decided one day to just get rid of e everything I owned. I gave my TV’s away. I shut off my cable. I threw away my VCR player. I sold my VCR tapes, my CD’s and DVD’s, I threw away all of the broken down ridiculous furniture, I emptied my shelves, closets and cupboards and sold it or threw it all way. This was a process that took a few years and a couple moves. I was a junk collector, a hoarder before anyone knew what hoarder was.
I currently have my computer and the Internet. It gives me everything I need and I have a lot more control over what comes across the screen. I have a wonderful old desk, a couch, a chair, some pictures on the wall and a couple lamps and my bedroom and that is it.
When people come over to visit they are overwhelmed at the simplicity of it all. They are disturbed that I live the way I do and they feel a need to do something to help me out. I don’t need helped out for fuck sake! I love this minimalist life of mine.
I am back to reading two or three books a week. I watch movies online when I feel like it. I listen to music twenty-four hours a day. I keep up with weather, news and friends and then I go out into the world and live. It’s absolutely wonderful!
The flea market became the perfect addition to my life this time. I can gather all this stuff up and put it in my booth and sell it. I can enjoy it while it’s there and then when it’s gone I get more stuff but I don’t have to be falling over all this shit in my home. I even took all my books and put them with the rest at the market. I bring home a couple books I am reading and I then take them back and get a couple more.
The biggest difference I find with the flea markets and who knows, it may be this way with all businesses now, is that it is virtually impossible to guage your business on who comes in or how many come in or when they do. It’s just impossible to figure out anymore. We have all become very fickle shoppers and we do not follow the brain washing as much. We have become more focused on what we can afford and if we really need it. I think. I’m not sure really. What I am sure of is that the weekends that I think will be busy are slow and the ones that should be slow are wall to wall people.
Of course as we all find new and more creative ways of sustaining ourselves without the government, the government starts to notice that we are making money at this and they get their great big greedy hands in the mix and start stirring up the stew so that they get a big plate full that they don’t deserve.
That’s ok, we are resilient people. We don’t give up and we will always just keep getting smarter and more creative and we will always do whatever it takes to make sure that the government is for the people and if it’s not we will find something else that works.
The last weekend at the old market was a slow one. The angry German decided to take her family and go camping after she informed everyone through her usual weird and cryptic way that she is getting out of the business. She tried to drag Tanny into a ridiculous scam deal to take over the market but Tan finally saw the insanity of it all and told her no.
The vendors are always in a better mood when we know that the angry German is going to be gone. That’s not a good thing. When the one in charge is gone we feel a sense of freedom and happiness. Of course the looming idiotic conversations that continued as to who was going to take over and what would happen and if it is so and so most of the vendors would leave just made me very sleepy for most of the weekend.
Age can be such a beautiful thing. The older I get, yea, yea, I got aches and pains and fears that I didn’t used to have but I also don’t give a rats ass as to what drama is going on at the flea market. In the past I would have been the one raising the hell and getting everyone all shook up but not anymore. As long as I can keep making money, keep paying my rent and not be completely annoyed by whoever is in charge then I am a happy camper. If the place starts costing me money or stressing me out. I simply pack up and go my own way. I also give my happy pills most of the credit but I also know that I can remember the day, the specific day, time, time of year, all of it when I realized that nothing, absolutely nothing in this world and beyond is worth getting stressed out about.
Simple formula; tell the truth, tell it quickly, don’t mince words and state your position immediately and you may piss someone off for a bit but they’ll get over it and it won’t come back up later as a raging monster out of the top of my head because I held onto it.
Used Fleas - Chapter Eight - A storm blows in
“Well I think it’s safe to say that the flea market crowd aren’t the people to be hanging out with if a crisis arises, or bad weather.”
Mr. Happy laughed as we sat in my booth and the storm raged on outside.
The angry German was trying to keep everyone calm and in all honesty was doing a fine job. She even tried to get us to come back to the back but we didn’t want to.
I frankly love storms, the more violent the better. There is nothing, absolutely nothing on this planet that is as untamed as a storm, as unpredictable. It’s an amazing rush. I want to see it, watch it, be out in it and feel it.
It was one of those storms that came out of nowhere. Well that’s not really true. The warning people on the radio said it was coming but they didn’t know it was coming at such a rate of speed. It was coming our way at sixty five mile an hour with eighty mile an hour winds. It was going to blow the shit out of things.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we weren’t so hung up and the weather people could just say, “Yes folks this storm is just going to blow the shit out of everything! Get yourself a beer and a comfortable chair and watch the show. It may be your last!”
Of course it’s not that way anymore. If it is going to be in the nineties, it’s a heat warning. It was one hundred and six the other day and that is a severe heat warning and a fire warning. Fire warning?! Does it mean that we may just burst into flames from the heat?
We have wind warnings, rain warnings, flood warnings, fire warnings, thunderstorms, possible severe thunderstorms, a thunderstorm watch or warning and tornado watch and warning. A tornado warning means curl up in a ball put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
They probably have “Beautiful day warnings” which is a warning that we should not get to happy because, well it won’t last and the come down will be devastating.
We finally lost power at the market and the angry German was ready with flashlights coming up to my booth asking that we come to the back and I basically at that point just said no.
I was a little surprised at the reactions by the vendors, both the girls and the guys but what I was more interested in was my reaction. I really didn’t get excited. I just figured, “well let’s see what happens”. The record guy sat down in the dark with me and started saying, “I don’t get too excited anymore. Viet Nam made it hard to get excited about anything. You just figured you would either make it or not.”
I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. Was it bravery, a complete loss of care for living, life or bullshit, who knows?
We never got power back for that day so as soon as the storm died down enough I was in my car and off to home. The wind was still blowing pretty hard and there was trash and trees everywhere and someone had said that my end of town had gotten slammed so I was ready to find everything tore the shit up.
I got home to everything being fine. My lawn chairs were gone, still are but I still had power so I was a very happy camper.
I spent the rest of the evening making sure my daughter was ok, my brother was ok, my other brother his wife and boys were ok, mom and my brother Paul were ok in Plain City, made sure TJ was ok and after all of that I settled down to do some reading. All in all it was a pretty uneventful eventful day.
I think it’s very important that we are given wake up calls every once in a while. I think we must never forget how precious and precarious this life is. One minute you are here and the next you are gone.
Babs said something about me up by all the windows watching the storm and I said, “You know when the roulette wheel hits my number then it will be time to go, until then I think I’ll watch the storms.”
I felt the same way about saying that as I did record guy talking about Viet Nam. I think we all have our ways of getting through the good times and the bad times and none is the right way or the wrong way. It’s what works for us.
Today was Saturday and there were still twenty five thousand people in Lima and surrounding towns out of power and like more than a half a million in the state. The market had power. My brother Nathan didn’t so his family brought over a bunch of food for me to put in the freezer and they went and got a room at the Marriott till Monday.
Today was a good day except for Zeck the religious jumpsuit guy.
Zecky boy has always rubbed me the wrong way in a number of ways. He talks too much. He rants about politics and God all the time and he also just gets unbelievably wound up and can’t seem to stop himself when he is getting out of hand.
When it’s just me listening to him I just go to my happy place and don’t hear a word the man says. Today however was a different story and unfortunately this wasn’t the first time he has done this.
After you have done this for a while you get to trust that feeling when a customer is in your booth and he or she is going to buy. I had one of them in my booth. In the first minute he had already laid a twenty dollar book down on a chair letting me know he wanted it and was continuing to look.
We were small talking when Zeck walked by and overheard the guy say something about NASCAR and ol’ Zecky was off and running. He started talking to the guy.
In the beginning I figured it was ok. Zeck could talk for a couple minutes and then dart off to bother someone else but that just didn’t happen. I began to see in the guy’s face that he was tired of Zeck rattling on. He was headed for the book on the chair which meant he was getting ready to leave.
I have an unbelievable collection of vintage books and this poor guy was a real collector so he kept picking up books and trying to get around Zeck but it just wasn’t happening. I finally walked over to Bev and whispered, “Bev if Zeck costs me this sale I will stab him to death with this homemade knife”. I had picked up a homemade knife that someone had made and was having Bev sell for them. They were beautiful. The man carved the handles out of bone and made the blades. I am not a knife person but I loved these things.
Bev realized that I was serious and started saying Zecky boys name and asking him to come over but Zeck wouldn‘t not budge. He just kept talking about stupid shit.
Somehow they got on the conversation of airports and Zeck said, “They tried to pat me down and I said, I’m not a homosexual.” For the first time in almost five years I thought, “Well I’m going to clock the fuck out and hurt this man.”
This customer was a racing fan, a book collector, had money and was a conservative. He believed in homeland security and the American Dream and even though I am one of the most liberal people on the planet I know when to make money and when to keep my mouth shut.
After a good forty minutes of this and me feeling like I was going to have a stroke Zeck finally got the message from the look on my face and started to make his exit which took another eight minutes.
The guy looked at me and we both laughed when Zeck was finally gone and I apologized. The guy let me know that it was an uncomfortable situation. He still bought the big book but this man was someone who would have spent more than a hundred on books.
I immediately went and found the angry German and said, “Angry German, let’s go for a walk”. Of course she knows that means I am upset. I really do try very hard to keep things civil and professional.
I let her know what Zeck had done and also let her know that he just needed to stay away from me for the rest of the day. I would settle down but I was not there yet and I didn’t want to talk to him and again she got right on it and took care of it.
Experience has taught me that I need a cooling off period after something like that happens. I would kindly and politely tell Zeck another day that he is an absolute pain in the ass and to never do that to me again.
Bev had actually told Zeck that he had upset me and he was going to come over and apologize and Bev and the angry German let him know that it was probably not a good idea right now.
It’s a paradoxical situation at times because I know that people feel safe with me for the most part. They believe that they can say anything and I will not judge which the case is but what I had to come to understand today is that I am also at this market to sell books. I am here to make money. I’m not here to get rich and this isn’t a social network for me and that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the social aspects of it all but the primary function is to sell books, for me. It has to be. I need that focus or I will just get caught up with another flea market romance or some half-baked business venture.
Yes I am finally learning from my mistakes.
Mr. Happy laughed as we sat in my booth and the storm raged on outside.
The angry German was trying to keep everyone calm and in all honesty was doing a fine job. She even tried to get us to come back to the back but we didn’t want to.
I frankly love storms, the more violent the better. There is nothing, absolutely nothing on this planet that is as untamed as a storm, as unpredictable. It’s an amazing rush. I want to see it, watch it, be out in it and feel it.
It was one of those storms that came out of nowhere. Well that’s not really true. The warning people on the radio said it was coming but they didn’t know it was coming at such a rate of speed. It was coming our way at sixty five mile an hour with eighty mile an hour winds. It was going to blow the shit out of things.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we weren’t so hung up and the weather people could just say, “Yes folks this storm is just going to blow the shit out of everything! Get yourself a beer and a comfortable chair and watch the show. It may be your last!”
Of course it’s not that way anymore. If it is going to be in the nineties, it’s a heat warning. It was one hundred and six the other day and that is a severe heat warning and a fire warning. Fire warning?! Does it mean that we may just burst into flames from the heat?
We have wind warnings, rain warnings, flood warnings, fire warnings, thunderstorms, possible severe thunderstorms, a thunderstorm watch or warning and tornado watch and warning. A tornado warning means curl up in a ball put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
They probably have “Beautiful day warnings” which is a warning that we should not get to happy because, well it won’t last and the come down will be devastating.
We finally lost power at the market and the angry German was ready with flashlights coming up to my booth asking that we come to the back and I basically at that point just said no.
I was a little surprised at the reactions by the vendors, both the girls and the guys but what I was more interested in was my reaction. I really didn’t get excited. I just figured, “well let’s see what happens”. The record guy sat down in the dark with me and started saying, “I don’t get too excited anymore. Viet Nam made it hard to get excited about anything. You just figured you would either make it or not.”
I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. Was it bravery, a complete loss of care for living, life or bullshit, who knows?
We never got power back for that day so as soon as the storm died down enough I was in my car and off to home. The wind was still blowing pretty hard and there was trash and trees everywhere and someone had said that my end of town had gotten slammed so I was ready to find everything tore the shit up.
I got home to everything being fine. My lawn chairs were gone, still are but I still had power so I was a very happy camper.
I spent the rest of the evening making sure my daughter was ok, my brother was ok, my other brother his wife and boys were ok, mom and my brother Paul were ok in Plain City, made sure TJ was ok and after all of that I settled down to do some reading. All in all it was a pretty uneventful eventful day.
I think it’s very important that we are given wake up calls every once in a while. I think we must never forget how precious and precarious this life is. One minute you are here and the next you are gone.
Babs said something about me up by all the windows watching the storm and I said, “You know when the roulette wheel hits my number then it will be time to go, until then I think I’ll watch the storms.”
I felt the same way about saying that as I did record guy talking about Viet Nam. I think we all have our ways of getting through the good times and the bad times and none is the right way or the wrong way. It’s what works for us.
Today was Saturday and there were still twenty five thousand people in Lima and surrounding towns out of power and like more than a half a million in the state. The market had power. My brother Nathan didn’t so his family brought over a bunch of food for me to put in the freezer and they went and got a room at the Marriott till Monday.
Today was a good day except for Zeck the religious jumpsuit guy.
Zecky boy has always rubbed me the wrong way in a number of ways. He talks too much. He rants about politics and God all the time and he also just gets unbelievably wound up and can’t seem to stop himself when he is getting out of hand.
When it’s just me listening to him I just go to my happy place and don’t hear a word the man says. Today however was a different story and unfortunately this wasn’t the first time he has done this.
After you have done this for a while you get to trust that feeling when a customer is in your booth and he or she is going to buy. I had one of them in my booth. In the first minute he had already laid a twenty dollar book down on a chair letting me know he wanted it and was continuing to look.
We were small talking when Zeck walked by and overheard the guy say something about NASCAR and ol’ Zecky was off and running. He started talking to the guy.
In the beginning I figured it was ok. Zeck could talk for a couple minutes and then dart off to bother someone else but that just didn’t happen. I began to see in the guy’s face that he was tired of Zeck rattling on. He was headed for the book on the chair which meant he was getting ready to leave.
I have an unbelievable collection of vintage books and this poor guy was a real collector so he kept picking up books and trying to get around Zeck but it just wasn’t happening. I finally walked over to Bev and whispered, “Bev if Zeck costs me this sale I will stab him to death with this homemade knife”. I had picked up a homemade knife that someone had made and was having Bev sell for them. They were beautiful. The man carved the handles out of bone and made the blades. I am not a knife person but I loved these things.
Bev realized that I was serious and started saying Zecky boys name and asking him to come over but Zeck wouldn‘t not budge. He just kept talking about stupid shit.
Somehow they got on the conversation of airports and Zeck said, “They tried to pat me down and I said, I’m not a homosexual.” For the first time in almost five years I thought, “Well I’m going to clock the fuck out and hurt this man.”
This customer was a racing fan, a book collector, had money and was a conservative. He believed in homeland security and the American Dream and even though I am one of the most liberal people on the planet I know when to make money and when to keep my mouth shut.
After a good forty minutes of this and me feeling like I was going to have a stroke Zeck finally got the message from the look on my face and started to make his exit which took another eight minutes.
The guy looked at me and we both laughed when Zeck was finally gone and I apologized. The guy let me know that it was an uncomfortable situation. He still bought the big book but this man was someone who would have spent more than a hundred on books.
I immediately went and found the angry German and said, “Angry German, let’s go for a walk”. Of course she knows that means I am upset. I really do try very hard to keep things civil and professional.
I let her know what Zeck had done and also let her know that he just needed to stay away from me for the rest of the day. I would settle down but I was not there yet and I didn’t want to talk to him and again she got right on it and took care of it.
Experience has taught me that I need a cooling off period after something like that happens. I would kindly and politely tell Zeck another day that he is an absolute pain in the ass and to never do that to me again.
Bev had actually told Zeck that he had upset me and he was going to come over and apologize and Bev and the angry German let him know that it was probably not a good idea right now.
It’s a paradoxical situation at times because I know that people feel safe with me for the most part. They believe that they can say anything and I will not judge which the case is but what I had to come to understand today is that I am also at this market to sell books. I am here to make money. I’m not here to get rich and this isn’t a social network for me and that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the social aspects of it all but the primary function is to sell books, for me. It has to be. I need that focus or I will just get caught up with another flea market romance or some half-baked business venture.
Yes I am finally learning from my mistakes.
Used Fleas - Chapter Nine - Heat Wave
On Sunday a storm was headed our way again which they said would be as bad as Friday’s, so, Bev and Howard ran around the market to tell everyone that if they needed to leave they probably should.
Seeing that Lima got spanked on Friday and there were still twenty-five thousand people without power it made sense that if another storm was on its way, no one was going to be out doing anything and especially going to the damn flea market.
I am a firm believer that if we are open at ten in the morning till five in the evening then every single damn vendor should be there and be open and of course that’s just not the case. The religious vendors won’t come in on Sunday because they don’t’ work on Sunday’s. Nope you can go shopping after church but only the heathens can run the shops. It’s amazing how many stupid rules have been made in the name of God.
It pisses me off to no end that vendors will leave early or not show up at all. I just don’t understand it. We are open four days a damn week. We pay rent to set up and try to sell our wares and there are those that are never there, always late or leaving early.
Sunday I broke my own golden rule and walked out of the market at three o’clock when we were supposed to be open till five. I knew no one was going to come in and I was just completely frustrated with the whole thing. Hopefully next weekend would be a better time.
The heat wave never let up for the whole week. We found ourselves under some warning that basically said people were just going to burst into flames. By Thursday the Internet service was down and I had promised myself I wouldn’t go into the market on vendor day but I became unbelievably bored and found myself headed down 309.
Babs, Howard, Maude and a few others were there. The angry German was also there in rare form. Hooting and hollering and ranting and raving about everything from customers to health care to oh whatever, I couldn’t continue to pay attention long enough to really get a handle on all of it.
Everyone was sitting at the lunch table. It reminded me of high school which wasn’t a good thing. I didn’t’ have a Maggie to rely on now. I had to put up with the shit on my own.
We all probably had more important things to do but here we were just sitting around shooting the shit. I tried and even lasted about twenty minutes but finally just wandered off and knew it was time to go back out into the terrible heat and head for home and hope that the Internet was fixed.
I have to be very careful on days like this. I can become unbelievably cynical and well, even hateful at how my life has turned out and that is frankly just a real waste of energy and time. My life turned out just fine. It’s not that magical thinking bullshit that I had dancing around in my head all those years but it is a pretty damn good life considering the hell I put myself through.
I don’t know really what I thought would be different. I used to be able to just go off into that magical world and create adventures in my head that were magnificent and also just were not the kinds of worlds that happen to people like me. You don’t take as many stupid risks as I have and still find yourself alive and not have to accept that there could possibly be some limitations on what can be done now. I think, I’m not always sure. That can get me into trouble also.
There is a part of me that really feels there are no limits and there are no rules and we better be out there living this life to its fullest or we are wasting the whole god damn experience.
I am looking forward to tomorrow, Friday mostly because it has been a complete day without being able to get online and I don’t really know what the actual problem is. Of course I have a pretty good idea but that’s never good enough for me. I can never just accept what is so obvious.
Tomorrow they are predicting a hundred and four and I don’t really know if that means people will come into the market or if people just will not be going anywhere. God I hope we have some customers not so much for the money but also for a different face to look at and a different voice to hear.
I’m very careful about getting to close to the vendors or even to my regular customers. I have spent my entire life getting wrapped up with people and groups of people and every time I lose myself in the process.
I know there is a balance here, well there is in most people’s lives. I haven’t found it yet. I am either neck deep up someone’s or a group of people’s ass or I am a hermit.
Right now I have let a few people into my protective circle but if things get to feeling weird I close that ring up in a heartbeat.
There are those days where I feel like I am cheating myself by doing these things. It’s so strange. I spent my whole life taking idiot risks and now I am not willing to risk opening up, sometimes, to another human being, to really allowing someone to know me.
I am a good flea market vendor because I am an actor, a consummate performer. I put on a show every single day. No one really knows the real me from the one that is reciting his lines every day.
Seeing that Lima got spanked on Friday and there were still twenty-five thousand people without power it made sense that if another storm was on its way, no one was going to be out doing anything and especially going to the damn flea market.
I am a firm believer that if we are open at ten in the morning till five in the evening then every single damn vendor should be there and be open and of course that’s just not the case. The religious vendors won’t come in on Sunday because they don’t’ work on Sunday’s. Nope you can go shopping after church but only the heathens can run the shops. It’s amazing how many stupid rules have been made in the name of God.
It pisses me off to no end that vendors will leave early or not show up at all. I just don’t understand it. We are open four days a damn week. We pay rent to set up and try to sell our wares and there are those that are never there, always late or leaving early.
Sunday I broke my own golden rule and walked out of the market at three o’clock when we were supposed to be open till five. I knew no one was going to come in and I was just completely frustrated with the whole thing. Hopefully next weekend would be a better time.
The heat wave never let up for the whole week. We found ourselves under some warning that basically said people were just going to burst into flames. By Thursday the Internet service was down and I had promised myself I wouldn’t go into the market on vendor day but I became unbelievably bored and found myself headed down 309.
Babs, Howard, Maude and a few others were there. The angry German was also there in rare form. Hooting and hollering and ranting and raving about everything from customers to health care to oh whatever, I couldn’t continue to pay attention long enough to really get a handle on all of it.
Everyone was sitting at the lunch table. It reminded me of high school which wasn’t a good thing. I didn’t’ have a Maggie to rely on now. I had to put up with the shit on my own.
We all probably had more important things to do but here we were just sitting around shooting the shit. I tried and even lasted about twenty minutes but finally just wandered off and knew it was time to go back out into the terrible heat and head for home and hope that the Internet was fixed.
I have to be very careful on days like this. I can become unbelievably cynical and well, even hateful at how my life has turned out and that is frankly just a real waste of energy and time. My life turned out just fine. It’s not that magical thinking bullshit that I had dancing around in my head all those years but it is a pretty damn good life considering the hell I put myself through.
I don’t know really what I thought would be different. I used to be able to just go off into that magical world and create adventures in my head that were magnificent and also just were not the kinds of worlds that happen to people like me. You don’t take as many stupid risks as I have and still find yourself alive and not have to accept that there could possibly be some limitations on what can be done now. I think, I’m not always sure. That can get me into trouble also.
There is a part of me that really feels there are no limits and there are no rules and we better be out there living this life to its fullest or we are wasting the whole god damn experience.
I am looking forward to tomorrow, Friday mostly because it has been a complete day without being able to get online and I don’t really know what the actual problem is. Of course I have a pretty good idea but that’s never good enough for me. I can never just accept what is so obvious.
Tomorrow they are predicting a hundred and four and I don’t really know if that means people will come into the market or if people just will not be going anywhere. God I hope we have some customers not so much for the money but also for a different face to look at and a different voice to hear.
I’m very careful about getting to close to the vendors or even to my regular customers. I have spent my entire life getting wrapped up with people and groups of people and every time I lose myself in the process.
I know there is a balance here, well there is in most people’s lives. I haven’t found it yet. I am either neck deep up someone’s or a group of people’s ass or I am a hermit.
Right now I have let a few people into my protective circle but if things get to feeling weird I close that ring up in a heartbeat.
There are those days where I feel like I am cheating myself by doing these things. It’s so strange. I spent my whole life taking idiot risks and now I am not willing to risk opening up, sometimes, to another human being, to really allowing someone to know me.
I am a good flea market vendor because I am an actor, a consummate performer. I put on a show every single day. No one really knows the real me from the one that is reciting his lines every day.
Used Fleas - Chapter Ten - And so it goes...
“I know that angry German has 666 tattooed someone on her body. She is fucking evil.”
Mr. Happy looked at me with genuine shock, “There is something deeply disturbing about you Gunnar.”
The heat didn’t break until Sunday but by Sunday we were all pretty much fed up with the idea of a flea market. It was an experiment that just wasn’t working and the angry German seemed to be doing everything in her power to guarantee that it would fail.
The angry German doesn’t turn the air conditioning on until someone complains and then she is constantly adjusting it and turning it off when she can get away with it. She will look you right in the eye and lie about it. It makes me want to back over her in the parking lot when she is smoking
It was a hundred and five Friday and a hundred and eight Saturday and this woman was playing games with the air conditioning. Vendors and customers wanted to know what was wrong but we were not getting any answers. All the angry German would say is, “We are on the upswing now” and “The weather is breaking Sunday!”
Saturday we were celebrating our third year in Lima as a flea market and everyone brought in food, a carry in. The angry German was going to cook out, hotdogs, brats and hamburgers.
Nathan texted me when I told him, “The flea market is having a cook out in one hundred and eight degree weather. You vendors are fucking geniuses!”
I couldn’t bring myself to eat any of the grilled meat. I just kept visualizing it going immediately bad as soon as she walked outside with it.
Carry in’s at a flea market, hell might be the same as all carry in’s that happen anywhere. The food is usually good old fashioned homemade food that will kill you instantly. No one brings in healthy carry in food, its potato salad, macaroni salad, cole slaw, baked beans, deviled eggs, puddings, cakes, pies, sweets, sweets, sweets, chips, chips, chips and dead animals. Oh there was one tray of raw veggies.
It truly is a feast of diabetes. It’s pure torture for me.
Bev has a friend that loves to cook and bake. She is constantly buying my cook books so she decided to make deserts for the event. She made a cherry cheesecake, blueberry cheesecake, some pink pudding stuff and a coconut cake. It was absolutely unbelievable.
I made a decision on the way in to the market for the feast. I was going to take a taste of each of the deserts and leave it at that. I did and I might as well have left the building and went out and found some heroin afterwards.
It was the first time in three years I had tasted such sweet evils and it was like sex for the first time.
I decided to bring in watermelon but no one was eating that because they were stuffing cake and pie and cheesecake up their asses.
I could see in my imaginations eye all the broken, diabetic vendors and customers all naked in the middle of the isles rubbing deserts on each other and licking it off all moaning and singing at the top of their lungs. It was a terrible vision that I couldn’t get out of my head. I lost my appetite very quickly.
After eating nothing but shit food and then sitting in a market where no one with any brains was out in this weather all the vendors just sat in their booths and became unbelievably sleepy and slightly sick.
I finally couldn’t take any more of it and left an hour early.
When I got to the market on Sunday Mr. Happy was there and ready to sell records. Harold and Maude were there and the angry German and that was it. No one else was showing up on time.
Bev called me and left a message that she wouldn’t be coming in and I figured it was because of the bad food and bad habits again, like it is for all of us but it really was a family issue I found out later.
You can set your watches to the health problems of those of us that have lived or are still living lives of excess and abuse.
I work and strive every single day to never go back to that way of life, that life where I just couldn’t get enough of anything. I watch the other vendors and even our customers who come in and you can see in their faces, their movements and their bodies the abuse they are raging against their bodies, their spirits and their very souls. It’s an evil beyond anything that can be conjured in some religious manifesto because it is all self-inflicted abuse. Wed do this to ourselves.
I almost died from my ridiculous hunger for something, anything that would take me out of the real world. Food, sex, work, drugs, alcohol, excitement, pain and more. It was a terrible way to live and don’t get me wrong we finally do get better, we do get well and we can enjoy those fruits of life. I mean come on I’m not giving up sex completely and I can’t give up eating completely.
Our focus seems to become so distorted so quickly. Life is a struggle and that is exactly what it should be. We are here to learn and man oh man have I been cramming for exams.
From ten o’clock to eleven o’clock and we open at ten there was no one in the market, including the vendors. It was a depressing way to start a Sunday. The place was hot, sticky and close feeling and on top of that we were bombarded with the reality of our decision in life to set up in a flea market in Lima, Ohio! What the hell was I thinking?!
As the day drug on and we had absolutely no customers and the ones we did have were doing nothing but complaining about the heat I started hearing that the angry German was going around asking for donations from customers for the air conditioning and that she was considering beginning to charge people for shopping at the market.
I figured it was all just kidding but with her you never know. She just does things sometimes that are completely insane. It made me feel very sad.
I even talked to Nathan about maybe it was time for me to look for a building of my own and open the bookstore and to my surprise he agreed that if the price was right it was probably a good time to start thinking about it.
I know and understand more than I let on the absolute beauty there is in our eccentric and eclectic ways as vendors in a flea market. The strange and magical nuances that create each of our characters are the real reason people come into the market. Hell you can go to WalHell and get bargains but you can come to the flea market and get bargains and be entertained by the strangeness that abounds. There are just those days where the strangeness gets to be, well a little more than I can take. Why? Because I am one of the strange ones also. I fit in perfectly.
The reason I keep doing this is because after a bad day, or even a bad weekend and I have had a day of sitting and thinking about my stake in life. I still find it to have a lot more rewards than not.
Mr. Happy looked at me with genuine shock, “There is something deeply disturbing about you Gunnar.”
The heat didn’t break until Sunday but by Sunday we were all pretty much fed up with the idea of a flea market. It was an experiment that just wasn’t working and the angry German seemed to be doing everything in her power to guarantee that it would fail.
The angry German doesn’t turn the air conditioning on until someone complains and then she is constantly adjusting it and turning it off when she can get away with it. She will look you right in the eye and lie about it. It makes me want to back over her in the parking lot when she is smoking
It was a hundred and five Friday and a hundred and eight Saturday and this woman was playing games with the air conditioning. Vendors and customers wanted to know what was wrong but we were not getting any answers. All the angry German would say is, “We are on the upswing now” and “The weather is breaking Sunday!”
Saturday we were celebrating our third year in Lima as a flea market and everyone brought in food, a carry in. The angry German was going to cook out, hotdogs, brats and hamburgers.
Nathan texted me when I told him, “The flea market is having a cook out in one hundred and eight degree weather. You vendors are fucking geniuses!”
I couldn’t bring myself to eat any of the grilled meat. I just kept visualizing it going immediately bad as soon as she walked outside with it.
Carry in’s at a flea market, hell might be the same as all carry in’s that happen anywhere. The food is usually good old fashioned homemade food that will kill you instantly. No one brings in healthy carry in food, its potato salad, macaroni salad, cole slaw, baked beans, deviled eggs, puddings, cakes, pies, sweets, sweets, sweets, chips, chips, chips and dead animals. Oh there was one tray of raw veggies.
It truly is a feast of diabetes. It’s pure torture for me.
Bev has a friend that loves to cook and bake. She is constantly buying my cook books so she decided to make deserts for the event. She made a cherry cheesecake, blueberry cheesecake, some pink pudding stuff and a coconut cake. It was absolutely unbelievable.
I made a decision on the way in to the market for the feast. I was going to take a taste of each of the deserts and leave it at that. I did and I might as well have left the building and went out and found some heroin afterwards.
It was the first time in three years I had tasted such sweet evils and it was like sex for the first time.
I decided to bring in watermelon but no one was eating that because they were stuffing cake and pie and cheesecake up their asses.
I could see in my imaginations eye all the broken, diabetic vendors and customers all naked in the middle of the isles rubbing deserts on each other and licking it off all moaning and singing at the top of their lungs. It was a terrible vision that I couldn’t get out of my head. I lost my appetite very quickly.
After eating nothing but shit food and then sitting in a market where no one with any brains was out in this weather all the vendors just sat in their booths and became unbelievably sleepy and slightly sick.
I finally couldn’t take any more of it and left an hour early.
When I got to the market on Sunday Mr. Happy was there and ready to sell records. Harold and Maude were there and the angry German and that was it. No one else was showing up on time.
Bev called me and left a message that she wouldn’t be coming in and I figured it was because of the bad food and bad habits again, like it is for all of us but it really was a family issue I found out later.
You can set your watches to the health problems of those of us that have lived or are still living lives of excess and abuse.
I work and strive every single day to never go back to that way of life, that life where I just couldn’t get enough of anything. I watch the other vendors and even our customers who come in and you can see in their faces, their movements and their bodies the abuse they are raging against their bodies, their spirits and their very souls. It’s an evil beyond anything that can be conjured in some religious manifesto because it is all self-inflicted abuse. Wed do this to ourselves.
I almost died from my ridiculous hunger for something, anything that would take me out of the real world. Food, sex, work, drugs, alcohol, excitement, pain and more. It was a terrible way to live and don’t get me wrong we finally do get better, we do get well and we can enjoy those fruits of life. I mean come on I’m not giving up sex completely and I can’t give up eating completely.
Our focus seems to become so distorted so quickly. Life is a struggle and that is exactly what it should be. We are here to learn and man oh man have I been cramming for exams.
From ten o’clock to eleven o’clock and we open at ten there was no one in the market, including the vendors. It was a depressing way to start a Sunday. The place was hot, sticky and close feeling and on top of that we were bombarded with the reality of our decision in life to set up in a flea market in Lima, Ohio! What the hell was I thinking?!
As the day drug on and we had absolutely no customers and the ones we did have were doing nothing but complaining about the heat I started hearing that the angry German was going around asking for donations from customers for the air conditioning and that she was considering beginning to charge people for shopping at the market.
I figured it was all just kidding but with her you never know. She just does things sometimes that are completely insane. It made me feel very sad.
I even talked to Nathan about maybe it was time for me to look for a building of my own and open the bookstore and to my surprise he agreed that if the price was right it was probably a good time to start thinking about it.
I know and understand more than I let on the absolute beauty there is in our eccentric and eclectic ways as vendors in a flea market. The strange and magical nuances that create each of our characters are the real reason people come into the market. Hell you can go to WalHell and get bargains but you can come to the flea market and get bargains and be entertained by the strangeness that abounds. There are just those days where the strangeness gets to be, well a little more than I can take. Why? Because I am one of the strange ones also. I fit in perfectly.
The reason I keep doing this is because after a bad day, or even a bad weekend and I have had a day of sitting and thinking about my stake in life. I still find it to have a lot more rewards than not.
Used Fleas - Chapter Eleven - Death is never real
It just never becomes real does it, that realization that someone you know and love has died.
I find myself standing in my front room thinking about Glen Campbell and that he is seventy-six years old and this makes me think of dad and that he would have been seventy-seven or seventy-eight but dad is dead; has been for a couple years now and it still just doesn’t feel, well real.
I don’t think it’s possible for death to actually be ingrained into our psyche, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and philosophical being, the finality of it all, the sheer mystery that surrounds all of it, the complete helplessness and loss.
When the Avon lady from County Market Flea Market called me to let me know that Sue had died it was devastating to me. I had just talked to Sue a couple weeks earlier and we made plans to go out. I even tried to call her a couple times and figured she really didn’t want to go out but instead she was dead. Sue was young and alive and full of fire and energy. I thought the world of her and like the blink of an eye she was gone. Her death was one of those idiot ones also. She felt sick, went to the hospital, had problems with her gall bladder, went into a coma and died.
Not two weeks later I find out that a dear friend from my hometown who I had been very close to was killed in a head on collision. I can see Rita’s face, her body in my mind, she’s real as anything and then that ghost thought hits me. She’s just not here anymore. Dad’s not out plowing the field. He’s not here. He’s not coming back.
Howard and Maude used to be Joe and Maude. Joe was a terrible person. He was angry, abusive and abrasive to Maude and well actually to everyone he came into contact with. He was such a force to be reckoned with whenever he was around. He was never wrong and would go to battle to prove that he was never wrong even when he was.
Joe and I did not get along.
After the final devastation of the County Market Flea Market for me which included the flea market martyr and I breaking up, me leaving the market, getting wrapped up in a couple very strange situations and pretty much burning all my bridges and going home to hide in my apartment broken and ashamed I figured I would never have to put up with Joe and Maude again.
My dear brother Nathan finally came over one day after about a year and a half and told me I had to do something or I was just going to become an even more crazy reclusive hippy nutcase writing my manifesto and preparing for revolution. We got a booth at Prospector’s Flea Market. I went back to a place I said I would never return to.
A month before I went to Prospector’s I was at County Market looking around considering if I should try this market again. After listening to Rob and Larry do nothing but bitch about everything and let me know how much they hated children and Obama I figured nope.
I did however run into Joe and Maude who were shopping and visiting.
Joe was genuinely trying to be friendly. He always did with me but I just didn’t want to be his friend and my experience with Maude had gone very wrong and I was beginning to see the whole picture of these two very unhappy people.
I had lost seventy pounds since the last time any of them had seen me so they all figured I was ill and dying. I just lost weight. What I did find out was that Joe had been diagnosed with fourth stage cancer and was going in Tuesday for an autopsy.
Joe went in Tuesday.
Joe died on Saturday.
Maude got married to Howard two months later and after only being at the Prospector’s market for a month Maude and her new goofball husband, Howard get a booth right next to me.
I had decided to be Zen about it all and let water flow over the rocks so to speak which was a mistake. Sometimes the Zen thing to do is to tell someone to take a flying fuck over the moon.
I become obsessed about twice a week and get on Bing search and call up all kinds of celebrities and the like to see how old they are.
Someone is dying on a daily basis right now. It’s pretty amazing.
No, it’s not amazing. We are all getting old, not just older but frigging old.
The headline will saying something about losing another one, the sadness and tragedy and then you find out they were ninety five years old! Whoa! That’s a pretty good gig if you ask me.
When death happens at one minute or one hundred and twenty years it’s sad, a loss and even a tragedy. There is a part of the whole that is not there anymore. The consciousness is not complete on this level for a moment until the balance is re-established.
Of course the human race has spent its entire time here making sure that death is the most profitable and consistent thing going on with wars and disease and abuse and all the rest of the idiot things we do to each other.
What an amazing thing to write about or to try and have a conversation on. It’s impossible. There is no chance of being completely objective. Fear, confusion and all that surrounds the mystery just makes it something we find ourselves standing in a room staring off into space trying to grasp hold of. What it is like to know that dad will never be here again. Trying to feel what it must feel like to know that I won’t be here one day and not having a clue as to where I am going and what is next.
I have decided to go to the market tomorrow for vendor day and move things around again. I sell books and I have chairs in my spot for people to sit down if they want. The other vendors love to sit in my booth which I don’t mind except that where the chairs are located at this time interferes with customers getting to the books.
My choices were to either tell the vendors to go to their own booths and stay the fuck out of mine or put a small table in front with chairs so everyone can just sit there and not be in the way. I have opted for the table and chairs.
I like having people there, sitting and talking, well for the most part I do.
I do like my alone time and I have to be very careful sometimes because I could hold up somewhere and not see another human being forever and be fine, well not be fine, but think I was fine.
I have to admit I do like sharing my space with other travelers. Taking whatever little time we have together and making the best of it.
- Return to Chapters One thru Five
Aardvark Diggs - Mike - Tim - Tom - Pat Cheeseman - [email protected]
Aardvark Diggs - Mike - Tim - Tom - Pat Cheeseman - [email protected]