Cornucopia of Crap

Is there a broader, more representative snapshot of today's America than the Saturday morning open air flea market? Part time machine, part smelly armpit, the flea market is the great melting pot of class, culture and cleanliness. You have folks who peddle their junk every week trying to eke out a living. Next to them you have suburbanites trying to unload part of their gluttonous accumulation of stuff they really don't need. Toothless country boys and soccer moms, who would never associate in any other circumstance, chat away sitting on the tailgates of overstuffed SUVs and El Caminos. During a twenty minute walk-thru you can hear four or five different languages spoken. Haggling, arguing, laughing-it's a beautiful thing.



And don't get me wrong, not all the crap is really crap. There are valuable collectibles and teriffic hand-crafted jewelry items. Then there is my level of crap- beer signs, Smurf glasses, baseball cards. For the most part I just window shop because we already fall into that earlier category of gluttonous overcollectors. But when it comes down to it, most of the crap is Crap with a capital C. I found tables of ashtrays, old shoes, books for every fad diet of the last twenty years and VHS tapes for bad Pauly Shore movies. (I suppose that last item was redundant.) And Knives! It was like Ninjas-R-Us with all the knives, swords and throwing stars. Since I have given up my career as a carnival knife-thower I pushed past these tables and wandered about buying nothing, simply enjoying the sounds and smells of diversity.