A Morning at the Flea Market

I am a terrible haggler. I get too invested in a piece, my heart rate spikes, and before I know it, I’m paying the original price for a print I decided I would only buy if I could strike a deal. I’m an embarrassment to my family on that front — my little sisters regularly got deals simply by being cute, and my mom is still a notoriously good bargainer.

Despite the shameful lack of wheeling-and-dealing skills, I love a yard sale or flea market. I walk up with a set amount of cash in my pocket, inevitably purchase overpriced lemonade from a pack of entrepreneurial kids, and enjoy the slice of humanity before me. People can say what they like about who they are — but a far more accurate look at their true selves is in what they collect, what they want to get rid of, what they sell at a premium, and what they can’t bring themselves to sell, but want to show off anyways. I went to the flea market to wander and hear stories and skim stall contents and ask dumb questions, and this is what I found.

Ms. Sharon has been planted inside the building for 13 years, and has been around the market since the seventies. “I’ll bet you can’t guess what the chair was for,” she said. I looked at it for a long moment, hoped it wasn’t meant for anything untoward, and then guessed childbirth. She gave me another hint: The chair was used for something illegal. After letting me flounder around for a bit, she told me the answer: The chair was for observing cockfights. A man would straddle the seat, settle his drink in its designated slide-out slot, and watch the brutal scrap.

If you ever need to be tided over on State Fair fare, this is the spot for you.

Allen is a man of many talents. He paints pet portraits, carves scrimshaw knife handles (using the tool he’s holding up above), and also makes primitive knives with handles of coyote or deer jaws.

It took me a second to realize who was on the stamp. Being a fan of old letters, I picked this up and noticed that the script was in German — then I saw the face, and dropped the letter like it had singed me.

An absolutely one hundred percent deeply curséd doll.

Around here, one of the sellers kept repeating that he would make his customer a really good deal. The customer turned over the item in question, while the seller echoed his refrain. “A good deal, a really good deal.” Which, of course, makes one wonder if he’s about to make a not-so-good deal.

This gentleman was originally from Sweden, and immigrated to the States in the seventies. His late wife was a photographer and, he told me proudly, she won a prestigious local competition back in the day. As a young couple, they decided they wanted to move south — but not too far south. He pointed to a random spot on the map, and decades later, he’s still in Raleigh.

This sums up to me the variety you see every way you turn at the flea market. It’s glorious.