Flea Market Enthusiast Laments Experiences

To The Editor:
A flea market offers a rewarding experience to anyone willing to endure outdoor air, leg exercise and an “all are equal here” atmosphere.
Usually, it encompasses a large area with an expanse of tables holding up all manner of goods from human homes excepting prescriptions, toupees, and dentures. Laying nearby upon the ground are various sized boxes crammed with obscured what nots beckoning or rather tempting passersby to stop, stoop and root.
There are, at these bargain fairs, appliances in good appearance, old tools with years of remaining reliability, shelf accessories ranging from cotton whiskered squatting cats through ceramic tail gone horses. Furniture, much of it wood, is found setting about ready for human strain, in both well, and not well cared-for states, some aided by splints and screws, others sporting dog gnawed legs. But for the most frequently displayed items are found in piles: those plastic children’s toys that did not remain dear following novelty’s departure. And they are cheap to be had. The individuals selling these wares all exhibit an agreeable disposition with one noticeable distinction: Those who come only now and then to sell display more enthusiasm for interaction with shoppers while those who sell more frequently present more facial indifference to naysayer and other irritants.
Of the hundreds of articles I have acquired at flea markets only two resulted in regret. Ironically, the sum of my regret was consequently erased by the amusement taken from subsequent events, now to be recounted.
Finding to my extreme dismay, the label less movie I injected into the VCR was not the movie described on its jacket. I returned the following week to the selling vendor informing him of the mismatch. Instead of the expected offering of apology or exchange, he looked straight at me and spoke these words: So what? I’m 80 years old. I don’t care.
The other experience involved an electric weed whacker. When I revealed an interest by asking its price, its owner replied $10, but noticing a drop in my interest at this announcement he discounted it to $8, and sensing no revival of attraction, went all they way to $5 at which price a transaction took place. Before surrendering the sum, I inquired s to its working order and received the assurance t hat it roared. As soon as I reached home an outdoor out let was sought and the instrument plugged in. It roared just as I had hoped.
Espying a clump of despised weeds, perhaps 40 in total, near the fence, I walked to them and directed the whacker to go to work. But when it came beside its prey its roar subsided to a hum. When I withdrew it from the confrontation, its roar returned but left again on rematch. That night it went with the trash to curbside. In the morning though, the trash remained and that weed whacker was gone leaving me to suspect our paths may cross again.
RAY LEWIS
Corbin City