There’s something funny about unlikely goods offered for sale together.
A friend of mine once spotted a sign somewhere on an Ohio backroad that read “FOR SALE: SCHOOL BUS & PENGUINS.” This sets a pretty high bar, but you can find similarly pleasing juxtapositions at the flea market held regularly at the Richland County Fairgrounds.
I paid a visit recently and within a few feet of the entrance I discovered a table display comprised of nothing but KNIVES & STINK BOMBS – all you need, surely, for several evenings’ worth of entertainment.
Further inside were bargains for those wanting to spend no more than a few dollars; collectibles and rarities for those with deeper pockets; and, naturally, a fine supply of cheap retro-kitsch and quirk. There are even some objects that serve an actual practical purpose. The dividing line is somewhat hazy, and finding that line is part of the fun.
Classic comic books stored pristinely in plastic wrappers are firmly in the collectible camp and priced accordingly. But what about vintage ’70s lunch boxes?
Consider two of the finest on offer: Evil Knievel and the Bionic Woman. Classic examples of amusing pop culture; items that a casual browser such as myself would be pleased to own, and perhaps even use to carry my sandwiches. Yet a look at the price tags – $95 for Knievel and $25 for the Bionic Woman – shows we are out of the fun range and into collector territory.
Which celebrities of days gone by generate the most interest and demand the highest prices? Top flight stars like Marilyn Monroe or Frank Sinatra? Not necessarily.
There’s a more complicated formula at play here. The exact mechanics of these calculations are beyond me but it’s clear that Don Knotts is very high on the scale. As is anyone who appeared on Hollywood Squares, along with Arthur Fonzarelli and of course, Elvis Presley.
Political campaign badges are here in large supply. They are collectibles of sorts, but once again the star appeal seems to be operating in reverse. Hindsight gives an appealing sort of pathos to the doomed campaigns of the losers – campaigns which, after all, are often more interesting and illuminating than those of the winners.
There are examples here going back to the early part of the last century. Some brand new ones too, and you can’t help noticing that a few of them (‘JEB!’) already carry a whiff of poignancy.
Spend a bit of time here and you’ll realize there’s more to rifling though these disparate objects than picking up the odd quirky, off-beat item. The appeal can be something like that of an archaeological dig – discovering artifacts from the past whose usefulness or purpose is sometimes far from clear, but give us a little window of understanding into the routines of the past.
Some of this can be plainly educational, like the table of vintage farmyard tools. To the uninitiated (me) this looked much like a table of props from the Saw movies, and there were many browsers trying to guess the purpose of the clanking piece of metal in their hand.
Other more modest objects lead you to muse on how earlier generations used to spend their spare time. Like the carefully-preserved albums of cigarette cards, half-a-century old, passed down from some long-gone smoker who took the time and effort to collect and paste each scenic picture into place. And the reams of popular pre-war sheet music – how many forgotten parties were enlivened by someone, somewhere hammering these tunes out on the piano?
To be able to hold these everyday relics in your hand, to take them home and put them on display or horde them in the basement, allows you to own a little piece of the past that cannot be changed, altered, whitewashed or otherwise forgotten and written out of history.
Objects from the recent past – like the clusters of tangled electronic gear, the keyboards and cables – currently fall into the practical category. They’re here for someone to pick up cheap and actually make use of. It may not be long before their practical use becomes obsolete and they instead serve as a wacky amusement.
Future generations may use hollowed-out TV sets to store their liquor or dangle an ancient computer mouse as a humorous Christmas tree decoration.
It makes you wonder what tomorrow’s amateur cultural archaeologists will have to uncover once access to the record of a person’s life dies along with their smartphone. Electronic auctions of expired personal data, perhaps: long-forgotten archives of texts and selfies, digital echos of the past, that can be purchased for a dollar or two.
For now we still have heaving tables of real objects to pick up and examine, haphazard and random, free from the unseen guiding hand of an online algorithm presenting what to click on next.
Anyone can stumble across anything: one person’s rubbish is another’s lucky find, and it’s all here to rummage through, a collective attic of faded and forgotten treasures.
Look for Steve Russell’s column on Sunday mornings at RichlandSource.com
