The wild wild west

Every Saturday morning is the same for me.
7am: Wake up, shower, chocolate chip granola bar
730am: Read the newspaper cover to cover
8am: Get in my car and head to the flea market in the next town over.

I've been going to this flea market for 6 years. Every week, week after week, rain or shine, snow or ice, hell or high water, 52 weeks a year. It's a true flea market. Where anyone with a beat up van, some folding tables, and a box of one dollar bills can set up shop and sling their goods to the hundreds of people who come to shop.

Old records, pocket knives, tools, clothing, fake designer purses, locally grown produce, antiques, coins, film cameras, artwork, used books, expired baked goods... you name it! It's your neighborhood tag sale on steroids and without the awkwardness of buying your neighbors old wool sweaters. Need a dozen batteries for less than a buck? Flea market! Need a rusted out washing machine for parts? Flea market! How about a needle for your record player? Flea market! Cassette tapes, VHS, beta max, laser disc, reel to reel, HDDVD, 8 track? Flea market! It's a who's who of outdated, nearly-useless, hard to find, rarely-wanted, hardly-desired knick knacks.

Nostalgia is traded, bartered, and haggled like oil and corn on the commodities index. What may seem like nothing more than a muddy, dirty parking lot 6 days a week, laying empty and forgotten - begging for the familiar comfort of a boot print - is actually home to the final frontier of a time that has been battling its extinction for decades. A time when cash was king, pocket change had true buying power, and financing was nothing more than a strange term used by silk-suited bankers toiling away in their navy-blue-carpeted offices in cities far away.

Try walking in to your local big box electronics retail establishment and haggling for a price reduction. Imagine walking into a car dealership and offering to trade your signed Magic Johnson poster for a 50% discount.

Flea marketers are a different breed. Like pioneers with nothing left to pioneer, they've taken to the fenced in lots long abandoned by their owners and turned them into a thriving mecca of opportunity. Mini economies governed by the principal that a man with only a dollar is worth something. Where torn jeans are torn by hard work and toil, not by stainless steel machines in designer factories. Where blistered hands shake blistered hands, and homemade jerky hangs wildly in the dusty winds. It is the last great strong hold of classic Americana.

Slowly though, I have noticed my flea market changing. Even in these few short years. Like a New England junkyard full of old haggard metal car parts, the essence of this great American tradition is being eroded away by the pressures of reality. Recession fears, joblessness and foreclosure have taken it's toll on the dirt lot and it's weekly visitors.

It's happening slowly, but there's no denying it. It seems that every week there is one less table set up, one less crate of old records, one less woman selling homemade zucchini bread... As situations change and people are forced to move away the dirt lot finds itself emptier and emptier as time goes on.

We're approaching winter now. The slowest time for the flea marketers. What starts off in May with hundreds of eager vendors is slowly whittled down to a fierce, and brave few who ride out the cold Connecticut winters and give hope to the even braver few who come to shop.

Me? I go every week, week after week, rain or shine, snow or ice, hell or high water, 52 weeks a year. I don't go to buy things, though I sometimes do. I don't go for the thrill of maybe finding a million dollar antique treasure. I don't go just to get out of the house, or because routine dictates that I should be there. I go for the faces.

The nameless regulars that I see every week. The man in the red hat, the woman with the bulldog, the father and his two sons who sell baseball cards and drink Coca-Cola out of icy glass bottles.

We've never been formally introduced. I don't ask about their family, or how work is going. I don't chit chat about every day life. It's beyond that. A friendly wave, a tilt of the head to say 'Hello.' We're like family. But it's deeper than that. Our bond comes not from bloodlines, but from our personal fight with a world that's getting larger and larger.

We are friends, not through Facebook, MySpace, email or instant message, but by common existence. We come to the same place, at the same time, for the same reasons every week. We are pioneers. We live for the familiarity of something that seems increasingly unfamiliar. Far from the overdue bills, and the empty refrigerators. We seek happiness in the tired and worn out gadgets of a million years ago. We seek refuge in the idea that a man worth 'only' a dollar is truly a man worth something.

Me? I like to think that I'm the man in the Yankees cap.