When I was a kid my brother and I would ride our bikes to the local flea market in town and make a day of it. Usually we would have a couple of dollars in our pocket and would make it last. At the end of the day we would return home with our bellies filled with fried dough clutching a few treasures we were able to acquire...perhaps an old Classics Illustrated comic book...or a couple of 1950s era baseball cards, which, back in the late 1970s and early 1980s might just as well have been made in the stone age...at least it felt that way to a couple of kids. There was no admission to a flea market in those days...and water was free.
We walked around the flea market for an hour or so. In the larger air conditioned buildings there were plenty of books...but no deals...everything was top dollar. There was nothing that I absolutely had to have. As I walked around glancing at the dealers wares I began to ask myself a few questions. What was I hoping to find?...and most importantly...Why was I even here? Most of the stuff in these buildings was junk. There were tables with old jewelry, tables with old farm tools well beyond their years of being useful, and sadly there was even a fellow selling old black and white photographs and tin-types of people who were long dead and now forgotten...no names or markings on the back of these photographs gave any indication of who these people might have been. Only their haunting, lifeless faces stared back at me. They reminded me of those old portraits that you see hanging in the Cracker Barrel. Who were these people? How did they come to be in the possession of this unshaven, beer-bellied, cunning rustic who was staring at me in the wild hope that I might purchase one of them? I moved along... outside, where the sun was baking anything that dare encounter it. As it was now about noon the temperature was about 100 degrees. I found myself attracted to a table of books...sitting idly by itself outside of one of the air conditioned buildings. There was nobody around these books and as I approached them I could see why. The sun had wreaked terrible havoc on them. Obviously these books had been discarded by their owner as being "almost unsaleable" Why were they out here being bleached by the sun? Were they were being tortured by their master for not turning out a profit? It was not their fault...or was it? I perused the dozen or so boxes and was somehow attracted to one of the titles Standing Firm by former Vice-President Dan Quayle. At one point in it's life the dust jacket of the book might have been blue...I say might have been...the poor thing appeared to be quite miserable. Not only had the dust jacket taken on another color, but the binding was cracked...however...for some reason the image on the cover betrayed the real emotion of the book. Quayle was smiling at me...but why? Had anyone ever read this book? This relic from a score of years ago. The absurdity of it now was...who would want to read it now? The sign on the table written on a postcard with a black sharpie said: Any Book $2. What a deal! Quayle was hopeful...he continued to smile at me...what was the potatoe man thinking? Is he going to buy me? Is he really going to shell out 2 bucks to find out why I am STANDING FIRM. I suddenly pictured the image of Quayle pulling itself off the cover of the book, picking up a blue magic marker, and attempting to propel himself back to the 1990s. "Do you see Craig...I am still standing firm!" he called to me desperately. I began to walk away from the this table of madness...this table of forgotten memories, dreams and ambitions. ..this table of books that because of their very existence were now engaging in the masochistic act of obscurity. "You can STAND FIRM in your box Dan" I said as I walked away "but don't worry, you have that sun scorched copy of the 1988 world almanac to keep you company." As I headed for the exit having spent only the $5 entence fee I wondered if the likeness of the former Vice-President was now frowning.
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