I sat there, with the wind making me oblivious to the fact that I was slowly being burnt to a crip, trying to sell my goods.

I was at Seguin’s second annual flea market thing in Cicero, trying to purge a few hundred VHS cassettes. My mom and sister had the table next to me, where they sold off various memories of my youth and inscribed books I’ve tried to force on them over the years.

An Elvis impersonator performed on 12″ makshift stage to perhaps 3 children. He was good, unlike the gangly Neil Diamond impersonator with a bad attitude who followed.

Second only to my love of purging/burning/destroying material posessions, is purchasing them. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head when a saw a clarinet for $5! I’ve always wanted to learn the clarinet, and here was one just waiting for me… cheap! Nevermind the $50 I’ll spend on new reeds and having it cleaned up.

Wait, what’s this!? Yes! The only thing that’s been holding me back from doing a fashion spread based on Haskell Wexler’s 1968 classic, Medium Cool, is the lack of the 20 pound battery-belt that Robert Forrester wears while operating his news camera in the opening sequence. Three bucks!

Naturally, these were the highlights. This flea market, like all others, primarily consisted of the mundane and unsettling. Socks, shoes, Half-used mace canisters and illegal knives (under 4″). Canned tuna, tools, gold jewelry, outdated and underused Fodor’s guidebooks. Outmoded computers, moldy clothes and a multitude of books on both cooking and dieting.

The grilled hotdogs from the concession stand and the joy of trying out my new clarinet while wearing a 20 lb. battery-belt took the edge off of seing some little kid paying 50 cents for the Return of the Jedi storybook I got from the Scholastic Book Club two days before the movie came out (thereby ruining it for me).

What a deal.