Loading Day
The two Mexican kids are doing it right, faces buried in big fat ripe peaches with the juice running down their chins, hands, and arms. Yellow jackets be damned, there is only one way to eat some foods, and eating a real sweet peach correctly means ignoring, yes, embracing, the runoff. The two kids trail on down the lane, juices dripping in their wake, past my truck. They follow their parents, who are both eating cotton candy with one hand and dangling a rooster from the other.
It is a Saturday morning at the Crossville flea market an hour away, and I’m here to try and unload old roosters and a small flock of Pilgrim geese. Mr. Kyle, my elderly neighbor, has joined me for the trip. The memory is from twenty years ago, so I’m sure things have changed. I have always meant to go back, but in some ways perhaps it is best to leave that morning as a memory. For all I know, the flea market may even be gone now, like my neighbor.
The roosters sell quickly to the rooster-and-cotton candy couple, who clearly come from a culture that is not afraid to be hands-on, up close and personal, with the next meal. I appreciate that. I also like that they use birds with some heft and age, that they know that age means more flavor in the pot.
For the first half-hour after we arrive, I settle back and try to coax a handful of tire-kickers to buy the Pilgrims. Mr. Kyle meanwhile has wandered off down the tree-lined road that disappears around a curve. He is on a mission to find the sock stall. As a canny farmer, who’ll be worth a bundle when he dies, he does not spend money needlessly. On this day he is wearing his usual tattered shirt and pants stained with the past week’s work on his farm.
Over the years he has always been a generous and helpful friend and neighbor. Oh, and did I mention shrewd? One day he and I were discussing the purchase of some of his cattle for our farm. We’d been talking over the price when he began, “Well, I’m not smart and I don’t have a college education like you, Brian….” I held up my hands. “Mr. Kyle,” I said, “When you start talking like that, I know I’d better grab onto my wallet with both hands, because you are coming for it.” He grinned big—he liked that—because we both knew it was true.
After another half-hour of sitting on the tailgate of my pickup, I watch as a couple comes around the bend in the lane. They had stopped earlier to look at the geese. The Pilgrim is an American heritage breed that can be sexed easily at birth. The ganders are white and the geese gray. I have six for sale, all under a year of age. The man and woman walk over to where I sit. We chat about the cost. I’m asking $20 each (which is a bargain), but I’m getting restless. I want to be done with selling and take in the rest of the market. We settle on a $100 for the six. The woman counts over the cash, and I stick it in my pocket. The three of us each grab a goose and carry it to the couple’s truck, put the three in a pen, then return for the rest. I say goodbye and wander off in search of Mr. Kyle.
The permanent part of the flea market unfolds before me like a medieval fair. The lane twists and curves among oak trees. Each side of the path has wooden shacks open to the lane, each one offering a different line of goods. Tools, logging chains of all sorts, more than a few clothes—something for everyone. There are shops selling candles, candy in old-fashioned bushel baskets, and seasonal fruit (those juicy peaches). The Mennonites from Muddy Pond are doing a brisk business in jars of last year’s sorghum.
And there, finally, on my right, is a stall devoted to just socks. That’s where I find my neighbor negotiating the cost downward on a bundle of white tube socks. Whether they are of legitimate origin or have fallen off a truck does not affect the outcome. The owner of the little store, growing weary, does not stand a chance: Mr. Kyle always get his discount.
Packet of socks in one hand and walking cane in the other, Mr. Kyle accompanies me as I browse the many stalls, but he buys nothing else. We head back to my truck. On the way out of town we stop at Cracker Barrel for a late breakfast. He buys both of our meals, then we head down the plateau toward home.
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Reading this weekend: Last Stands, why men fight when all else is lost (M. Walsh). And County Highway, a new journal that is designed as a newspaper.
