Flea Market Memories

"My mother used to take me to flea markets in my stroller, and I would just rummage through the piles. You've got to dig through the overstuffed racks that everyone else just walks by. It's the only way to find the cool stuff."

Lily Collins

Lolo Pass (Montana-Idaho border) June, 1976

I almost always begin any blog with a quote. I want them to be topical, perhaps introductory in nature. At least germane. So I searched "Flea market quotes." There were hundreds.

What amazed me - which I admit isn't a huge ask - was how many of the quotes began, "My [parent] used to take me to the flea market, where..." I'd thought I was the only one, except it was me taking my mom. And, I thank God for that.

How could that be? My mom didn't drive, not that she didn't try to learn. I think it was the time she nearly drove through the wall of the school kitchen at which she worked (it is called, blandly, "pedal misapplication" by automotive engineers) that finally did her, and her instructor, in. The day I got my license, in 1971, my dad, in high dudgeon and with great ceremony, handed me the keys to the family car - a Ford Torino. 

"Your turn," he said.

One of our destinations, on multiple occasions, was a large flea market. We bought books, mostly - both Mom and Dad were voracious readers. On one occasion, I found a treasure that became deeply important to me. I hadn't thought about it in 40 years.

And then, I had some pictures transferred from slides to digital... If that's the correct way to phrase it. And, there it was, in all of its splendor. The orange jacket I wore, through rain and bitter cold, in the early days of Bikecentennial '76. 

It probably cost a dollar. It fit fine, did the job I asked of it (warm, light and very visible) but had one peculiar attribute that sparked a question wherever, and whenever, I wore it.

"Where is East Campbell, NY?"

The jacket had, boldly printed on the back, "East Campbell, NY Volunteer Fire Department." Having never been a volunteer firefighter, much less one in East Campbell, I really didn't know. Purchased in pre-Google days (and lost by the time the internet was a thing) I had only the vaguest of notions where East Campbell might be. Since most of the fire departments in Western NY are volunteer, that didn't help, either. It was bright and warm and that's all I knew.

In August of 1977 I moved to Denver, to start life as an adult. My relocation from Pittsford, NY coincided with a resurgence...well, since they'd never been much I guess technically it's surgence...of the Broncos. Colorado was crazy for these now wonderfully successful football players, a team that featured a defense called the "Orange Crush."

After a particularly stirring gridiron victory by our hometown boys, I put on my East Campbell jacket and went out for a run. Well, you would think I'd been on the field that day, because the driver of every car that passed honked madly and waved at me with crazed abandon. My orange jacket, having been to Oregon and back, suddenly made me one of "them," but a good them, a collegial them. It was obvious, if one didn't get too close, that I was a Bronco fan and was sporting the required regalia.

My mom would chuckle, were she around to read this. That orange jacket was just another thing that bonded us over the years that I drove her here and there, ending only when she passed in 2015. JC Penney to pay her credit card bill, Wegmans to purchase ingredients for dinner, and an orange cast-off jacket from a volunteer fire department in New York.