Webster

So here we are at the Webster flea market. You notice on the sign that it says every Monday. It doesn’t say every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, just Monday. Yep, it is only on Mondays. Seems a bit strange to me because everyone is at work except for retired folk. It seems to me that they would do more business if they included the weekends, like “every Saturday, Sunday, and Monday”. Wouldn’t that make more sense? But even with just Mondays there were quite a few people there shopping and quite a number of vendors selling everything imaginable. The flea market is so large that you get quite a workout from all of the walking, up one aisle then down another and then back up one aisle and back down again another, ad infinitum. I met a vendor who had lived in Phoenix, Arizona at the same time as me. He also attended Arizona State University at the same time that I did except he graduated two years before me. Amazing that I should run into a fellow Sun Devil at a flea market in the small town of Webster, Florida and that our paths should cross. He was interesting to talk to as we compared notes on our memories of Phoenix. He sold fine antiques at the flea market. I met another vendor and started to chat with him about metal detecting. After we were a couple of minutes into our conversation I saw that he also sold metal detectors. He gave me a catalog of the metal detectors and his business card. He is from Ocala. I told him about a friend who sends me pictures of the beach at New Smyrna and how so often there seems to be people there with metal detectors. I also asked him if he had read the book Diamonds in the Surf and said he had and we started talking about that. The premise for the book Diamonds in the Surf (a book on metal detecting) is that when people go wading into the ocean, that over time the salt water draws fluid from the body and as fingers lose their puffiness, rings will easily slip of unnoticed. So instead of walking along the dry sand with a metal detector, it is better to get a waterproof one and wade into the water about waist deep and try using the metal detector there to find jewelry which the author of the book had pictures of a large number of rings that he had found. I found his theory to be true when I was snorkeling in waste deep water at the beach in Miami. I was looking at the small critters on the bottom. As I swam along I suddenly spotted this very large solid gold ring with a large rectangular onyx stone. I dove down to get it (diving was no big deal since I was in about four feet of water but it sounds good). The ring was heavy and had to be valuable because of its solid gold content. I never sold it and it was later stolen from my house along with my high school ring and other jewelry. I guess as they say, easy come, easy go. There was another time when I was playing with my daughter in the sand at the waters edge. We were digging into the sand with our fingers and my daughter snagged something with her fingers. She had found a beautiful gold crucifix with gold chain. This was also stolen later at the same time of the other jewelry. But it points out that you can make some significant finds at the beach. I think that the name of the game is persistence. But with respect to the flea market, it was very rustic as you can see from the weathered wood, faded paint, and sheet metal roof of the main building. This is definitely countrified as they say. Being a Monday, the vast majority of the people were senior citizens. The waitress at the Speckled Bean Café said the place was packed last Monday and people had to wait for 45 minutes to get a seat in the café. Then I remembered last Monday was Memorial Day and so people were off from work. The first time that we went was last Memorial Day and the place was packed. See, that just proves my theory that they should be open on week-ends and they would do a lot more business. But I don’t think that the harried waitresses at the Speckled Bean Café could stand a packed restaurant with a crowd waiting to get in every weekend. I am way over on my word count. Have a nice day. Lew