If you drink your daily orange juice, or have a strong immunity, and had a recent tetanus shot, its the place to be on a Wednesday! Traditional farmer's market day... in our area, the grand ol' Springville Action is always a summer favorite for my kids. A gathering were the fanny-pack and tie-dye shirts never left the wardrobes, and not a single itch on the body is ever off limits for scratching! Dry skin, bug bite to the untouchables...not a problem- dig like a dog and no one cares!
A come as you are, kind of good time for sure! Generally a 50/50 split- women in bra, to nope no bother cinching up today...
Teeth rotten and stained, to not even visible in the smile, was more of a 60/40 split, and
...deodorant or not here they came!
Huffing a wagon or two wheeled cart like an ox, through hundreds of the finest un-showered bargainers, without getting down-wind in the stagnant swirling air current, was never an easy task. Try doing it with kids leaping in and out like grasshoppers...even harder!
Every Wednesday had the grandest smells of sickly farm animals, flea market filth, and many of un-groomed folk magnified by 90 degree heat.
I'd weave and jog, in and out of the retired wanderers and flea market extraordinaries, who clogged up the walkways. Trying to keep up with my kids, my head bobs up and around the crowds, like a chicken tugging at worms.
Just where the hell did that child go, now?
Try to find one, without losing another... yeah, really just try it sometime!
Carefully searching, without smashing into other mothers, also frantically chasing their darting toddlers in each direction. Kids everywhere were ripping and shredding the vendor tables like Christmas morning.
"Don't touch that! Don't touch... OMG, don't eat that!"
Some mothers exhausted themselves hovering, others hadn't a clue what their children were doing.
A day at the auction was like a redneck scavenger hunt. It was full of filthy scavengers, the occasional good find, and I was always hunting for my rampaging children. They'd snatch things, then race through the crowds, with no place off limits- I'd find them hiding in stacks of rubble, peeking out of flower carts they'd tipped over, even tucked into dresses of the Amish woman, but never in the ground space I'd pointed to, and said, "Stay right there!"
Loads of junk camouflaged any small child enough to make a smooth get away. My four year-old daughter wandered away again, and this time I found her falling in love with... could it be, her very own Hello Kitty umbrella!
$4.00...what a bargain for a barley popping open, sure to leak through, China quality, and certain to be broken before leaving...kind of gem! And had I remembered to put sun screen on my children today, that beauty would still be laying in the box of shit, under the classy non-English speaking gentleman's sale tent.
Nope, instead there I was digging for money to buy a ninth children's umbrella... and afterward, I noticed... a damn whistle attached on the handle????
Shoot me now, before I choke the child with the blasting whistle!
"Ohhh, wait... Exchange! Exchange! Lets find something else..."
"All sal fin-al, mam!"
Oh now he could attempt some English...
Perhaps, next time I circle back past his tent, and the whistle has yet to silence, I shall demonstrate how umbrellas shoved up the rear are final as well!
If anyone ever thought, "like a kid in a candy shop" was dramatic...they obviously never took a child to the land of never ending garage sales, hills of flea markets, and vendors with heaps of intriguing cheap crap. Throw in a few hysterical old farmers, fruit displayed like an all-you-can eat buffet, and a mangy goat, and you've got a child who can't decide what to touch next.
The day was never complete until collecting a couple of lice infested chicken feathers for souvenirs. And then licking Amish woopie-pie frosting from those same dirty little fingers always seemed to follow.
Occasionally, I'd find them so intensely staring as they people watched, they would stand at a halt, and I could actually purchase some items. I noticed my littlest making friends with an apple farmer. He was standing at his pair of worn boots, looking up at the old man, and tracing the outline of the patch on his pant leg with his finger nail.
The little man was sharing a story and one of his apple with him... actually two apples. The first one hit the dirt, (like always) and the man insisted it was too dirty to eat. Reaching for the second apple, he pulled out his old soiled jackknife from a pocket, and peeled the entire apple with one long ribbon. Bostyn was fascinated...and I was fascinated that he felt the ground apple was too dirty, yet not the rusty colored jackknife cuts across the second.
I knew, that old guy's knife probably had 50years of use, poking at infected slivers, scraping calluses, and cutting shit-balls from a heifer's tail. I'm sure he even used it to cut umbilical cords and dirty twine, then simply wiped the blade on his pant leg each time. But, it was okay, he was a cute little man and Bostyn liked him... and I just may need him and his knife later, to cut the whistle out of my child's throat. So, I let him eat the apple and keep the cool ribbon peel, and we went onward.
I finally found some plants and flowers, as I located my two year-old dropping his pants and peeing everywhere-- including a flower pot in the wide open of the market...
My daughter's bathroom task was a bit more difficult...
"I gotta go potty, mommy!" ...ugh, I'd rather hear "Can I have a friend over!" or "I hate you, mommy!"
Of coarse she had to go...she drank
my entire bottle of water, and continued her skipping in the driveway when I told her, three times, to go potty before we left.
There wasn't enough fiber consuming possible to force my desire in using this particular Porty-potty, yet I had a child who wasn't willing to following...
Rule #1: never use the bathrooms at the Springville Action
As we stepped up into that Porty potty (wisely placed on the side of a hill) the floor gave, and that sucker swayed like stepping onto a boat. Oh, this was as risky as a Prom date insisting he would just pullout...
We covered the seat with half the roll of toilet paper, like we were building a giant bird nest, and I dangled her down like a crane. Anyone who has ever tried to dead lift a 43lb child, shackled at the ankles with tight fitting shorts, spraying piss in all directions, knows...perfecting this is the kind of skill that should be resume worthy!
Trying not to breath, in the incubator heat and stench, I answered all her questions, all 33 of them in my nasal clenched voice...
"I don't know why some is green and some brown"
"I'm not sure why it doesn't flush."
"No, I don't know who peed on there and didn't clean it up. Yes, I'm sure they will get in trouble for it."
"No, I would not eat that corn either..."
We finally busted out of that contaminated box, like horses smashing through the gate at the Kentucky Derby, and we choked for air. Similar to having chocolate milk bubbling from our noses, we gasped.
I gave a shimmy and jerking twitch, like a salamander had climbed up my back, followed by a "ughhhhh!" And the lady near with the homemade misspelled
"Sanatizer $1.00" sign, knew she had a sale! I didn't even care that I had a coupon at home for the same product, or that she wasn't wearing a bra, and was blowing smoke in my face like a diesel exhaust, it was the best dollar I'd ever surrendered!
Next, trying to find some produce, I located the happiest little vegetable farmer in sight. And also in sight was his giant black booger, and it was the best babysitter I'd had in years! My kids were content... and QUITE!
He looked as if he'd snorted Oreo crumbs or chimney ashes, and both of my small children stood at attention like in a military lineup. With bugged-out eyes and suspense that left their mouths hinged open, they waited to see where that sucker was going to end up.
He told us of his passion for growing the best damn tomatoes in N.Y. and continued on, adding more expression by sharing about the drought in '68, and it whistled in and out of the nostril a little faster and much further, each time. My daughter knew it was coming, and each time he added more emotion or cleared his throat, her arms would quickly cover her face, like playing peek-a-boo! I simply tried to establish eye contact, yet not sure which of his eyes was the dominate, and which was the wanderer... maybe it was less confusing if I too kept my eyes on his booger instead. I reached down to my youngest, who's neck was cranked back for staring up, and shut his mouth from revealing a much too convenient landing.
I bought the tomatoes, and I surely will be washing and inspecting each one before slicing.
"He needed a tissue, hu mommy?"
It was just the next vendor table over were a hefty beauty waved my kids over...
"Cute kids! You want a banana?"
Well... he was currently gnawing on the apple peel ribbon, dragging behind him like a kite across the dirt, but what child has ever said no to a naner?
Then we approached the table and it was quite obvious why she'd offered a banana, and not the delicious looking berries... The bananas were as black as her husbands hands, and nearly as ripe as the pit stains on her snugly fitting shirt. He shooed away the flies, first from his wife's pits, and then from the sun burnt bananas. These bananas would have been rejected by the emaciated monkeys crammed on display at the zoo, yet the man insisted to Bostyn, "This one looks like a winner!"
Oh, oh... banana handle, please, I'll peel it...? oh, and there it was... the filthy man was not only peeling the sides down, he insisted removing the entire peel...yup, the only barrier between ol' soiled hands and my child's health, gone!
The black grease covered finger prints wrapped around that banana were more clear than those lifted from a police crime scene. And if that wasn't enough contamination, the man's saliva and breath smothered it as he pretended to sink in his rotten skoal covered teeth, and threatened stealing the first bite.
I would have felt a bit more at ease feeding my child the mystery corn from the Porty-pot, or the nice old man's booger, than that banana! And I think any mother would have flipped over that produce table or leaped over the wagon to intercept that banana hand off. Instead, I yanked it from his little hand as we turned our backs and whipped that sucker across the parking lot, like a dog Frisbee.
Luckily, I won that battle and without toddler tears, as I stole his lunch away...
he knew, "Was poopy, hu Mama? Uck! ...Get some cheese instead?"
"Yep, Bud! Lets get some cheese curd."
There was something more appropriate about cheese baking in the sun, and stacked in a cooler with no lid or ice, that seemed more satisfying than shit covering a banana.
My kids then stood in the doorway of the barn, touching anything I told them not to. Smearing their cheese curd all over the walls before finally eating. They watched the livestock unloading and gaped in amazement as one little wooden crate held eleven goats. It was a show like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat. The man drug them by the horns, yanked them by the tails, and my kids enjoyed every exciting moment.
Especially this last image-- here he is either checking to see if this is a male or female, or trying to get his watch back...
After tormenting some baby pigs and trying to feed them his sucker stick, I decided it was time to go.
My kids hands were now as black as the banana man's. Their nails were packed as tightly as a cup of brown sugar, with dirt and probably boogers. And it was time for getting out of there before someone had to go to the bathroom again... Lord knows, there was plenty consumed today that their stomach was not going to agree with...
