The American Flea Market

On weekdays this square of concrete fills and empties with the regular intervals of the school bell, as one group of junior high students is traded for another. They mill around during recess and stand uncomfortable in their shorts for games of kickball and handball during gym class. It's a space every city kid has inhabited, an urban field of tan and black, faded paint lines of a baseball diamond or four square court. This particular yard is only blocks away from New York's Central Park, the only color here are the taxis passing by. But early Sunday morning a transformation happens in this spot, and in many other school yards across the country. Folding tables are unpacked, hand-made and vintage wears are laid out, stacks of apple crates driven that morning from the Catskills are taken from trucks. By ten the once empty school yard has become a vibrant flea market, as it has been for twenty-two years.

Markets and Bazaars can be found all over the world, in many towns they are the main source of commerce, but here in the United States where you can find what ever you want at big box stores 24 hours a day, the flea market fills a different need. People come not out of a need for a particular thing but for the joy of the search. You may leave with a few things in your bag, but you bring away from it a sense of connection, a return to our collective past. Where else can you sift through bins of buttons to find a matching one to your grandmother's sweater that has hung in your closet for a decade unworn, and two minutes later watch a woman expertly twist lengths of silver into a pendant while she talks to the four people who are looking at her booth?

As a teenager I would come to this market to escape back in time as I browsed the old magazine ads from the twenties and thirties and to watch the people. I can still capture that feeling when I enter the cafeteria where more tables stand, and the room smells of old paper and school lunches. Some of the same vendors are here as when I was young. New ones have joined them filling spaces left by vendors who have died or moved on, becoming equally as timeless no matter what they are selling or how old they are. As I finger costume jewelry and dressing table mirrors a young orthodox guy haggles with the coin dealer and a Korean mother and daughter browse the movie paraphernalia. The room is full of conversations but they are buffered by the tiles leaving me to drift into the past.

Each row at the market is filled with tables and booths, discount underwear next to African tapestries, rare coins beside personalized 'while you wait' dog food bowls. The goods that are sold are not staples but the market itself is a step aside from our usual life. Here people slow down and browse. We start conversations with strangers over old tea pots and yards of ribbon. Old women with shopping carts and teenage girls both look at the same sweaters hung on wheeled racks. Being here I want to create the stories for the people around me, give them lives. Maybe it's a sweater the old woman wore when she was young and still traveled in packs, as the girls who dance around her do.

At another flea market in a rural area I find myself on my knees digging through a damp box of old metal tins. This market is in the middle of a strawberry farm. On either side of the market area are acres of berries waiting to be picked. My son has wandered away from me and is exploring a pile of stuffed animals that is taller than him. By the time I have caught up to him he is running towards a couple of girls who are selling zucchini. The wares at this market couldn't be more different. The people here are as well, but there is still the same feeling, of people searching for something, not an object exactly. We find a pair of pajamas for him and a few tins for me, oh no we've spent three bucks.

As we walk through the field to our car we are stopped by an older gentleman with dark blue jeans and a tractor cap. He is one of those people who looks as though they are busting at the seams of their skin, his face is rosy and he is smiling. "I remember taking my son with me when he was that age. Now," he points to a man and small boy in matching blue sweatshirts, "All three of us come."