Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Swap Meet Sunday

Hey, it has been one year since I quit working for walmart and became self employed! So for my anniversary we went to the swap meet on Sunday-the same swap meet that we forgot how to find months ago and forgot to stop and get money to go to anyway and just ended up driving around town aimlessly for an hour or so.
Anyway, Keith had a bug up his ass about going to the swap meet on Saturday morning so off he went by himself and came back home about 4 hours later with some tools, and then Sunday morning he gets up and wants to go back to the swap meet, so off we went. We remembered to stop and get some money first, too. I don't know where most towns hold their swap meets these days since the demise of the drive in movie theatre-drive in movie theatres will be a topic for a later post, I'm sure there are lots of young people who don't even understand the concept of a drive in movie theatre and think they are something us old people just made up, like computers that used to take up a whole room or something-but anyway our swap meet is in the dirt parking lot of the fairgrounds downtown. The nasty dirt parking lot of the fairgrounds.
In southern California the swap meets have become a marketplace attended by a mostly Hispanic crowd-no racism intended here, the majority of swap meet shoppers and sellers are Mexican in our part of America and Spanish is the most common language you'll hear there . So, the merchandise is aimed for the most part at that demographic. Lots of the ruffledy baby clothes, work clothes for the farmworkers, gloves, tools, Caballero styled shirts, chili peppers and unidentified dried spices, the odd Mexican candies, housewares, cheap toys for the kids, all kinds of stuff, and all at really really low prices. There must be some mega swap meet wholesaler out there that provides all this stuff since most of it looks pretty much the same from booth to booth. Hard way to make a living, selling shirts at 3 for 10.00 and having to sit out there all day long hoping to make enough money to feed your family for another week.
They even have what passes for a food court, the catering trucks set up shop there and put out a few picnic tables so that you can enjoy your meal out there in the dirt parking lot. I noticed that every food truck had a sign outside advertising the gourmet treat of the day. Hot Dog...with Bacon. I didn't want to get one to see what they do with the bacon, is it wrapped around the hot dog like a bacon wrapped filet mignon or is it crumbled up on top? Hot dogs by themselves are nasty enough, I don't think the bacon will improve anything there.
Of course I had to go to the bathroom as soon as we got there after drinking a cup of coffee to wake up and having a notoriously small bladder anyway, and of course there are no bathrooms, just porta potties that didn't have working locks on most of them, all lined up in a row. Porta potties that were totally nasty already and probably only get cleaned out on the third Thursday of the month or something. I'm not usually real squeamish about public restrooms, but I used a LOT of toilet paper to line that seat before I sat down, believe me!
So, next time we go to the swap meet I'm getting some of these first!
Serenity underwear so that you can pee your pants in total serenity.

3 comments:

Meghan said...

Ya know I think our small bladders run in the family - I have the bladder the size of a jelly bean. I drink one cup of water and I have to pee 3 times. It's crazy.

Jennifer said...

I was thinking the same thing about the small bladder thing. I hate it when you drink thing and have to go about 5 times.

Jim and Heather on Meerkat said...

Ok, so it is official. My sister has turned into my Grandmother.