127sale, episode 5. In which we expand our collections.

As I'm looking back on these photos and reminiscing, I'm getting the fleamarketing itch all over again.  I hope these photos of muggles and their mysterious possessions are working their magic on you, too.  I know some will look upon such scenes and think that would be the LAST place they'd want to be dragged to on a weekend morning, or definitely the LAST place they would want to fly/drive/vacation to, but I know there are others (like Mari and me) who simply have that constant craving (with apologies to k. d. lang) for a good sale or flea market.  It also makes me want to get up from the computer and go look at my stuff, but, actually, I don't have very far to go to satisfy my wanderlust.

I just need look a few inches above the monitor to a floating shelf that hovers with the stoic flight of about 20 owls, one of my first collections (begun with a bubbly little porcelain "weather owl" perched atop two books that used to change hue with the temperature back when I was in third grade).  More on my little fluttering parliament (I had to look that one up) another time.

I think I've warned about the potential "danger" of shopping without a purpose, the result of which is usually the birth of yet another new collection.  Well, despite her best efforts, and because of her eye for a bargain, and also because of the carefully, artfully, and colorfully displayed glassware you see here, Mari started a new collection.  Three milky white hobnail vases are now on display in our master bath.

Always accessorize
in odd numbers.

One is too lonely.  A pair looks like you planned it.  Three is a haphazard little collection that looks like you don't put a lot of effort into decorating when the truth is you actually DO spend a lot of time think(obsess)ing about it.  (There, I just saved you hours of watching HGTV and DIY.)

When you see this kind of display at a sale you might be tempted to buy (hoard) as much as you can, especially at the reasonable 127sale price (most pieces were $1, $3, or $5).  We've learned over the years to TRY to be more selective and to appreciate pieces that really speak to us.

We have also learned to have a safe word (question, in our case) when it comes to fleamarketing. When either or both of us gets a little too giddy about a collectible or a "bargain," one of us has to step back and ask, "Where are you going to put that in our home?"

If you can't visualize it in

your home, leave it behind

for another collector.

If we can rationalize an answer, if we plan to replace something with this picked prize, if we can picture it in an increasingly rare empty spot on a shelf, table, or corner in our home, then a deal will be made.  Otherwise, we will admire the object one last time and sigh an appreciative sigh of longing as we walk away.

I still can't get over finding all of these sales against the lush summer backdrop of Kentucky and Tennessee!  This is one of my favorite pictures of my wife because of the vivid setting, because she's doing something I know she loves (with someone I know she loves), and also because it kind of looks like she's giving me a well-deserved dirty look of exasperation from behind her sunglasses for taking yet ANOTHER photo of her.  She doesn't realize it, but I live for those dirty looks!

In addition to the $9 spent on the new-to-us white hobnail collection, there was a wide variety of other lucky finds and bargains that help make up the collections in our home.  In addition to owls, I collect glass (mostly millefiori) paperweights; vintage (mostly accordian-style) cameras, razors (mostly 1920s Art Deco), and cuff links (mostly big & eccentric styles from the 1950s); and a few other curiosities we don't really need to go into right now without risk of alerting the hoarding authorities.  I'm certain Mari has the number on speed-dial in anticipation of the day when I go over the edge (clutching "just one more" owl).  I am happily satisfied/cluttered to report, however, that I was able to add to each of these collections during our visit to the 127sale.

Why do we keep adding to and creating collections?  Why do we fleamarket?  Why do we clutter cyberspace with philosophical conundrums?  More secondhand philosophy and getting swallowed by a giant rocking chair next time.

127sale, episode 4. In which I discover I am not a horse whisperer.

If you've scanned the Saturday newspaper bright and early, drinking coffee from a favorite fleamarketed mug, then driven around your neighborhood looking for garage sales, then you'll be glad for the 127sale.  Someone has taken all that scanning and guesswork (but not the driving nor the coffee) out of the morning mix.  Just get in your car, get on the 127, and drive.  The sales will find you.

After that first small sign and first small sale (and first friendly-yet-slightly-freaked-out-by-our-enthusiasm seller) just south of Frankfort, we started seeing big open areas along the side of the road with goods-laden tables and tents blooming with secondhand commodities eagerly anticipating a third hand.  Sometimes there was a group of 4 or 6 vendors, sometimes a dozen, but there were at least a dozen areas where there were hundreds.

The 50 miles we allowed per day were fairly generous.  After a whole day of driving, pulling over, haggling (more on the art of the haggle another day), visiting (an essential part of the haggle as well as just a neighborly--and fun!--thing to do), snacking (careful you don't oversnack), then driving and pulling over all over again and again, you get kind of worn out no matter how much you enjoy fleamarketing.

I admit to getting a bit worn out by the end of each day, but I was never bored.  Mari is a born fleamarketer, having grown up hosting and shopping garage sales. I'm a late-comer to the experience, but I'm here, baby!
I loved fleamarketing the 127sale. You know your limits and you will quickly learn your spouse's, partner's, or friend-that-you-dragged-along's limits.

We did get to the point, though, where we actually skipped sales, especially smaller locations. Once we realized there were big lots and fields and open areas right along the 127, we decided to forego the single-family sales. There was no way we would get through our 50 daily miles if we stopped at every sale--that's how many there were. You will drive barely a mile or two before you make another stop.

For sale were plenty of small, packable (with bubble wrap!) items as you can see from these photos. Collectibles of every variety (and condition and price), records, books, clothing, boots, rugs, lamps, quilts, dishes, tins, pottery, art, cameras, tools, toys...
you-name-it!

I'm kind of addicted to
you-name-it.

We were very fortunate with the weather.  For some fateful reason, we are ALWAYS very fortunate with weather when we travel, but we do always travel with our lucky umbrellas.

Some day I will attempt to entertain you with what I consider the essentials of travel.

There's a list.

There's ALWAYS a list.

Sunny and dry (a little humid, but no rain) the entire time, it did get a little warm (it's summer for heaven's sake!), especially when there was no shade.  Lucky for us, we were able to cool off with some fresh, horse-churned ice cream.

That's me and Susan, the ice cream churner.  Susan kept trying to lick me from the perch atop her custom tread(hoof?)mill, providing Mari that skittishly anxious forced smile on my face you see here that she photographed at just the right time to embarrass me for(digitally)ever!

We had a creamy cool cuppa Susan-the-churner's vanilla ice cream to cool off while we took another special moment to savor the landscape.

More on what we spent our grand total of $112.85 on next time.  Okay, I'll give you a hint, but you-name-it don't come cheap!

127sale, episode 3. In which a scenic overlook beckons.

Time for clarification.  Fleamarketing can take place at a garage sale, thrift shop, antique mall, vendor marketplace, and, of course, at a flea market--whatever that is.  Shopping for (not necessarily buying) something secondhand in a non-traditional store is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about fleamarketing.  I didn't grow up in an area where garage sales were the norm, nor where there were many thrift shops at the time.  Thrift shops have taken on a new cultural dimension (with divided thanks to Nate Berkus and Macklemore) and even have cache (they've got cache, baby) depending on their location and what designer wares are available.  But I digress (more of my treatise on what constitutes secondhand shopping another dreary day)...

You might be wondering, "143 miles?  3 days?"  Yup.  If you are planning a trip to the 127sale, be sure to allow plenty of time to travel a short distance.  We knew we wanted to fleamarket for 3 days (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) and we knew we were going to start in Frankfort and end somewhere that would get us back to Nashville in time for the Opry show, so that's how we started our calculations.  About 50 miles per day with corresponding hotel stops.

Now, that was the tough part--hotels.  You don't want to go hotel-commando when you've already done so much careful planning.  I panic when we're down to the last 4 rolls of bathroom tissue in the pantry, so I'm not going to take a chance and only look for a hotel when I'm ready to call it a day. The internet and MapQuest were my lifesavers.  (Now I rely mostly on Apple's Maps app on my iPad and desktop.)  You already know how to use the internet if you're reading my blog, so let me get back to our journey.

We took these selfies (before everybody started calling self-portraits by that ridiculously-cute name) upon entering Lake Cumberland State Park on a bit of a break between sales.

We never overlook

a scenic overlook.

We're standing in the same spot--just facing opposite directions.  This was such a breathtaking stop and we are forever glad we pulled off the 127 to enjoy the view for a few minutes.

Never be afraid to veer off the beaten, pre(overly?)-planned path.  You never know what treasures await.

That being said, and the overlook not overlooked, there were lots of treasures awaiting us down the road as we wound our way back towards Tennessee.  If you look at the 127 on a map near Lake Cumberland, you'll see the very definition of a winding road.

Something I haven't mentioned yet is the road itself:  127 is a main thoroughfare that leisurely winds its way from Michigan down into Alabama, joining other arteries as it approaches large cities, but the whole time you're fleamarketing it's "the 127" and when it's not linking up with other routes, it's a smooth two-lane highway with just enough of a shoulder to allow locals to pass you as they journey about their business yet Sunday-driveable enough for fleamarketers to enjoy the business of their journey.

Never be afraid of

a complex sentence.

I think I told you I went a little crazy with my then-new digital camera.  It's just that I found some of the displays and objets d'(sale)art fascinating, especially juxtaposed with the scenery.  I'm sure the crib of life-size Barbie and gal pals eventually emptied to the delights of young doll lovers tagging along with their parents. The box of doll heads didn't leave me with the same optimism, but did yield a rather intriguingly creepy photograph.  If you have a fleamarket-reluctant spouse or partner, maybe the natural scenery or the photographic potential of the collections on display will help entice someone to join you for at least one day of the 127sale.

There were also warm, fried fresh-peach pies, dusted delicately with cinnamon sugar to entice the travel-weary and foodie alike.  More on those and horse-churned ice cream next time.

127sale, episode 2. In which we arrive in Nashville and find our way to the 127 corridor.

Have been spending a lot of time looking through photos of our trip.  It was one of our first trips with a digital camera (I resisted for a long time) and I went kind of crazy.  Pulling the rental car off to the side of the road, I couldn't help just breathing in the clean air and looking around at the lush scenery, but, of course, we stopped to shop.  

These quilts were for sale.  Now, not every sale was as picturesque as these, but there were enough of these moments to make this a special adventure.

We started off by flying to Nashville, a city we had never visited.  We picked Nashville because it was close enough to the 127sale (100 miles) for two Texans who are used to driving a couple hundred miles for a good time, and because we thought it would be a kick to go to the Saturday night show at the Grand Ole Opry.  The show was a great experience, with lots of favorites from our childhood, closing with two exciting performances from newly-crowned American Idol, Carrie Underwood.

opry.com has lots

of useful info for planning

a trip and buying tickets.

Before anything else, though, we hopped in our rental car and found ourselves at The Loveless Cafe for lunch (and biscuits).

Did I mention the biscuits?!

This meatloaf masterpiece of a lunch was no accident.  We try to avoid accidents when traveling, of course, but I plan EVERYTHING.  As soon as I realized we were heading to Nashville, I knew we had to go to the Opry and I knew we had to go to The Loveless.

When I'm planning a trip I do my research and start making lists.  Eventually the long list of destinations is broken up by day and then reservations and calls are made.

Like I said (unless I haven't

said it yet), I'm a planner.

We headed north to Louisville on I-65 to spend an afternoon and evening exploring that beautiful city.  The next day, on a Thursday, we drove about an hour east to meet up with the famed 127 highway just south of Frankfort.

And this is where
our story begins.

We weren't sure what to expect.
We had seen the specials on HGTV, but no one ever really talked logistics.  Were we going to see signs?  Would there be sales just off the road, or would we have to drive around looking?  Well, it didn't take long before at least one of those questions would be answered.

There was a sign

and we pulled over.

A small house, a few small tables with some household items, and some tools in a box.
Naturally, we told this friendly woman our entire life story.

She was surprised at how far we had traveled and assured us that there would be plenty of sales if we stuck to the 127.  Which we did.  For 143 miles.  For 3 days.

And for 17 biscuits.

More on what we found along the route next time.

Pilot. In which our narrator introduces himself and begins at the 127sale in Kentucky.

Hey, everybody.  I was going to wait until summer to dip my toes into this blog, but kept getting too excited just thinking about it.  Besides, I'm a planner, and I will plan a trip years, or at least months in advance.  I am, however, going to pull a Holden Caulfield and dismiss with all that "David Copperfield kind of crap" until later because I want to start sharing my secondhand travels now.

It's been almost 7 years since our trip to Kentucky and Tennessee by way of the World's Longest Yardsale, but when I think of my adventures in fleamarketing (I'm coining it, feel free to spread it around) it's the first trip that springs to mind.  It's also the source of that great-ish photo of me (taken by my wife and trip[py] photographer, Mari) I decided to use to head this blog.  So, I'll start in Kentucky--even though I'm a New Yorker who went to college in Indiana and has lived in Texas for over 25 years.

Mari is a fan of HGTV, especially back in its early days when it wasn't all about flipping your house or buying a home.  For several years we watched their spring special on The World's Longest Yardsale until we decided to get off the couch and make a summer vacation out of it.

It wasn't a vacay.

It's NEVER a vacay.

If you don't live along the 127 route (visit 127sale.com for details and lots of helpful information), then there is a lot of planning involved including transportation and lodging.  Since we live in the farthest reaches of the Lone Star State (10 miles from the Mexican border in McAllen), it takes a WHOLE lot of driving before you stop seeing Texas asphalt, so we decided against driving all the way to Kentucky and Tennessee.  That was a big decision because it limited our purchases.  No antique furniture (of which there was A LOT), nothing that wouldn't fit in our suitcases or carry-on luggage.

The thing is, we weren't really LOOKING for anything.  When we fleamarket (again, used properly as a verb), Mari and I don't LOOK for things.  We sometimes keep an eye out for items that we collect (more on our myriad collections at a later time), but we enjoy the experience of browsing and meeting friendly people more than hunting for that missing collectible.  When you look for something, you don't find it.  Of course, when you are just casually browsing--without a particular mission in mind--you'll find (and buy) more than you expected.  Congratulations, you just started another collection!

We did find some goodies and brought them home safely in our luggage.  Part of bringing home your treasures safely is being prepared.  Rule one of fleamarketing by air:  carry bubble wrap.  Bubble wrap pouches are especially awesome for small collectibles, including jewelry.

I get VERY excited

about bubble wrap.

Of course, this flea market adventure wasn't just about the shopping.  It was a vacation and it was beautiful.

More on what we found and where we went next time.

This last photo was just a few steps off the grounds of a large sale in Kentucky.  So lush and colorful, the natural beauty of Kentucky and Tennessee made this flea market adventure an unforgettable journey.