Swappers Day, the Collection and The Motion

Swappers Day, Johnstown Ohio. Another time and place. A short drive on Highway 62 takes you from Columbus to Johnstown. It is probably only about thirty minutes, but time is just a series of numbers that move through space and I am uncomfortable with numbers, and not a little unsteady with space. Let’s just say we could listen to my Obsession Playlist twice so my wife could decide which to choose (Don’t forget to exercise your right to vote)^1.  We still had time to talk about the knights suit of armor on the back porch of the small house right on the side of the highway, and the other things that make traveling so much fun.

We have been going to Swappers Day for about five years. My wife started her new job, and one of her coworkers, one of her friends, who has become one of my friends, told her about it. We are always game for crowds, sales and festival food. We really had no idea what we were about to see. Even now, all these years later it is still new, and always interesting.

One of our favorites is the negotiations. Intense, occasionally difficult to understand.

“Look, I’ll take sixty dollars, but that is the best I can do, it is still a hell of a deal and you’ll still make money off it.” Which seemed, to me, an odd sales pitch for a compound bow. But, the quiet, bearded Amish man, dressed in his simple clothes was comfortable with the price and the implication and bought the bow.

Or the angry exchange between vendor and woman customer.

“It’s marked as ten dollars, I’ll give you five.” The woman offered.

“I’ll take seven.” The vendor countered

“Are you f*&#ing crazy?” An agressive counter offer from the woman.

You have to enjoy the people. It is always the people, more than the booths, the food, the wild variety of products displayed, bickered over, bartered for and occasionally sworn about. It is always the people.

There is an old couple with a really nice camper, an expensive, newer model that looks comfortable, and huge. They always have a “booth” right by the road. Several tables under an awning with a few trinkets scattered tastefully and sparsely, it looks more like a museum display than a sales booth. the sit in comfortable looking folding chairs and watch the crowd mill past. I can’t help but think they are there on a little vacation, to see some old friends, to make some new friends, money isn’t everything, right? For some reason the thought makes me happy.

Some places have no camper, no tents, just tables piled high with tools, like they were dumped there from a tractor’s bucket. Old tools, newer tools, wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, chisels, tools for every job. All you had to do was pull out the one you wanted, and hope the rest didn’t fall on the ground in avalanche of clanging, clattering metal. You break it you bought it. I’m not very good with tools, so I just look, from a distance.

There are some people who are there on business. Pulling carts recklessly, homicidally through the crowded paths, looking for a bargain, they are the most aggressive negotiators, pity the poor vendor who has the item they want for their shop, sale, booth or swap meet table. They are as hostile stationary as they are moving.

One guy was pulling a cart full of guns, he stopped at a booth with a lot of guns laid out on a table, and asked “Are you interested in buying any guns?” He asked, politely, and they talked quietly about the guns. Before he moved on he bought at least one more gun from the table to add to his traveling sales cart. You have to love the people. 

It was a good day, and we are already looking forward to next year.

1.  At last check it was a three way tie between An Emotional Fish, Dr. John and Scandal. Which leads me to believe nobody watched the Midnight Oil video, Peter Garrett was a wild man.

Time Stumbles Along.

There is a three day weekend coming at me, it is crawling toward me, a snail trapped in amber, frozen in a glacier. I am running, jogging, really, actually limping as fast as I can to get there, but it doesn't seem to be getting any closer. I'm pretty sure yesterday was Friday, and now I am in the early stages of Thursday wondering what happened. You know the feeling you get when you're standing in a crowded place and you think someone is looking at you, feel it in your bones, certain of it. And you turn around and someone is looking at you, staring right at you, maybe right through you. It's that feeling, only worse.

Where did the time go?
Nowhere, it hasn't moved all week

I'm afraid somehow we have slipped out of the space time continuum. We exist in a void beyond reality. Days shift in and out of focus, time passes in both directions. Minutes collide, recoil and change course. You never know where you will land in these times, Wednesday, Thursday, even Monday, God forbid. Swimming in these waters will stretch your strings and leave you out of tune.

The world has stopped rotating, and only the crushing weight of our disappointment keeps us from sailing off into space. We walk through life pretending it still makes sense, but, deep inside we all know, Labor Day is never going to get here, the weekend will never come.


Swapper's Day in Johnstown will always be just out of reach. Sometimes close enough to feel, you can smell the chicken on the flattop grill, but you can't see it. Sometimes off on the fading horizon, distant, silent, almost a memory. Frozen crowds wait only for the moment to mill aimlessly down the long, narrow paths. A moment that never comes.

One benefit, though, is you have a lot of extra time. So, I got a new app for my phone. I'm not sure what I am going to do with it, but it seems cool and there will be plenty of time to experiment. Here is my first video.

Of course, I could be wrong about the whole time thing. If the weekend ever comes I will have more videos from the big day, the big sale, the outdoor extravaganza. The place to go and see, and enjoy, marvel at the diversity, and the sheer, unpredictable marvelous mess that is the brotherhood of humanity. If I can spend a little time in a place like that I start to believe we might be OK after all.

Labor Day, Hello, My Old Friend.

Labor Day, the birth of Winter, or the death of Summer, or just a Monday holiday. Maybe all three for some people, maybe just another damned Monday for others. Not everybody gets to take the day off and get paid. I am one of the lucky ones, one of the lucky millions probably.

I'm not sure who decided to make the first Monday in September a paid day off, or why. And, I don't really care. It's a day off, with pay, that I didn't have to ask for. It doesn't carry the emotional obligations of Memorial Day, the patriotic fervor of July 4th, or the spiritual demands of Thanksgiving. At least I don't think it does. I could probably look it up, but why bother?

There are several hummingbirds that have breakfast with me on the weekends. I sit on our patio drinking my coffee and they come along and drink their nectar. When they finish they buzz off to somewhere. It seemed, for a brief time I should try to find out more about them, but decided against it. I enjoy them, I probably couldn't enjoy them anymore than I do. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, after all. I just snap their photos, say good morning and they move on. I know everything I need to know about some things, Labor Day is one of them.

Not knowing much makes it makes it easier to assume that someone, due to laziness or lack of funds, or even a minor speech impediment shortened it from Don't Labor Day. Because I don't really labor all that much, I might mow the lawn, and trim the hedges, but that's about as laborious as it gets, and if I can keep my wife distracted I will probably fall short of that modest goal.

Normally Labor Day ushers in  more civilized weather, less heat, humidity, fewer unbearable, sweaty, sticky days. You might need a jacket, oh blessed be the mornings you need to layer. It always leads to trouble, though, when the morning is cool, and the afternoon warm, a migration of coats to work, a pile on the shelf by the printer, loved and cherished early in the day, forgotten on the way home. Life on the edge, the struggle is real.

And there is always Swapper's Day, in Johnstown, an event not to be missed. A trip through time and space, at least times and spaces I have occupied. 8 track tapes, fishing equipment, vendors everywhere, selling everything, within fairly wide limits. It is crowded, hectic, cramped, and noisy. The ground is uneven and hilly, and the whole thing is difficult.  But, just going is fun. For $5.00 you can take a trip through another world. Elon Musk can't compete with that.

So, hold on, Labor Day is coming to save us. I will see you there. If we make it.

Today's song o' happiness comes from a different time and space, where Funk was King.  Don't forget to vote in the Life Explained Happiness Poll, coming soon. If anybody knows how to create a poll in Facebook, please send me the instructions.

A Day to Remember. Again

Yesterday we went to the Johnstown Swapper's Day meet. It is always entertaining. Always eye opening. Always the same, but always different. It had rained most of the night Friday, not torrential, no downpour, just a constant, light drizzle, and the day was cloudy, and cool. With a chance of rain in the forecast for the afternoon we decided to risk the trip and head to the the sale. It was a lot more crowded than we thought it would be. 

I am not sure what they do at the Sportsman Association when they're not having Swappers Day, but it is a huge place, asphalt paths big enough for a car run through the property. It is 190 acres according to the website. As numbers go that is a big one, but as a reference it is meaningless to a person raised on measurements in blocks. And I coldn't tell you how many blocks could be laid end to end in the area, because we wander from place to place, stopping, looking, backtracking, looking again.  We walked over 9,000 steps as measured by iPhone.

It always surprises me how many people are carrying guns. I think they are trying to sell them, or maybe just bought them. There was an older couple, maybe late sixties, or early seventies pushing an umbrella stroller that had two rifles, a compound bow, and some pistols. I don't know how many, staring at people with enough weaponry to outfit an infantry squad seems foolish. And the Amish people carrying rifles, hunting rifles, rifles that seemed, to my limited knowledge, to fall into the "assault weapon" classification. Pacifism no more. Spend a little time walking the rows and paths of Swapper's Day and you quickly understand "excuse me" is no longer a popular notion. It has been replaced by the silent push, and press. 

In the time I have been there, three years in a row, I have only seen one potential sale take place. Yesterday, a man said "hey, are you trying to sell those?" Pointing to a pair of wicked looking revolvers. I waited for the "or are you just happy to see me?" Which never came. The comic potential destroyed I walked away before the dealing began.

As we rounded the curving, slightly erratic line of vendor's tents was the rotor blade of a helicopter. My wife said she had stopped by to look at it last year. It was UH-1 Huey from Bell Helicopter. It was a display that traveled to various places. I asked why she didn't take me.

"You had probably wandered off somewhere." She said, then she relayed a conversation she had with our youngest son.

"Why do you let him do that?" He had asked. "Just let him wander off like that?" I was a little insulted, but as a five year old he made me hold his hand in parking lots so I wouldn't get run over. At the time I thought he did it as a joke, maybe not, though.

We went and looked at the helicopter. It was from the Vietnam war, it was one of the early models, a UH1-A, I think he said. It was a profound moment. It was so small, there were seats for seven including the pilot. Flimsy looking nylon benches were supported by what looked like aluminum tubing, it looked so finite, skimpy. The shell was thin, almost fragile. One of the exhibitors took me around and showed the patches where bullets had torn through the beer can skin. I said "it looks so small." He explained the letter suffix designation, and how the machine had stretched and changed over time to carry more soldiers and door gunners. But, this was one of the early ones. 

I remembered the lines from Apocalypse Now in an exchange between Martin Sheen and Robert Duvall. Duvall's character said, "Air Cav, son, Airmobile." And Sheen's narration explained how the cavalry had "traded in their horses for choppers and went tear assin' around Nam looking for the shit." And they had done it in something so oddly beautiful, so awkwardly graceful, so tragically insignificant as the small machine sitting in front of me. 

I remembered the book Dispatches by Micheal Herr, and his description of the terror he felt the first time the helicopter he was in took fire. Someone hammering on the side of a helicopter flying at 2,000 feet.¹ It was striking to stand so close to something that had carried so many terrified men into a jungle screaming with anger, fear and death. I couldn't help but think of the words of Isaiah Berlin "liberty for wolves is death to the lambs." 

It had been deployed between 1967 and 1971, a time of vicious fighting, fear, pain and death. The time of Khe Shan, the Tet Offensive. Long after any illusion of guerilla warfare had drained away. I don't know where this little helicopter had been stationed, I didn't ask, but it had seen some action, the patches served as ample proof.

It was a great day, we had a good time, had some good food, and did not get rained on, even a little.. Life can be tough, and sometimes working and living require so much time you overlook the important things. Like how oddly right my wife and I are for each other. Wandering through a huge yard sale, looking at the tables filled with the flotsam of life, I was reminded how close we are. There were times it seemed as if we were the only people there, she was the only thing I could see.

I did find a wide brimmed, floppy hat for kayaking for $5.00. And since I am such a compulsive, uncontrollable, easily influenced sort I bought a small tackle box for $1.00. It was a little broken, and needs some work, similar to life, I suppose, but it was my first step toward the lofty position of  Kayak Fisherman, a big, inexpensive first step. I am that much closer. 

Adventures are everywhere, stories wait at every turn. Next week, 2 1/2 days, we are off to Lake Hope, and a new adventure, on kayaks, at the Moonville Tunnel, in Athens, OH, just the two of us, our two kayaks, and the threat of a guest appearance by our sons, we had better take some extra food. Just a coming attractions.

¹ I don't really remember the height. Just the terror he felt, and the dread he described.

Good Times Ahead if I live that long.

Today I have good news. And I have bad news.

The good news.

I am only 6 days away from a three day weekend. A three day weekend complete with our annual trip to the Swapper's Day extravaganza in Johnstown, OH. Home of the Johnstown Johnnies.

Unless you are from Johnstown you probably don't care too much about the Johnnies, that is the mascot and namesake of the high school sports teams. I just think it is a great name for a team. So, I gave them a mention. If you read this blog send an email to the school saying "Go Johnnies!" and reference my blog. They won't have any idea what you are going on about, but they will appreciate the sentiment and they might read my blog. It is what sales people call a "win-win scenario." Everybody loves a winner, right.

Swapper's Day is fantastic, it is a huge sale, almost a yard sale in a yard the size of pasture, with hundreds of different "yard sale vendors" (if that is the right term). There is something for everybody. Fishermen, hunters, collectors, people who are obsessed with knives, oh there are knives, bayonets, machetes, swords. Crafts and arts, clothing, and crowds.

Not from Swapper's Day, Just a picture to add
texture and visual appeal.

Popup covers run down long lanes radiating from a central point. Spokes of a giant wheel, and on the edge, where the business part of the wheel would be, runs the biggest tents of all, the booths of the gun sales people. It is serious out there. RVs sit behind tables and racks loaded with guns. People talk about guns, bicker over the price of guns, discuss the distance at which a certain gun is no longer accurate, occasionally they will bicker about that, too. Displays of guns by kits to clean guns next to books about guns. There are boxes of straps and handles and accessories to carry guns. One trip to Swapper's Day and you will never worry about the well being of the second amendment again.

And at the hub of the wheel is one of my favorite parts, the food vendors. Most of the time we dine on the cuisine of a local organization for youth. Sometimes the PTA will have a booth, or the 4H selling chicken and noodles or pulled pork, maybe street tacos. Volunteers sweating in the cramped, hot shacks hawking the value of their work and the taste of their food. Often they will have several children employed cleaning tables, handing out napkins, or just smiling and saying hello. Who could refuse?

As long as we started with good news;* In two weeks I will spend three and a half days at Lake Lifestyles of the lower middle class and unpopular airs again. This time the cabin is a little more appropriately sized for two, not as luxurious, or well equipped. And the lake is smaller, farther away and probably pretty forgiving when compared to Gitche Gumee. It probably has very few deaths, and will gladly give them back. Just a bit of boating, grilling, a little wine, a little relaxing and enjoying life. It is the stuff of paradise. Just my wife, our  kayaks and me.

Lake Hope lies in the middle of Southeastern Ohio. An area that was once a thriving hub of iron mining, iron smelting and munitions manufacturing for the civil war. Bricks, tiles were made by the thousands, trains steamed across the region. Now, it is mostly just forested hills cut through by lonely highways going places mostly forgotten. Two lane roads that wind through dark, dense woods eventually taking you to Washington Courthouse, or Nelsonville where you can jump on a real road. Multi lane, controlled access expressway, with bypasses so you don't have to waste your time watching the small parts of America dry up and die. You can hurry to the coast, or the mountains or, in my case, the lake.

And that's the good news, in a depressing way.

Now for the bad news. I have to get through today, tomorrow and all of next week. Somehow I have to find a way to claw, fight and will my way through the next six, or so, days. Then a long weekend After three days off it will be the desperate struggle to get through two and a half days to reach three and half days off. Give me strength.

*Please note the semicolon, I was told never to use one, and then in a class I took on self editing (a practice I am still learning) the teacher said it was alright; the semicolon is back.

Labor Day, Swappers Meet, And Life.

Yesterday was the first day of the long weekend. Having Monday off makes a weekend even more mystical. So, we celebrated by going to the Johnstown Swappers Day, which is actually three days long, but one day is enough, for us, anyway.

Swappers Day is a celebration. It was born around dogs racing across a manmade pond. It became more popular, and soon grew into an immense flea market. An immense flea market that covers acres. An immense flea market that brings thousands of people to the small Central Ohio community.

Food vendors are always a big draw, and Swappers Day is well supplied. Corn dogs, french fries, elephant ears, funnel cakes, fried stuff on a stick, even things that are not normally considered vendor food, chicken and noodles, cornbread and beans. Rows and rows of food, even a booth with Amish people selling homemade pies and cookies. Ridiculously good cookies, too.

What I really like about the event though is the opportunity to walk through miles of vendors, selling little pieces of the past. Small, trivial bits of American history. It might be a Jetson lunchbox, or a Nintendo game. There are things from modern history, many may say junk, but these are the artifacts of our time. 

In many ways it is a museum. For five dollars you an walk down the grass and dirt aisles and view the artifacts arranged randomly on folding tables or stacked on shelves. A blogger whose work I admire greatly once raised the question of what people from the past would think if transported to the present. A wonderful exercise, but these events make me wonder what future archaeologists and anthropologists will think when they unearth the minutia of the present.

It is as diverse as it is large.  Order and chaos in adjacent booths. One set of tables arranged neatly, product lined up straight, grouped logically, prices easy to see and understand. Two steps away is a jumble of used things, dropped from a box, and scattered by hand into one single, homogeneous layer of yesterdays dreams, and today's memories.

Guns, everywhere, guns, people walking around with rifles, pistols, shotguns, all displayed proudly. All for sale or trade. Guns laid out on tables, standing on racks, nestled comfortably in foam lined cases. You could not swing a dead cat without hitting somebody with a gun. Being from a small suburb of a large city it always surprises me when I am around that many guns. And knives, there were knives for sale everywhere. From the decorative knives that sell for a few dollars with aluminum like blades (whose only real function is to provide a few dollars to the seller) to the utilitarian, specialty knives made for cleaning game. Almost every bladed weapon imaginable, bayonets, machetes, swords, all for sale, all being carried around proudly. As a pacifist who worries about the condition of the world, all of these implements of destruction are a little unnerving. What is the fascination?

It was a very good day. We started with a good breakfast and before we left the event we had over

11,000 steps. Plus, there is something comforting about moving through a mass of knotted humanity. A herd like solidarity being around that many people. Moving along the path of least resistance, and stopping to admire the relics of days recently passed.  It is almost hypnotic listening to the bargaining over price, and intent. “Make me an offer,” was a common phrase. And offers were made, rejected and countered. Here is the best part, I am going to make a video, sort of a practice video for my big trip to Tennessee. If it is worth sharing (and it will be, it might not be worth watching, though) I will. Until then, have a great day, find a festival around you and dive right in, you will be happy you did.