13012N, Mill Road Spokane, Washington 99218
For several years my husband has dreamed of our attending some
of the larger swap meets as soon as we ‘were ‘free’
from our responsibilities as community college instructors. His
enthusiasm for attending these swap meets was fueled by the
numerous smaller ones we were able to attend on weekends and in the
summers, so when the time arrived last June for us to begin a new
phase of our lives called ‘retirement,’ the first thing he
said to me was ‘next May we will be able to attend the
Portland, Indiana, and the Waukee, Iowa, swap meets!! Won’t
that just be great?’ (Oh, sure!)
When we found that we could couple these two swap meets with an
antique gas engine auction in Minnesota, he was in seventh
heaven.
We loaded the camper, hooked up the horse trailer (because
it’s the only trailer we have, and how would we get all our
purchases home without a trailer, honey?), withdrew from our
savings account for all those purchases, and took off.
The auction in Minnesota was held on a beautiful farm;
everything was clean and we were provided with a nice pasture in
which to camp overnight. The next morning, as the auction
progressed, I noticed that No. 112 (my husband’s number) was
being called out frequently, and by the end of the afternoon when
we were loading’ our ‘things,’ we noticed that our
trailer was approaching three-quarters full, and we still had two
swap meets to go! What a great time we were having already!!
We greeted relatives and did a little sightseeing as we
journeyed to the first swap meet at Portland, Indiana. We arrived
and were anxious to start ‘swap -ping.’ Actually, we were
only buying, not swapping, but you get the idea. As my husband
located an appropriate place for the camper for the evening, I
checked out the bathroom situation very nice, clean, flushers and
plenty of stalls. I’m impressed!! Maybe this won’t be so
bad after all.
When I got back to the camper, my excited husband was ready to
roll. We started down the first aisle of rusted, broken, bent,
unpainted treasures. As I began to look and wonder just what made
this stuff so wonderful, I could hear my husband shouting at me for
some reason, but something behind me was making so much racket that
I couldn’t hear him. All of a sudden, he reached out and
grabbed my arm and yanked me onto the grass, just as a Cub Cadet
riding lawn mower rolled by, with its driver gawking in the
opposite direction. Man! I was almost run over by a lawn mower! I
can just hear my husband trying to explain it later on the phone to
our kids and grandkids! ‘Well, kids, Grandma died of a gaping
lawn-mower wound while enjoying herself at the swap meet. She was
having a great time, though, right up to the very last. What a way
to go!’
But back to my story. I wondered why on earth that guy was
driving that thing down the middle of the path? Then, as I looked
around, I saw all manner of noisy, slow-moving ‘vehicles’
that turned out to be lawn mowers, golf carts, high-boy tractors,
homemade three-wheelers, etc. all driven by perfectly
healthy-looking men. Why weren’t they walking like the rest of
us? Didn’t they need the exercise just as much as we did? I
then realized that they all had the same look on their faces the
look of an eight-year-old boy who had finally found a reason to
play all day with his prized toy. When my husband looked a little
longingly at the guys playing, I reminded him how much better it
was to be ‘heart healthy’ and walk around the grounds. I
even told him that I recognized that it would be better for me,
too. However, I had no intention of walking around all day; I had a
good novel in the camper. As the day progressed, the purchases
mounted up, and my husband’s happiness could not be measured.
He had lots of help from fellow ‘swappers’ when he was
loading his buys into the horse trailer, mostly in the form of
‘You paid HOW much for that? I bought one last year for only
half that much.’
We took off for our next destination Waukee, Iowa. However, I
had no fear of almost being run over by anything there because
their advertisement in the April issue of Gas Engine Magazine
clearly stated ‘Small motorized vehicles limited to handicap
only (enforced 5 MPH speed limit).’ People would be walking on
the grounds there!! We arrived on the Wednesday before the first
official day of the swap meet, which was Friday. Everything was
under way already, and most of the ‘good deals’ were
happening then. We found a campsite, and I immediately checked out
the bathroom situation again not so impressive. Pit toilets, but
running water to wash your hands. I never did quite figure that one
out.
We started down the endless aisles of pieces, parts, whole
‘things’ and miscellaneous merchandise, some of which had
attached notes that read ‘does anyone know what this is?’
We had walked only a few hundred yards, when we were suddenly
honked at by a high-boy tractor carrying a man and his wife, both
of whom looked completely able-bodied to me! As we looked around we
could see that there were all sorts of motorized vehicles, carrying
perfectly healthy people to and from places on the grounds, driving
at speeds much more than 5 MPH; the only conclusion I could draw
was that they had not read the same advertisement that I had. They
did, however, each have a number stuck to the vehicle somewhere, so
if you were accosted by one, you could at least ‘turn in their
number’ to someone. (It was never clear who that might be,
however.)
By Friday, the official start of the swap meet, we were all done
with our ‘swapping’ by noon and headed back to Washington.
We were tired from all our walking, but convinced we were better
off because of it that is until we stopped at the first rest stop.
After sitting for several hours in the truck, we could barely move
because of the cramps in our calves and thighs due to all that
healthy walking. For two-thousand miles, we paid for our healthy
lifestyle each time we stopped. It took several minutes each time
to convince our legs to ‘start.’
All in all, we had a wonderful time on our first retirement trip
and didn’t sustain any permanent injuries, either from
motorized vehicles on the swap meet grounds or from all our
walking. I must close, but what’s that noise I hear through the
window? Oh, yes, it’s my husband starting up his Cub Cadet
riding lawnmower. . . I wonder, if he removed that cutting blade
and put an extra seat on back if we could. . . Oh, no, after
writing this story, I better stick to walking!
