Road Trip

Three o’clock in the morning.  Ease our way out onto the interstate, car cup coffee and Mary Jane sleeps under the van blanket for the first couple hours. Road trip to California. Kind of a rush. Except for no seasickness, I hadn't felt that way since hunting for king salmon in my little fishing boat thirty years before. Chasing boyhood dreams back then, middle-age fantasies now. Reality didn't live up to one's hopes in either case but we sure had hella fun trying.

‘04 and ‘05 the first Sunday every month we packed up the show kit and drove eight hundred sixty miles down to the Alameda Point Antique Faire. Twenty trips in two years.

We got the idea from a colorful old school dealer at Fremont market. Crazy George and his partner Nancy never missed a show in Alameda. Lots of times when we had cold March rain on the street in Seattle they got sunny and sixty-five in San Francisco. Our sales numbers at Fremont tended to be better on the weeks George and Nancy were in California, but they assured us that an average day in Alameda could easily be three or four times a good day at Fremont, plus they always found lots of cool things for resale shopping along the way through Oregon. What’s not to like about that? Mary Jane worked on building the inventory for a few months before we had enough to make the trip pay, then we reserved a space, loaded the van and hit the road. The first trip sometime in the early spring, hills still green along I-505. This business is all about finding things to sell. Always on the lookout for something that would make the feature segment on Antique Road Show, Mary Jane mostly finds the kind of things middle-age folks remember from their grand mother's house and of course anything MidCentury Modern. The trips to California were as much about shopping new territory along the way as doing the Shows on Sunday. 

Loading the van with the entire show kit and enough inventory to fill the space even if we didn't find a single thing along the way, then leaving room for two days buying didn't come without the occasional argument between the two of us DON'T BUY THAT NO WAY IT WILL FIT ON THE VAN and it's fifty dollars right now, five hundred in our pocket before daylight next morning.

Shopping our way south on I-5 through Oregon we quickly saw that every town has about the same junker community.  A mix of dealers who make most or all of their living buying and selling, collectors and specialty dealers looking for whatever it is that they are into, and a few folks who just come out for the fun of the hunt.  Waiting in line ahead of opening time at a sale everyone is friendly, chatty sometimes real friendships develop, but when that door opens its GAME ON.  No one says a word. One almost thinks of hunters in the woods, quickly grab a treasure hidden in junk glassware find some 14k in a pile of scrap jewelry hardly pay attention to what you really got until later. You don't know the bracelet is gold, something about it just caught your eye, same with the treasure from the glassware table. Looked interesting but you didn't know it for sure that it is 'something' until later research.

That kind of skill at hunting is called having an eye.  The highest compliment in this business is she's got a good eye.  Mary Jane has a good eye.  I don't have an eye at all.

At home or on the road, Mary Jane uses local shopping rags online classified ads to set the next days itinerary.    She makes a list of the sales that look interesting on a yellow pad, in order of opening times.  Addresses and a word or two descriptions - jewelry or whatever.  Still have boxes of those pads, mileage deduction documentation.

At home, she usually goes out shopping alone. Thursdays and Fridays I'm doing school jobs, Saturday mornings I worked on eBay ads. Kept Google Earth running in the background so I could locate her on the map and give directions when she called in lost.

On the road, we worked the same except it's me riding shotgun with the yellow pad and laptop running a local street map.  We never had a GPS, one little flip phone. On the freeway, we pretty much-shared driving fifty-fifty but she took the wheel around town hunting sales.  I'm too slow and don't take direction well. Fine with me.

Alameda weeks we had the van loaded and hit the road early enough Friday to be first in line at an early opening estate sale in the Eugene Springfield area.  I took first watch at the wheel while MJ slept then she took over through Portland and on down into the Walammet valley.  Spent the rest of the morning until elevenish going through the list of sales, then always stop off at a large Goodwill store in Eugene where we scored big time more than once.

By noon we are on I-5 pointed south again.  Always stopped at a Carl's Jr thirty miles or so along the way, enjoying the best burger ever possible in this world winding our way through the hill country south of Cottage Grove.  Tried out a local Carl's Jr burger a time or two but it just wasn't the same.

Soon as we got down into a more populated area we started taking the off-ramps looking for garage sale signs.  Scored some designer mid-century modern furniture following one of those signs.  Can't for the life of me remember how I got that big hutch down to the show and then just as the guy from Surfing Cowboys who bought all our mid-century modern asked me the price I dropped one of the glass cabinet doors.  Shatter and I'm saying guess it's a lot less than it was a minute ago.

Friday nights we always stopped at the Quality Inn Medford.  Had the punch card for a free night and we got really good at making waffles at the breakfast bar.  Best part   Sherm's Food 4 Less we called the  Mexican store because we enjoyed hearing Spanish spoken up and down the isles. Relaxing change after a long hectic day. 

Microwave dinners and salad for us in the room relax with TV and a long hot shower. Mary Jane works up tomorrow's itinerary at the laptop on motel wi-fi. 

Saturdays were a repeat of Friday, only this time in the Medford Ashland area, ending at an Albertsons on the south end of Ashland where we got a large cool drink from the in store Starbucks - mine alway a milkshake-like drink that I casually sipped all the way up the hill sometimes pulling out around a big rig in compound low but usually at about truck lane speeds.  Probably go faster if a guy put the peddle to the meddle but an old fisherman doesn't like to push the machine too hard.  She lasts longer between changing bearing liners that way.

Once over the Siskiyou summet we pretty much coasted all the way down into the Bay Area without stopping.  At least not chasing garage sale signs so much, a time or two in Yreka and a time or two in Redding.  We had to hit the hippy food store in Mount Shasta, designer soda pop and killer deli sandwiches and a couple times we found some really cool stuff in that town - half a dozen school room roll down maps I managed to stuff into the van on top of the pile sold before noon next day at eBay prices.

Evening rush back to the city on I-80, stop and go with bikers rattling around between lanes feels like we are in a different country for sure.  Loaded like the Jodes back in '33 we hoped she wouldn't break down somewhere in Oakland before scooting around the corner and under the tunnel out onto a tree-lined boulevard leading to the Marina Village Inn. Room on the water looking toward Oakland a little south of Jack London square.  Sounds and smells of Saturday night at the yacht club next door echoed up and down over the still sunset water.

Microwave dinner and salads again from an Albertsons we passed along the way, restless sleep then three AM we were waiting with a line vans and trucks for the gate at the show to open so we can get in and set up fo the day.

Find our space in the dark, get to work fast.  Carefully worked out gameplan, work together to get everything off the van as quickly as possible, move out to vendor parking before the streets on the lot get too congested. Set up the tables we rented from the market, erect the show tent - those spaces are big enough to have four tents but we only had one. We had a Colman white gas lantern sputtering out harsh white light from the rafters of the tent advertising we were open for business. 

Early buyers come through that show with minors lamps on their foreheads so both hands are free to sort through stuff as we empty our inventory boxes out on to the tables.  Lots of dealers get a space in the back of the market, shop early especially newbies who might not know pricing for that market so well, buy a pile of stuff then take it back to their space when the general public comes in and make a decent profit.  Probably go into their day jobs the rest of the month let others go out every day hunting for the stuff to bring into the market.

When it started to get light we could see the long line of shoppers waiting at the gates.  It seems to me the admission price varied by time.  Higher at the start, then acknowledging that all the really good stuff had been scooped up, the price went down for the nine o'clock arrivals.  Made for a good steady morning of sales for us.  Headlamp shoppers, then the first wave of dealers over from the City and they got money.  After that a steady stream of retail customers who just like old stuff, and that's the part of the day when we made most of our sales.

That kind of selling, all cash and out in the open-air San Francisco skyline in the distance but too busy to look behind the next rube coming into the sideshow.  I wouldn't pretend to know the carnie world but this has lots in common.  Empty lot morphs a city that is gone by supper time, each space inhabited by folks who are as just as much as actors as shopkeepers. Become the character we think the customers want to meet at the antique show.

Most markets stay open until four or five in the afternoon, but Alameda gets done earlier.  By two in the afternoon the party was pretty much over, official closing time at three.  Our inventory, lots of smalls that have to be individually wrapped and packed into the banana boxes.  While we did that some of the dealers around us had packed up and gone making it easier to pull our van next to our space for the final push loading.

My memory works in pictures that are not time-stamped but it took us the better part of three hours to pack up and get on the road.  Sixish on I - 80 heading back out of town.  Fun part, MJ riding shotgun while I dodge Bay Area traffic and she counts cash exactly backward, ones first and on up trying to hold numbers in her head and refuses to listen to suggestions of how to do it right and we end up with a total sales number for the day and you know it is all spent on bills and expenses but it's still fun to pretend to have some money for a few hours at least.

One guy I know claimed that they drove all the way home, a town just south of Seattle after the show, went into work Monday morning.  We never made it any further up the line than Willows, California. Sixteen hours on the go by then and we were fried. Closest motel to the freeway, off-ramp and around the corner into their drive, single-story structure that went off in two directions with dry grass courtyards between the wings.  Looks the same now but must be put to a different use, no label on google earth and the street view sign is fogged out - but then it was a motel and they gave us a discount for returning every month impossible to say how it felt to get into the room, bags of hot McDonald's dinners probably deserved milkshake and some mindless T.V.  Head swirling sleep almost like drunk and the bed became the peak of a roof the slightest wrong move and I'd be tumbling. Or at least that's the way if felt at the time.

Relaxed start Monday morning feeling refreshed with coffee and geedunk from McDonald's easy cruise north with the sunrise heating up the person riding shotgun while the driver still wants some heat.  Lunch again at the organic and expensive deli in Mt Shasta, better fare than the gas station mini-mart where we topped off our tank along the way.

Monday is usually thrift store closing day and there aren't any estate or garage sales early in the week, so we pretty much drove straight through to home without stopping off to shop.  Always hit a small Goodwill in Ashland, driver change time and we couldn't go more and an hour or two without getting out and walking around anyway.  It seemed to me we pulled some western boots and jewelry out of that place.  Maybe not. That part of the business, the stuff we found and sold and where we found it all, is mostly a blur in my mind. Home by evening, good to settle into one's own bed, your own coffee the next morning.

Rest and unload the van Tuesday, then I'd be back at school the rest of the week and MJ out on her usual rounds of thrift stores then the Thursday to Saturday estate sales.  FSM the next Sunday.

In the end, it got to be just too much driving.  Too many miles on the van too many hours on the road for our bodies.  Shopping along the way didn't really turn out to be all that much different than Mary Jane's local territory, at the same time our Fremont Market sales averages were consistently strong enough that it just didn't pay to make the road trips.  Hella fun, but can we really afford to be just having fun and barely breaking even financially?

If a couple had a comfortable retirement income it would be fun to do something like the Alameda show two or three times a year.  Shop the usual sales and thrifts the same as MJ does now, only stockpile everything cool over a few months, then take a leisurely drive down to the Bay Area for the show.  Hang out a few days with friends drive up the coast road that sort of thing.  Pay for the trip and a little for the buying fund would be profitable enough.

The problem with that scenario for me is that one has to have the career first, then retire and at age seventy-two it may be a bit late to get that career started.