A Trip to Trump Country

 Twice a year, for the past several years, I have attended the Dublin Lions Club Flea Market in Dublin, Virginia. Dublin is in southwest Virginia which even a Democrat would concede is a Republican stronghold. Pulaski County is as conservative as Fairfax County is communist. Yeah, I like to visit there.

I arrived there on Friday to set up my collection of fine wares and assorted stuff. It always takes longer to set it all up than it takes to toss it all back into the truck and trailer and go home when the sale is over.

The Flea Market opened at 7:00 AM and it only took about thirty minutes for the first liberal to show up at my spaces. It was a woman who appeared to have been a "hippie" in the 1960's and had never changed. I won't say that she looked a little rough, but my initial impression was that she looked like was working now as a curb girl at a crack house.  I was talking to a guy who is a regular customer who usually buys something from me at the sale.

I had a stack of Civil War books that I was trying to sell. There was a sign on the table that read, "Civil War Books. Buy them before Biden bans them!" She was in front of that spot and said, "What does this mean? Biden doesn't have anything to do with this." I replied, "Where do you want to start? Do we start with the renaming of military bases? Do we talk about tearing down statues? How about the desecration of graves? How about the banning of Southern symbols?" She was visibly excited and screamed, "Biden doesn't have anything to do with any of that." I said, "He's the President of the United States. He has something to do with everything that happens in his administration." She then screamed some incoherent phrase. I told, "Honey, you're out of your league here. Move on down the line!" Then she screamed, "Fuck You!". By then, I was laughing and told her, "You must have had to think for days to come up with that!" She flipped me and stormed off. She was probably running late for that job at the crack house.

The guy who I was talking to before her rant was still standing there. He said to me, "I have pulled out my phone to record all kinds of stupid stuff. Finally, something happens worth recording and I just stood and watched with my phone still in my pocket." I just laughed and told him, "Maybe next time." He said, "I'm pretty sure she's not coming back." Mercifully, she was not seen again.

Apparently, there is some kind of minimum for liberal stupidity in that area. A couple of years ago, a guy told me that Trump had met with Putin 53 times at the White House. He also claimed that information was available on the White House logs. I told him that he was obviously bad with math. He hasn't been back, either.

I sell old Life magazines. They range from 1937 to 1972 in publication dates. I also have a few Look magazines and some Saturday Evening Posts. Earlier this year, I acquired a large collection of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and Mechanix Illustrated magazines from the 1940 and 1950's. I like to tell people that the future can be found by reading the history of the past. I also tell people that history is circular. A guy is his thirties was asking me about the old magazines and I explained that to him. He seemed a little skeptical about my claim. So, I said, "Let me show you." I picked up a Look magazine from 1962 with a Brazilian girl in a bikini on the cover. That wasn't what I wanted to show him, but it makes it easy to find in the pile of magazines. At the top of the front cover are a couple of headlines. One is "Washington, DC Crime-sick Capital City". Then I pulled out a 1972 Life magazine where the cover story was "Sky High Meat Prices". He just looked and said, "Okay." He bought four magazines.

I park my cargo trailer in my spaces at the market, so I don't have to walk far if I need anything. I had a 3X5 flag that read "Trump Nation" on one side and a 3X5 flag on the other side that read "Get on the Trump Train".   I had no negative comments. However, on Saturday morning, a guy walked up and asked, "Is that your trailer with the flags?" I told him that it was. He said, "I want to buy something from you." He bought about twenty dollars' worth of wrenches. It pays to advertise!

I was telling the vendor beside me, next to my trailer, about that incident. He told me that several people thought that it was his flag and had complimented him on it. He pointed out that lots of people had told him, "I am voting for the felon." One guy said it best with, "I am voting for the felon, not the crook."

Looking forward to the September Flea Market in Dublin.