Good Stuff Displayed Bad

It doesn't really get any better than this. I mean, look at this guy. I just had to use this photo- Jesus, sign and all- because it inspired my title for this entry. What a great marketing scheme. First of all, Jesus is watching. Second of all, don't underestimate this shopping experience. Jesus would never underestimate a scraggly old man selling the contents out of his wife's junk drawer. Not pictured: the contraption with costume rings tied down by threading bolts on the other side of a crate to discourage five-finger discounts. Genius.

Mom and I spent the weekend at the Nashville Flea Market, a location slowly becoming one of my favorite places in the world (added to a list that includes Rosemary Beach, Clay County AL, and my own kitchen with a good recipe)... I know you're not supposed to end a paragraph with parentheses, but I have to move on.

Saturday morning we drove to the Loveless Cafe for breakfast. http://www.lovelesscafe.com/ This restaurant has been covered by Southern Living, Martha Stewart, and just about every other expert on good home-cooking. The food was great. The art was better. I was in the mood to decorate. After a brief stopover at a TJ Maxx to replace the tent dress I was wearing that kept flying up in the Tennessee wind, we were off to find our treasures. And that we did.

Upon arrival, Mom and I discovered a closeout tent of oil paintings. We were probably a little out of control, but I had good intentions for all of it. I bought seven landcapes that remind me of places I've been, a cowboy for our bedroom (because everyone needs a cowboy in the bedroom... what?) and numerous gifts (for Pop and GG) and a woman who I think (rather delusionally, I'm sure) looks like me. Mom got a few landscapes that look like Clay County, an abstract of musicians (because she is one) and one of a woman in a kitchen with a bowl of apples, who we decided we would claim was a depiction of our beautiful Italian aunt, Sophia (a lie, in case you don't know that we are just a bunch of Alabamians with no clue of our ancestors' place of origin)... There I go again. More parentheses. I knew I was a commaholic, but I didn't know about my parentheses problem. Anyway...

We go there for the stuff. But mostly we go there for the characters. Let me explain. I am a storyteller... Don't like the story I'm telling? That's okay. All I'm saying is that it's important for me to have a story. Seldom do I not recall an old memory or something that relates me to what you are saying. Everything is relevant. And when it comes to finding trinkets and tchotchkes, I don't want it if there's not one. If you come to my house for the first time, I'll ask you if you want the house tour or the story tour. I love collecting art, and every single picture/painting on my walls has a story to tell. Some things are worth nothing, but everything to me. Some things look as if they are worth nothing, but will knock your socks off if I told you the value. Take, for example my Mose T watermelon I bought directly from the artist in college with money I got back from selling a watch. See, there's a story. I paid $92. Sadly, he died last year. It is now worth over a thousand.

Let me tell you the story about Steele. Mom and I discovered him on a cold November day last year, selling everything from Oriental rugs to retro green lunch trays. He is cool. And he knows what's cool. If you admire, say, a wheeled cart at ankle level he'll tell you the same one is selling in Pottery Barn for $700. http://www.potterybarn.com/products/p12515/index.cfm?pkey=call%2Dcoffee%2Dside%2Dconsole%2Dtables Only, Pottery Barn's doesn't have a history (my insertion, not his). We were enamored by his personality and his ability to carry on with us as a salesman should. Unassuming, friendly, and just plain original. If the stuff he's selling wasn't cool before, he makes it that way. I'm not talking about paint and refinishing. I'm talking about character. He has it. He radiates it.

He sets up once a month in the same spot and leans his goods up to a trailer. On it, he hangs handmade crosses constructed of iron, wheels, barbed wire, etc. Back in November, Mom and I learned of his refusal to ever sell one of the crosses. When we asked him why, he said that he could never ask someone to pay him for one, after everything that cross had done for him. Later that day, we witnessed an unforgettable exchange.

Two hispanic women with small children had stopped to admire the collection of hanging crosses. In broken English one of them asked how much one would cost. Steele asked her if she liked it, and if she wanted it, but she just kept asking "How much?" He took the cross down from its post and handed it to her. "Here," he said. "But if you take this, I want you to know what it means. You should know what that cross has done for me." The woman and her friend were flabbergasted. Through the language barrier I think they still thought they owed him something, possibly an amount to which they had not yet agreed. But he kept insisting that she take it without any payment. The women still tried to refuse, but Steele explained that what he could now give them for free would one day be priceless.

Now that's what I call a character with character. And his good stuff is displayed good.