Y'all dunn asked fer it now!

There I was again at the Nashville Flea Market over the weekend. Can you believe it? I can't get enough of this place.

Mom and Dad met me there, accompanied by friends. They with their close friends Janet and Eddie, and I with my gal pals Libby and Lauren. We went down for the day. And what a day it was!

Lauren and I picked Libby up in Elizabethtown and got to the Flea Market around 9:30. We found a nice little parking spot and met up with my parents. Of course, we had to go see Steele first (see the entry titled "Good Stuff Displayed Bad"). It's a good thing we did. I thought Lauren was going to buy him out right then and there. She found herself an antique vacuum cleaner base painted turquoise (which she will use for her outdoor fountain), an iron coffee table with hotel flooring for its tabletop, a turqouise metal scroll for the wall, a brass lamp, and she was given a cross made of iron pipes. Yard art!

I personally found my dream decor, which I suspect will end up being my husband's worst nightmare: Three already-wired lamps made from vintage tin pails. Two were once used to hold lard (I have a feeling he will have an issue with the word "lard" on a functional piece in our living room), and one that used to hold peanuts. I asked Lauren if they were kitschy, to which she replied, "No. They would be kitschy if they were fake. These are dirty and real." Touche.

One of the most treasured memories I have of the Nashville Flea Market (albeit my memories only date back to last November) are that of the little hut that sells fresh roasted, hot-buttered corn in a husk. There, you can nibble away on something relatively healthy- I mean, it IS a vegetable- and you can also refresh your thirst with a nice cup of ORANGEADE. I know, why didn't I think of this? Someone actually said to me, "Isn't that just... orange juice?" Oh, but it's not. It's made the same way lemonade is. With sugar and water. It's divine. I had soon added two fans to the Orangeade Fan Club and it was only about one hour after the first cup that Libby offered to go back and get herself and Lauren seconds. So away she went.

Now, I am about to tell you what happened to my mother, Lauren and myself while Libby was off refilling her newfound obsession. This is not, in any way, an exaggeration (ask them for their version- I can assure you it will be the same). You will almost not believe what happened next. The three of us took off on foot, down a 45-degree angle hill to retrieve our vehicles and drive them back up the road to load our new treasures. You must have a pass to do this (which we did) and there is little to no traffic here for that reason. But alas, there we were hugging the curb of the road, walking to our cars. Let me paint the picture- we were on a paved road that was wide enough to fit three cars across. Plenty of room.

So as we are walking, I hear the loud beep of a car horn. Naturally, your first instinct is to think that you are in their way out of your own stupidity, or that you are in their way because of theirs and either way you might want to move. Well, when I turned to see that this car was riding down the middle of the road and was loaded with 4 heavy, middle-aged women holding small children in their laps it occurred to me they were just being obnoxious by honking at us innocent curb-huggers. It made me mad. And I'm a big fan of fairness, so I simply uttered, "What are you honking at?" No surprise- all four windows were down, but to my surprise, the driver was an angry mid-life-crisis road rager who must have had a target on our three little skirts (we did look cute, as Lauren pointed out and derived she must have been jealous). But here we are thinking I would have just uttered something to tick them off as they drove away. But no.

This crazy loon slams on her brakes- on the 45-degree hill- and proceeds to give everyone in the car whiplash while doing it. The two kids are thrown into the backs of the front seats and the car comes to a screeching halt. As the car stops, we hear these words from the lost soul of a woman in the front seat: "Y'all dunn asked fer it now!" I look at Mom and Mom looks at me and Lauren is already trucking it. It turns out Lauren was deathly (rightfully so) afraid of this woman using her vehicle as a weapon. But at this point, the redneck driver was flinging her own seatbelt off of her (never mind the kids- just save yourself) and GETTING OUT OF THE CAR! Mom and I are thinking "What exactly did we ask for?" And I'm mumbling to Mom, "Do you have your pistol?"

Meanwhile, we make it a good ways down the hill before we turn back to see this nutjob standing in the middle of our nice, wide road, in a middle linebacker position. She has her hands cupped around her mouth and her feet are nicely planted in a rather manly-looking plie position. And she's yelling, "I was TRYIN' to tell y'all to GIT out of the RO-AD!!!" At this point, there was nothing we could do but... laugh. And laugh we did. We laughed all the way to the shady spot under a tree where we determined the deadly vehicle would have plenty of things to run into before it ran into us. It took a good minute and a half for us to regain our composure and walk the rest of the way to the car. Only then, did we see the weighed-down nissan make its way out of the grassy parking area and disappear on the other side the guard shack. We're pretty sure they sat there for a minute plotting our deaths. But we didn't care.

We were living on the edge of our curb. And whatever we "asked for" was worth every redneck second.