The Booth and a Basket

This weekend is Bikes, Blues and BBQ.  There are 500,000 people coming through town starting today and everything will be packed.  They stay in nice hotels and eat at all the local restaurants, shop everywhere from the Malls to Flea Markets.  It is a huge weekend for the economy and that is a very thing!  You might think, as I did, that someone on a motorcycle couldn't buy much. But, most of those people don't ride their motorcycles here - they have fancy enclosed trailers for them and SUV's to pull that.  They buy a lot!

Because of that, I made my weekly trip to the booth to straighten up.  I don't talk about the booth much because I don't make much money at it.  I always make my rent and my commission and get a check too.  So, I think that is successful enough.  I have been there a year now and each month my checks get a bit bigger.  August was my best month yet, despite being told that August is the worst month for booths, the heat being unbearable and me hardly even stopping by to straighten it all month.  When I stopped today. a lady was checking out and had bought about fifty dollars of things in my booth.  Thanks lady!

Whenever I straighten my booth, I have to take a look around.  There are three other booths that sell the sort of things that I like and they have interesting displays, so I like to look for inspiration.  My booth is really just shelves full of items since I prefer to sell smalls.  I try to arrange the shelves and have themes - green pottery here, Razorback items here, toys here, etc.  But it really is just shelf upon shelf of stuff. 

In one of the newest booths, I spotted a big basket full of vintage Christmas ornaments.  I started digging in it because I love vintage Christmas.  (You like the way I say that like it is a big surprise to everyone?  Whaaaaaaaaaaat?  You like vintage Christmas?  I didn't know THAT!  ha)  So, I dug and I dug and even though I didn't really find anything that I consider to be truly vintage, I dug all the way to the bottom removing each ornament as I came to it.  Suddenly, the basket was empty and I realized that I was looking at an incredibly old basket. 

I held my breath as I looked for a tag, because often, things like that are marked DISPLAY ONLY (I am guilty of that myself) and not for sale.  But, this tag said, "Antique Basket" on the front.  Uh-Oh, Antique is never a good word to see as that means $$$,  I flipped the tag over and it said $5.00.  Holy crap!  S-O-L-D!  It is really the biggest buttock basket that I have ever seen.  That's what it's called.  Honestly.

I love the feel of a truly old primitive basket. The wooden handle is slick and worn from years of use. It has repaired areas - people used to repair items and make them last instead of tossing them out like we do now.

I already have a smaller one and this one matches it beautifully. 

I may have to think on this one - old baskets command high prices.  But I really love it so.  I might enjoy it awhile and then let it go.  In any case, I think it was $5.00 well spent.