I made my yearly pilgrimage to Brimfield today for the annual postcard show that goes along with the much larger (read: totally insane) antique fair there. The postcard dealers set up at buildings on either end of the mile of antique dealers, so I parked at one end and walked the length to the other, checking out some of the stalls along the way. The amount of stuff for sale was just astounding, and the dealer booths seem to just recede into the distance, discouraging all but the heartiest of collectors from discovering the far reaches (check out the aerial shot). Plenty of strange stuff to examine, even in the few stalls I checked out.



Yes, that is a wrought-iron gazebo, decorated with a set of steer horns, flanked by an accordionist and a Statue of Liberty lamp.



Kind of spooky.

I came across this clock, which immediately caught my eye because we have one just like it, only in a darker shade, at home in Anchorage. The lamp on the table in front of it is similar to something we had on the wall, too – did they raid our house?



I managed to find a few new postcards, even after six or seven years of buying every new one I came across. The same dealers who never had anything still don’t have anything, and the same dealers who managed to have a little something new each time came through again. I chatted with one dealer who recognized me – “Hey, Mr. Amherst…” – looking a little older each time I see him. I still want to make a documentary about postcard dealers and collectors; I wonder when I’ll ever have a chance, before the generation of dealers I know has passed on.

Almost as interesting and numerous as the antique stalls are the food choices available at Brimfield. Ben & Jerry’s, Del’s Water Ice, Herrell’s Ice Cream, every kind of fried dough, dough ball, flan, and slush concotion known to man. I decided against those, and instead enjoyed some locally-brewed “dark bottle” root beer and a kielbasa from the Mr. Kielbaska cart from Worcester, but I passed on the delicious treats these folks were advertising.