Word: flea
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...biggest rummage sale of them all is the "Seven Mile Fair," a rural flea market that sprawls over 50 acres of fallow soybean field near Milwaukee. The fair has attracted as many as 1,000 sellers (who each pay a $3 registration fee) and 100,000 browsers, who haggle over the price of bassinets and branding irons, laundry soap, auto parts, farm tools and bakery goods. Charles L. Niles, who originated the fair and now spends all his time operating it, recalls the time that someone walked into the main office seeking an oxygen mask: "I announced it over...
...curios, antiques and all kinds of gadgets and recyclable junk. For the nostalgia-oriented, who form a big segment of buyers, there are WPA buttons for a dollar, rolls of World War II barbed wire for $35 and 1920s radios for $5. One of the hottest items on the flea market circuit: used blue jeans...
...balanced by harder ironies. In The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, ostensibly written for children, the inhabitants of a fishing vil lage discover a magnificent corpse on the beach, and in marveling at its splendor come to recognize the meanness of their own lives. In another story, a flea-bitten old angel makes a mysterious appearance...
...passengers include retired lawyers, doctors, realtors, a former speechwriter for Franklin D. Roosevelt, a banana exporter from Brazil, a 42-year-old mother of seven from Quebec, and the couple who operate stall 22 at the Flea Market in Nice. But to the obvious disappointment of many passengers, there is hardly a recognizable celebrity to goggle...
Sean O'Casey called Wodehouse "English literature's performing flea." Wodehouse gloried in the phrase, and used it as the title of a volume of reminiscences. If being a performing flea isn't the greatest talent in the world, it is, nevertheless, a talent, and nowadays that's something to be treasured. Genuine performing fleas are, after all, a rarity. We could use a few more...