Full Load

Another day packed with stimulus, sometimes confusing, quickly moving to exhaustion. I tried yesterday to take photos and make contact with some of the other human-powered market-goers for an article I hope to write. Adding that to my forays for food and produce filled my day to bursting, and this morning I'm moving slow. Luckily it is a perfectly gentle, quiet day and I even have open windows.

I weighed my trailer load as I took things off last night: 407 pounds. I had been thinking it was about 300. It's far too much, though the displays looked great and variety is one of the keys to my success. The weight didn't even include the groceries I brought home and the ten pounds or so of stuff I sold. Time to leave something home, the longsleeve shirts or the hoodies or the extra color choices or the camera.

I've been thinking about Bob Walden, one of the vendors who used to haul his crudely-finished kids furniture to the Market from Springfield, on a bike cart. He's featured in what I think was local writer William L. Sullivan's first book, called The Cart Book, published in 1983. I have a copy because I am in it too, and it's a cool slice-of-Eugene from that time. Lots of young Market people and Eugene people are featured in it, as well as many of the carts that led to the ones familiar to our town now.

Bob was 72 in that interview, and Bill tells about the little scrap-material xylophones Bob used to spread out on his little tables for kids to play during the day, which he said was his real pay. I'm looking at one of the little rocking chairs I bought for my son, paying less than $10 as I recall. Since my son was born in 1990, I guess Bob must have still been there then, which means he was still hauling that trailer in his 80's. I wonder now how much that inspired me.

I remember my ex- coming home with a car for me when I was pregnant, a car I didn't want and grudgingly adapted to. I still have the same car, and hope to keep it for those loads I really can't do without it. There are many places it is just too inconvenient to bike to, and after my surgery I appreciated it a lot once I could drive. Bob had a car too, and I'm thinking he just kept it in case he ever got old. He said "If I'm as old as I act, I'm 25."

His cart was a homemade affair of steel or aluminum plate and tubing, longer than mine and with what looks like a bike-tube hitch. The hitch I have on my hauler, one of the most handy features, is a superior piece of gear, one thing that makes the price worth it. Plus the powdercoat frame and diamond plate deck of my trailer are just so slick that I don't have to hide it in my setup. I'm so proud of my deal, but Bob hauled 260 pounds, he said, and to be realistic, I need to develop a process for getting my load down to less than 200 if I really want to be doing this in my 80's. Raven and I agreed yesterday that was our goal, as we admired his new popup. I might get one, but I don't know about adding 35 pounds to my load for something that won't even do that well in the rain, and technically requires weights to hold it down.

Plus, everybody has those, and one thing I am attached to in my life is what I would call my maverick tendencies if McPalin hadn't ruined the term. I like resourcefulness and doing more with less and being flexible and unique. My DIY is a huge part of my self-image. I'm a throwback. I haven't gotten the full use out of my white fire-resistant tarp yet, and I do like the way those drain off the back, and the way the old-style booths can be lifted one piece at a time.

I'm not sure I can handle the effort of the pop-up popping up. Lots of people get a person at each corner to help them, but I don't like to ask people to help me set up. I suppose if I were next to Raven every week we could help each other, but I think I'll stick with my classic booth. I know how it works, and I only need it on rainy days. It fits on my cart, sort of. I can put it up myself, though it worked better with two, and I think of my ex- when I use it. A two-person team can do a really efficient market set-up. I'm tempted to ask someone to be a team with me for the booth setting-up Olympic event at the Big Birthday Party (May 9 at the Park Blocks), but actually, I only have so many set-ups left in this old back, so I am trying to sensibly pass. I'll be a cheerleader instead. Not that I will be recreating the leaps of my cheerleader past.

Bob said, "The culture has made it compulsory to work for the other guy. It's a new kind of serfdom--to a materialistic society. Sure, people say they've got to make money so they can eat, but they even eat too much. I don't think we're as happy as we would be..." He thought a money-less world would work, and some parts of it might, but I don't think we can throw that far back. Still, he found his place at Market like so many of us who wanted something different. We made it so, despite the compromises we have to make to do it now (liability insurance, fire extinguishers in every booth, security, credit cards, inspectors, rules and more rules as we come up with new ways to get around the old rules.) You can't do it with a blanket now, though I guess you can still do it with a wagon and a sign, and people still try every kind of minimal setup you could imagine. Not that I'm against minimal. I've tried lots of ways to get out of stepping up to what looks like hard work, but usually found that it ended up being harder to do it simple than it was to do it conventional. Not always.

He was a shy guy and an oddity and I do try for a little less of that eccentricity in my own life, but I remember my affinity for Bob and my grief at the memorial set up at his favorite spot back in those niches in the stone walls on the west block. I guess he and another octogenarian, Carol Jacobs, the mathematician who sold triangles of cloth made into a multipurpose tool for carrying everything (The Burden Cloth) are two of my Market Heroes.

More than 10% of Saturday Market vendors have been members for more than 20 years. We're there for as long as we can be. We work to make it simpler, lighter, and easier each year, and we get more help from our family and neighbors and maybe new neighbors as we move to the 4x4s as Carol did. There are lots of ways to do it, and I have faith that the Market Board and staff will continue to work toward sheltering us and assisting us when they can. I think Bob got a free booth space in those last years. I probably won't get that, and I have a long way to go until I hit my 80's, but I don't object to free booth spaces for people who bring so much history with them. It might add up to way too many of us though.

Sixty isn't old! I have changed a bit since the days shown in the book. So has the Market (we were on the butterfly lot then) and so has the technology. My old cart was made by someone who runs a very successful company that now focuses on accessibility in construction, and has changed the world for the disabled and elderly. My first cart then erected into a triangular booth made of two-by-twos (didn't hold up, though it was an elegant concept) and I did it with a car for lots of years in the middle when I had a child and a playpen and a big crop of t-shirts. My folding table of last year has morphed into my present boothless setup that depends on zipties (even bungies have been replaced). Each piece of that rack weighs 26 pounds, I discovered last night, so maybe I have to go further. I talked with Elise after market about figuring out a way for her to turn her shelves into a ramp so she can get up the steps, because there is always an elegant solution if you keep looking for it.

Bob's gone, but his little chair hasn't aged a bit. I search it now for remnants of his personality, the familiar signature, the way he didn't varnish the center of the underside of the seat (waste not, want not), and the way he carefully carved the spokes and rails, stopping short of removing the pin-holes from the lathe, and every splinter. The marks of his tools and hands are all over the chair. He said in the article he spent five hours on a chair he sold for $5. I wonder how many people will work for $1 an hour today.

I know I will, if it means I can still stand in the sun on the Park Blocks and watch little kids smile. It's a really, really good life. Thank you, Saturday Market, for providing so many with a home and family.

Appreciation to Tyler, my fabricator from Human Powered Machines, who stopped by yesterday, and for all the others who make it all work, protect it, or just watch and approve.

And thanks, Bob, for doing it your own way.