The Buyers and The Sellers

This article may sound slightly different in comparison to my other articles. It is for a literary journalism class that I am taking this summer. I'm struggling to find a narrative voice and to get past the facts of journalism that I've been learning thus far in order to expand my mind and take up this new art form. Here's my first try.

On a gray, soggy Saturday morning while most of the town remains asleep, a group of searchers flock to an open blacktop parking lot. They enter carrying empty baskets and “go green” reusable bags in hopes of filling them with fresh, locally grown goods.

Despite the hanging clouds and misty air, fathers carry young daughters on their shoulders, mothers push their sons in strollers, friends walk at a leisurely pace as do the elderly couples that shuffle side by side. All of them with content smiles and friendly hellos. These are the buyers.

Four rows of tall green pillars supporting plexi glass awnings shelter the local goods. The two outside rows allow drivers in their large white vans, rusty pick up trucks and small steel trailers to back in and unload their treasures onto the old wooden tables covered with multicolored fabric, tarps or worn out tablecloths. The middle rows are for the smaller displays showcased on makeshift tables made from stacking milk crates and laying a piece of plywood across. It doesn’t matter what the presentation looks like anyways, it’s what’s being displayed that truly matters. These are the sellers.

The buyers and the sellers almost always interact in the same manner at every booth down every row. The seller automatically says, “Hi there! How are you doing this morning?!” as soon as any buyer walks up to his or her booth. The buyer then replies, “Just fine thank you. How are you?” They make small talk about the rhubarb or the honey or the petunias until the buyer decides to give in and make the purchase or walk away and look for better, cheaper cabbage or eggs or radishes.

The chit-chat creates a low, steady, even cadence that remains constant throughout the small market. The kettle corn popping like a hundreds tiny firecrackers occasionally accompanies the tone.

The earthy smell of dirt and herbs compete with the sweet buttery scent of the kettle corn near the entrance. The sellers of the beloved sweet treat dress their role. A chubby, short woman with thick curly hair wears a long black dress with tiny yellow and red flowers printed on it and a red apron that has faded to a pink. Her partner and the stirrer of the kettle wears a white linen shirt, brown leather vest topped with cowboy hat with a feather stuck on the side.

Their period dress looks ironically similar to the Amish family that sits quietly at their booth on the opposite end of the market. Two young boys wearing similar hand stitched black pants and gray shirts, both with identical black hats stand quietly guarding the onions for sale, “2:00 for a bunch.” Their older sister, a shy, small framed girl draped in a long pink dress and her long golden hair tucked under a white bonnet stands amidst the radishes, also “2:00 for a bunch.” The bearded father and grandfather in straw hats leave, without saying a word to the children, to walk and converse with some interested buyers. The children continue to stand watch over their small selection of vegetables laid upon the wooden table with rusted metal legs.

At this end of the rows the earthy scent mixes with the aroma of brewing coffee and stench of cooking sauerkraut. A man nearby interrupts the monotonous symphony of the marketplace as he loudly exclaims, “DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT CARBON CAP AND TRADE AND HOW MUCH CARBON DIOXIDE CAN BE CUT DOWN!” The buyers and the sellers seem not to notice and go about their usual business.

The rows become a blur of the sellers and their products. Carnations blend with marigolds that blend with cabbage and beans and mushrooms and peppers and lettuce and cheese and eggs. The buyers start to look the same. The brunette moms, long hair loosely pulled back into a pony tail, wear no makeup and tote their children around with their now half full baskets. The khaki dads wearing plain t-shirts and sandals take their kids to get a dollar bag of kettle corn.

An occasional buyer or seller interrupts this blur. Like the boisterous black women in a lime green skirt with matching jacket and white high heels. Or like the bee women that sells every imaginable product that can be made from bees. Her table is crammed with beeswax lip gloss, soap, candles, honey sticks, honey comb and one gallon, half gallon, jars or plastic bears full of honey. Or the old Amish man that sells twelve different kinds of tomatoes including brown berry, Cherokee purple, yellow pear and black krim. Or the chili lady with her hair in braided pigtails and pajama bottoms printed with red, yellow and green chili peppers who sells strings of red chilies hanging from a large wooden fixture made for that specific purpose.

These slight interruptions are accompanied by upbeat music from a band that recently set up their instruments and speakers. An older hippie man with a scraggly beard and long brown hair strums his acoustic guitar. His playing, however, is drowned out by the younger geeky kid’s accordion. A lanky women dictates to the contra dancers, that have come with the band, over the microphone. “Put-her-on-the-right-we’ll-do-the-dance-one-more-time-now-do-si-do-and-swing” she staccatos as her voice moves up and down.

Soon enough the band and dancers become a blend of the market as well. They are sucked into the low, even tempo of the rows, the goods, the green, the buyers and the sellers.

An hour slowly moseys by and the sun occasionally peaks from the behind the clouds to play, but is quickly tucked away again. The buyers bags and baskets have been filled with the locally grown peppers, personally roasted coffee beans and hand made elk patties. The sellers goods are now sparse on their plywood tables. The tall awnings shelter over what is now becoming the empty blacktop parking lot again. The tone starts to fade to silence. But next Saturday the buyers will come to fill their bags and baskets and the sellers will display their produce and the monotonous, earthy, peaceful rhythm will continue.