i want to collect dead people's hair.

Our fair city is currently in the grip of a sleet/snow dusting, and around here this sort of weather signals the coming of the End Times. Everyone is panicking in long lines at the grocery store trying desperately to buy milk and flashlights to ride out the 1.5 hours it takes for the DPW to get out and clear the roads.

I decided to brave the hideously dangerous slush and drive to the monthly antique flea market out at the fairgrounds. As a young heterosexual male who likes to collect antiques, I thought it would be a great day to avoid the big crowds and creepy old people that usually attend these things. What I didn't realize was that the ratio between the creepy old antique dealers themselves and nice normal people shot up dramatically, like when you leave a glass of seawater out in the sun. These people are nice enough, sure, but when I'm looking at a case full of Nazi medals I don't want some swarthy redneck invading my personal space to tell me all about how history got Hitler's intentions all wrong.

Most of these dealers focus on certain genres of old shit. They divide themselves into Dealers of Furniture, Dealers of Old Toys, Dealers of Oddly Sinister Greeting Cards from the 1930s, etc., but my favorites are those vendors who seem to say to the customer "ah fuck it, here's a bunch of old junk on a table, good luck."

It was at one such table that I came across a very, very, very old book full of tiny silver gelatin portraits and braids of hair, the latter being cut off of the former at the moment of death and tied up with a faded ribbon. At one time this book was the chronicle of various branches of a western Virginia family and, apparently, their hair color. Some of the portraits were missing, so all you have is a weird little tuft squashed between two yellowed pages. A crusty old letter was also wedged in there, part of which read (and I am not making this up) "...glad to have gotten yore letter, but hope to see your ugly [garbled] without all the fuss next time you come down," dated 1887. The dealer was asking $95 for this book although they've been carrying it around for at least two years with no takers and seemed surprised that anyone, much less a young [heterosexual] antique seeker, would want to buy it. Yet they would take no haggling on the price.

To my knowledge I've never shoplifted, but I came pretty damn close today and I can't really say why. I suppose it's one of those selfish obsessions that lead you to believe that you are capable of appreciating something's profundity and innate worth while no one else can. It's a delicious feeling of righteousness and frustration when it strikes, but in most cases (like today) it's just a case of self-absorbed bullshit.

Instead I got this 1896 collar pin for $20:



Neat-o.