Summer Outing in Ohio: Geauga Antiques Market

The Great Geauga Antiques Market is held at the Geauga County Fairgrounds, on the racetrack. There's a double row of stalls all around the outside of the oval. And there are more stalls around the inside of the oval. And then there are all those stalls in the middle - it's no wonder the lemonade and root beer wagons do a good business!

The Fairgrounds are easy to get to; they're in Burton, Ohio, about 25 miles east of Cleveland. Parking is free. Admission, at 9:30 a.m., is, $6.00 per person.

For the earlybirds, admission is $20.00, and you get to go in as early as the day breaks. I haven't tried it, but on a hot day, it might be worth the twenty bucks just to go that early, besides getting first chance at all the goodies.

I've been there quite a few times, and I know the weather must have been pleasant some of those times. Statistically speaking, it must have been, right? But my faulty memory tells me it's always been either hot, or raining. Or both.

Still, I keep going back.

This isn't a flea market, and you won't find the guys with the "As Seen on TV" oddments. It's pretty much all old, vintage to really antique. There's furniture, glass, china, textiles, toys, architectural salvage, and a plethora of miscellaneous items.

And there are so many people to watch! Friendly sellers who are happy to let you browse under the shade of their awnings. Bored sellers, glad to exchange a friendly word, and busy sellers, trying to manage sales and cell phone together. ("Well, he has to be somewhere else right afterward, so he wants us all out in an hour - what am I supposed to do, tell everyone to eat fast?") People who want to bargain, and people who don't. ("I can't go two hundred on that doll. I'd rather keep her for my granddaughter.") Even, this June, one nutso seller who didn't want pictures taken of her stall (It didn't look like stolen merchandise, so why was she so antsy? And that rag doll with the breasts made of two different printed cottons would have been worth a photo).

There are shoppers of all sorts, too, dressed in whatever way seems appropriate to them. (Although this June the weather seemed to ask for shorts and tank tops, and a lot of people said Yes to that.) Shoppers with carts, with baskets or bags on their backs, with big sun hats and odd bits of merchandise. Eager but polite lookers, who say "excuse me" if they accidentally bump you.

One woman stepped back and bumped into my husband, apologized, and told him the same thing had happened to her. A man had stepped back, she'd put her hand out to stop him, and she wound up looking as if she was trying to grab his tush. Such are the hazards.

I came home with nothing, having had a great and cheap time. I resisted the dessert dishes, the stained glass windows, the china cabinet I loved, even the 1903 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. It was amazing, and I'm quite smug about it. (Last year, I came home with two huge bound volumes of pre-World War I newspapers, and I still haven't found a good place to keep them.)

My husband, the Slide Rule King, saw several slide rules, but didn't buy any. The only thing we bought was the lemonade, and was it ever good.

Great time. We'll be going back.