Canton again

Today I paid another visit to Canton First Monday Trade Days, in Van Zandt County. I last went four years ago. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, there are 254 counties in Texas (I discovered that from a book I picked up at the market).

Once a month, the otherwise small town of Canton holds a giant flea market on the weekend preceding the first Monday in the month – hence the name. Apparently the market dates back to around 1850, when the first Monday of each month was when the circuit judge would arrive to hold court sessions. Everyone would come to town to watch the proceedings, this being in the days before television and the Xbox.

Today, the market is spread over 100 acres, with more than 6,000 vendors, selling everything from pets to food to clothes to crafts to the usual “boot sale” fare and the even more usual craporama. I spent about four hours looking around, but have no idea how much I still didn’t see – I suspect a lot.

Lazy people on "scooters"

Since I last went, they have started renting “scooters” – really mechanized wheelchairs – which, piloted by unskilled drivers, can be a menace. They’re invaluable for the disabled, giving them the mobility that they otherwise lack. Most people that I saw using them, however, are simply bone idle – but that’s sadly a contemporary malaise. Maybe if they actually called them “wheelchairs” the stigma would scare off otherwise healthy people.

Indian taco

For lunch, I tried Indian (as in American Indian) tacos. These are similar to the familiar Mexican tacos – meat, tomato, lettuce and beans topped with cheese, served with a spicy salsa – except that the beans are pinto instead of refried and the base is Indian flat bread instead of a tortilla.

It was hot – 100  ̊F, or 38  ̊C – and the sweat running off my brow made my eyes sting. There’s plenty of shade, though, and the secret is to stay in it as much as possible and drink plenty. I bought a second hand book (signed by the authors) on the back roads of Texas ($2) and a baseball cap to keep the sun out of my eyes ($5). Very restrained, I thought. No need to mention the cost of the fuel to get there and back …

On an entirely different topic, I was unfortunate enough to find myself, a couple of weeks ago, in McDonalds (it’s a long, and not very interesting, story). I only wanted a small fries. It seems they don’t do “small” fries. They have two sizes: medium and large. I know I’m more pedantic than most, but isn’t there an element of lunacy here? If you only have two sizes, shouldn’t they be small and large? If not, why not large and gigantic? Or giant and colossal? Am I missing something? (And, by the way, I still refuse to use that silly Starbuck-speak for coffee – it’s not venti, it’s large; and it’s not tall, it’s small (how confusing is that?). We already have perfectly good words to express these ideas – why invent new ones?)

Mural in Canton

Food stand

Grinding corn, the old fashioned way