... can be another person's junk for the low, low price of [insert your offer here].  Yesterday Kylie & I and her parents went to First Monday Trade Days in Canton, TX to get a quick fix for any desire we may have had to have a garage sale any time in the next several years.  In hindsight, I can't think of a better thing to do than walk around 100+ acres of what I can only describe as the world's biggest garage sale in 100+ temperatures.  I mean really, who wouldn't want to walk around for hours with your shirt stuck to your skin and sweat dripping in your eyes while looking at bird houses made of license plates, rusted car parts converted into yard "art", and used spark plugs from 1977?  What can I say?  We're livin' the dream. Actually I'm being unfair wih the sarcasm; there's actually a fair amount of some pretty unique new retail items in addition to old treasures to be found at Canton.  Unfortunately you won't see hardly any of them on this blog because unbeknownst to me before we arrived, it's actually against the rules to photograph any of the stuff for sale without the owner's consent, and based on all the "absolutely no photoraphing or sketching signs posted in the booths and shops, I'm guessing most weren't in teh consenting mood.  I was politey reminded of this by a gentleman who looked like the kind of guy who could smile and make you feel like his best friend while at the same time permanently disabling you with some Jedi mind trick if he so desired.  I did manage to sneak a few images in while in stealth mode, though. Actually, it was more like ignorance mode.  All the images posted were taken before I was aware of the strict rules against photography, and even then there were plenty of things to photograph that weren't for sale... I was just too hot to put forth the effort in most cases.

I was really stoked when I stumbled on these old microphones and was all set to buy the one in the front lower left foreground in the image below (with the black slots).  As I was reaching for my wallet to pull out the $35 I thought it cost, I walked just a bit further around it and noticed the "2" I couldn't see from the first angle.  $235 was a bit lot more than I wanted to pay for a non-working microphone, no matter how cool it looked.