After checking out Nathan Hall’s Antique Center we still didn’t have enough for the day and were far enough from home to want to slip yet one more little exploration in there, so we ended up not too far away at Another Man’s Treasure which was our second pick after the first turned out to be an obsolete store… Anyway, it’s in a little plaza, in the corner store at the back.
And I must say the displays in this place were really nice. They even somehow made a couple jars of pickled god-knows-what from god-knows-when look amazing! And they somehow managed to make a couple closets into displays as well. All and all though this was a rather small shop and didn’t have much in the way of the usual things I am drawn too. It was all a bit… sanitized… but hey, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into check it out if you find yourself in the area!
OK, so this post has been sitting in my draft folder since December… Whoops. Time to let it see the light of day!
Middleboro Antique Co-op was another delightfully large mall adorned with a life size Betty Boop! And since it was the holidays she was surrounded by three big Ho Ho Ho’s. I’m sure nothing was meant by this. (Seriously though, I fucking love Betty Boop in all her salaciousness. You go girl!)
ANYWAY. This place does not look that big from the outside and initially when you walk in it still appears pretty small with a bunch of little rooms off to the side. It was very spacious once you got around some of the corners and everything was laid out very professionally. Being that it was right before Christmas there was also a surprising amount of people. We walked through looking for our usual taboo items but this all seemed pretty tame except one really odd book called “Pepe was the Saddest Bird” that ended with an ad to buy war bonds. Weird. Will have to look into that later.
Another absolutely bizarre find was what I am GUESSING was an ad for baby food where two toddlers were bareknuckle boxing??? Obviously, the bigger fatter baby was black and wearing a potato sack. You know, got to get that racism in over the initial shock of forcing babies to fight to the death or whatever.
At some point my travel companion went to the bathroom and then disappeared. No idea where he was. I walked back to the front where the bathrooms were and nope… no one. Turns out this place has a basement and it’s sprawling! And also has a lot more of the odd and cheaper stuff down there where I am guessing vendors pay less for less than prime real estate. And that’s where there were booths full of terrifying dolls and I was loving every second of this. I think there may have even been one there with actual human teeth which is something I just learned some dolls have. Isn’t that a comforting thought!
Anyway, this place took a couple hours to go through and we could have spent more time there if we weren’t both getting a smidge hangry by this point. We left after marveling at a decrepit Gothic pram.
We had been meaning to check out the little aquarium in town but time has a funny way or eroding old ideas. However, today was the day we finally ventured to this little aquarium next to the bay. And it was so worth it!
We weren’t sure what the parking situation was but were happy to be told upon driving in and asking that part of the parking lot was sectioned off for the aquarium and free. So that was our first nice surprise. Admission was $9 for an adult and this place was… a little strange to figure out how to get in. We had to follow a bunch of signs through corridors before we found the ticket booth.
Inside we learned that this aquarium was basically an education center that housed various marine life and animals mostly from the bay but also in freshwater habitats nearby. The place was tiny but packed in every nook and corner with aquariums and displays. I was a little taken aback when the first thing I saw was a tank with three cowfish (labelled Buffalo Boxfish) in it. We have cowfish in New England?! Yes, but no, a guide answered. These were in one of several tropical fish tanks maintained at the aquarium where tropical fish dragged out of the bay found a refuge rather than freezing to death in the winter. Why are there random tropical fish in the bay? The answer was a bit hazy but basically, they’d got severely lost at some point in their life and washed up here in this cold gray hellscape where if they weren’t accidentally fished and then donated to the aquarium they’d just eventually freeze to death and die. There was quite a few of these “orphans” and I was surprised by the variety – they even had a puffer fish!
From here we were welcomed to the first touch tank. A guide handed us a periwinkle and told of about what sounds like the first issue we had with feral animals or rather non-native species. The little varmints apparently ate most of the plant life in the bay and left it permanently altered. We also got to hold a hermit crab and a welk. The welk was really weird. In the tank next to them there was an orange lobster whose life had been saved because he was such a bizarre color. He already looked cooked! Lobsters are generally brown.
As we made our way through the rest of the aquarium several guides gave us super in-depth information about their little section. We got to pet a stingray, a dog fish, a disabled horseshoe crab who was a permanent resident, and even a piece of seaweed which was rigid and not at all slimy. Blew my mind. We got to see their shark breeding program – so many baby sharks and developing eggs! We also met a series of octopuses who were REALLY good at hiding, some sea horses (we have sea horses in new England?! Apparently!) and a tank full of adorable shrimp. Later we’d get to the freshwater tanks and see several species of turtles and frogs. The snapping turtle was found wandering lost in the bay and I found his lack of direction just as endearing as his extra toes. You guys, there was a POLYDACTYL SNAPPING TURTLE. How great is that!
All and all we got QUITE the lesson from the various guides and learned that the center will be moving soon to a location 7 times the size. We will be back when they do! All and all it was a great little place to check out and my only lament is there were no lump suckers which are my favorite local marine fish but who knows maybe they’ll get some after they move! And hey, if you’re here in the winter the Save the Bay people also do seal tours.
Of course, I couldn’t go a week without checking out a different antique mall. This one was a two-hour drive and worth it because it was an unending Byzantine labyrinth of all sorts of oddness. That was 16,500 square feet and 200 dealers worth of strange. Loved every second!
As with any of these adventures the shop soon came out with the theme of the day: animals that should be featured on a meme reading, “You know what a *something* looks like, right?” Whether they were old folk art paintings, weird stylized sculptures, figurines, or random artifacts there was all sorts of bizarrely created animals – each and every one of them looking at least a little bit off. One of which neither one of us could identify read cryptically, “cat.” Sure. That’s what that was.
There was the usual assortment of dolls, clowns, and Old Timey racism but also a number of art pieces and various paintings and wall hangings that could satisfy any decor. There was even one of two babies “sleeping” with a doll that probably didn’t kill them. We spent a few hours picking through the isles, booths, and glass cabinets. It was a really decent spread! All sorts of things! Even a figurine of a black gentlemen dressed in the Victorian era’s finest to offset the other racist garbage. I love to see someone celebrating minorities that did succeed (and just because history has largely made sure that didn’t last and forgotten them doesn’t mean they didn’t exist at all.)
So that’s where I’ll end this blog entry. If you happen to be in the Stratford CT area or are looking for a big place to go picking this seems to be a good bet!
The Yankee Flea market was another fun stop because it is enormous with over 200 vendors. As such you never know what you’re going to find! We spent quite a while here picking through the various booths and finding everything under the sun. The great thing about a place with this many vendors is that you’ll find not just a large variety of items but also price ranges. There’s something for everyone! And I came home with a jar of marbles since I have stopped taking marble photos at every location. I guess at the time I didn’t feel particularly encouraged to do so but it was a cute little signature of mine.
We picked through creepy clowns, dolls with vaguely threatening auras, cow creamers in the midst of an existential crisis, bad taxidermy, cast iron everything, hilarious Disney knock offs that looked just the slightest bit off, a model of a human spine, a marshmallow man with a changing face, and even an Old Timey Bottle reading “Cathartic Compound” which I am sure was something that throw you on your ass. Oh, and random “Pin the Pistol on the Cowboy” game and a mug with a naked woman and a wobbly butt. Very weird but hilarious. There were even a couple booths that appeared to be maintained by artists selling their works which is always lovely to see. You get out there!
All and all this was definitely one of the larger venues I’d go back to in a few months or years when everything has rolled over again. Fun fun!
Having failed to find any aquarium plants that tickled my fancy at Forest Wonders I decided to continue down the street to find Pet Supplies Plus which is a larger store – a chain store – though I think one that might be locally owned (but don’t quote me on that.)
Walking in it looked more or less like PetCo or Petsmart – big, open, a sort of Wal-Mart for pets, though I don’t know about the pricing! There were a few cashiers and one of them warmly greeted me as I came in. I went straight for the fish isle which was labelled critters for some reason. They had a nice assortment of tanks, especially ones on the smaller side. At the end were the bettas. Just a handful, all looking as pitiful as bettas in little plastic tubs always do. There was one really small one for five bucks. He looked half dead but then again that’s how they normally look in these places. I talked myself out of it. I don’t have the right set up for a betta. Next to the bettas was two small tubs of plants. One read cryptically, “assorted plants” and had only one dried up brown plant in it. Aquarium tumbleweed? The other tub was java moss and looked almost as bad.
Within the fish department there were rows of tanks with the usual assortment of glo fish and whatnot. One tank had a few plants in it. $7 for a little pot of dwarf baby tears actually was a super decent price. Too bad the plant itself was yellow as fuck and I didn’t feel like I knew enough about rescuing plants to bring it back to life. Not yet anyway. Seems I struck out once again.
I stayed a little longer only to see what they had for critters – a furless guinea pig, two ferrets, and some miscellaneous fuzz that were probably hamsters – before leaving. The staff flagged me down again and asked if I needed help.
“No, I’m good, but thank you!” I smiled. At least the personnel here were super friendly. I give them that!
We’ve been to the Clinton Antique Center before but it was such a large place that it was worth another visit a few months later. And this time didn’t disappoint!
If you read about my previous visit you may remember this place as the antique center where I found a booth FULL of Nazi shit. Like real Nazi things used by actual Nazis probably during World War II. You may be happy to note that although it looks like the same dealer may be selling in his usual booth all the Nazi shit was gone. Hopefully because of public backlash because that level of bad mojo shouldn’t just be hanging out in public spaces. There was however still a whole booth dedicated to racist black memorabilia just around the corner which had one of the most heinous prints I’ve ever seen of a little black boy screaming as a goose clamps down on his most tender of bits which apparently were through a glory hole?! Now this says nothing about black people but the needless sexualization of a SMALL BOY as well as the flagrant racism says much more about the artist! WHAT A CREEPY ASS OLD MAN HE MUST HAVE BEEN. Good riddance.
But really this shop had a lot less offensive material than in previous visits. Most of it this time seemed to be directed at indigenous Americans. You know Indian rubber pull dolls and cigar statues and whatnot. There was also a lot of fun stuff like – a fox who seemed delighted to be taxidermied, a boar head that looked like it was used for testing cosmetics before being put on someone’s wall, a CAST IRON BICYCLE which must have been so fun to ride, many many creepy clowns, a lot of dolls giving an obscene amount of side-eye, and of course a whole bookshelf of books that had titles which aged very badly. Every one of them was a modern innuendo and I was in stitches going through them starting with Scouts in Bondage, Wooden Willie, and Memorable Balls. Seriously, if I lived in a place large enough for a bookshelf or a coffee table I would have been on these like shivers on a Chihuahua. Just hilarious.
It was well worth the revisit! And I am very happy they pulled the Nazi bullshit off the shelves. If that is to be sold at all it should be under great suspicion behind the scenes.
Fort Wetherill was another one of those finds that I kept having suggested by search engines and AI but nothing online made it look that impressive. Still, it was only a few miles away from where I was staying that day so it made sense to go check it out.
To get to this place you have to wind through a bunch of sweet little neighborhoods reminiscent of European villages. There’s more trees though. And by the time you get there it’s a big park with a ton of parking and no one there. There was literally one other car.
I was not expecting this place to be so massive! Or so taken over by trees. It’s not that old – at least not compared to some of the other forts I have visited for this blog. Fort Wetherill was commissioned during World War II to protect the bay and as a sister fort to Fort Adams – which I haven’t gone to yet but I am sure I will at some point. It’s in complete disrepair now. For the most part it looks like it’s being eaten by a jungle of weeds. Many areas are fenced off from going inside but there are parts you can still go inside or even on top of the fort for some spectacular views of the property and the ocean.
We spent a good chunk of time just wandering around the structure like lost rats. The graffiti was something else. Hilariously someone commented to me that they love the graffiti in New England because you can always read it. And it’s true! We lack the highly stylized fonts of the west coast. In addition to this it was oddly cerebral. Although there were the usual tags there was also some pretty decent art – including a chimp dressed in a gnome cap. And someone had taken the time to hang bizarre vaguely medical looking paper flyers like they may have done in the early 1900’s. It added a certain… ambiance.
I really enjoyed this place. It was a great place to spend the afternoon and probably had some hiking trails too – we just didn’t go that route on this particular day. I don’t know why this isn’t a more known destination although maybe it is and we were just there on an off day. Hard to say as I did also get some responses about other people having loved this place in the past. All and all it was well worth the trip and I think would make a fantastic outing for photographers.
Brimfield MA is known throughout New England as hosting the largest antique fair in the area and they do it three times a year – once in spring, once during the summer, and once during autumn, each time lasting about a week. And these fairs are serious – they are HUGE. Basically a good chunk of main street (all lined with antique shops) turns the entire area into one giant open-air market with literally hundreds of vendors. Every conceivable space that’s not being used for selling is turned into a giant Byzantine parking lot and even so… it’s hard to find parking when it’s busy.
I’ve been to Brimfield before and knew it was something you take a whole day to do. I have been wanting to go back for years now but have never managed to get someone to go with me and it’s one of those things I’d rather share than go alone to because it is such an experience. So I was happy when a few weeks ago my companion brought it up. This year I wouldn’t forget and I wouldn’t go in summer (in the miserable heat!)
We woke up late that day and honestly I was expecting to spend the day looking for a dentist so I didn’t really try to wake up early but instead of this my companion really wanted to go somewhere so I laid out two options – Brimfield which was two hours away or an abandoned fort that was 15 minutes away. The fair closes at 5 and with two hours of driving that was only two hours to spend there. I once again said it was a HUGE event and said maybe we’d better go the next day but no, he was all charged to go on Tuesday. So off we went.
The weather was PERFECT and I was very excited to finally be going. I wanted to see if I could find any terrifying medical antiques (not that I can afford them) and just have a generally good day. It’d been so long since I had been there that I had forgotten about the parking situation. By the time I drove up we were already running out of time and I passed all the parking lots (as many had “full” and “closed” signs out and the ones that didn’t also didn’t look promising.) I drove one mile an hour through the whole fair in a row of traffic as people who were completely unafraid of cars just walked in front of them whenever! I had to turn around and seek parking somewhat outside of the festivities for a cheaper $10. The lots more centrally located were $20. The sight of all the people and everything going on immediately sent my companion into a downward spiral of overwhelm. It wasn’t a great start.
However, we were successful at finding parking (there were TWO spaces left) and we went on our merry way. The one great thing about the Brimfield antique fair that has nothing to do with antiques is all the food trucks. They’re everywhere and make spending the day there a lot more pleasant. I could smell fried dough (which I really wanted – but couldn’t figure out who had it) and I found the lemonade stand that uses real lemons that is SO GOOD in summer heat. We started to wanter into the back end of the antique fair and look around and without even going far we found this fabulous orange couch I totally fell in love with and the usual parade of probably haunted dolls – two of them were even anatomically correct baby dolls. (Just why??) There were also marbles up the wazoo!
Sadly, nothing I picked up was marked with a price. Not the marbles, not the cool rock skulls I thought would make a nice fish tank decoration, not the partially hidden Tupperware tub FULL of racist bullshit, not the odd rusted out farming implements, not the possessed dolls… and I know if something isn’t marked it’s too expensive for me. Some of the vendors were also missing in action which didn’t really help matters. By now my companion had gone from overwhelm to shutdown as his toothache became too much to bear. I rescued him from an old hippie vendor who was trying to talk to him as I chatted happily with other vendors. And it’s weird. I used to come to these things HATING the social aspect of it but today I was really enjoying the chit chat.
We wandered back and forth with no sense of direction for only an hour or so before heading back to the car, having seen only the tiniest bit of the fair. We had stayed only long enough to see some truly bizarre art, some odd ideas of lawn ornamentation, and the closest thing to a medical antique I could ask for – a poster of the spine for chiropractic usage. I never did get my fried dough but it’s probably for the better. By the time I got done driving 2 hours home a migraine had set in and I was exhausted – but still happy I went! And as usual I can’t wait to go again.
Every outing I feel like I come closer and closer to having the cops called on me for being almost criminally weird. Today was no exception as in my search for the perfect aquascape fish tank I was on the lookout for a clump of wet leaves and mud – which I found before squirrelling it away in my purse in a plastic sandwich bag. No, I’m not conjuring creek nymphs, I swear. I was just after the healthy bacteria that breaks down said leaves so I could introduce them to my little aquatic habitat. Old School filtration – nature knows best! Plus how better to multitask than making your nature walk into a treasure hunt?
So that’s how I ended up at the Wales Loop. I’ve been here before but it wasn’t quite like this – all the rain we’ve been getting this spring and the melted snow from the mountains was whooshing by in a very feisty little river! On my last visit this was little more than a slow creek but not today! It was so loud that I couldn’t hear anything my mother was saying (as I brought her out for this adventure to be my hiking buddy for the day.)
Surprisingly, there was already two cars parked there aside the road (as there’s no proper parking) when we got there and we passed three sets of hikers. For such a tiny and out of the way trail this was encouraging! Also encouraging was the boot brush at the beginning of the trail asking that we wipe our feet before and after entering to avoid the spread of invasive seeds.
As always it was just absolutely gorgeous scenery winding along the river. And it smelled so fresh! I had also chosen this trail because except for this tiny incline at the beginning it’s for the most part very flat and super easy and that’s what my mother needed to start the sunny season. We did not do the whole loop as we wanted to enjoy the river as much as possible so we turned around when it started to head into the woods. Perhaps I will do that half of the loop at a later date.
All and all I would highly suggest this out of the way trail for anyone in the area looking for something a little less known or an easy trail. We all know there’s plenty of mountains around but not all hikers are up to that challenge! And there’s no shame in that. Go out, listen to the birds, dip your feet in a river. It’s all good!
