Calling All Junkers!

Tomorrow I leave for Shakopee, MN to attend the Junk Bonanza. (Insert you're own version of an epic theme song here.) It will be my first official flea market experience and I cannot wait to come home with a trunk full of glorious, rusty relics. I get all giddy when I have the chance to sort through junk piles and now I will be surrounded by organized junk? Things are going to get crazy and my wallet might want to beat me up afterwards...

Let me tell you a little bit about what junk does to me. When I see a junk pile, there's no telling what I will do. I dig and dig and come up for air holding the most random and dirty objects, all the while reciting what unique treasures they will become. I swoon over old barn wood and rusty buckets. "What a great picture frame this will make!" or "I could plant flowers in this!" I am a junk enthusiast and proud of it.

One of my favorite junk piles is located at my great-grandparent's homestead. I always find some interesting objects there...like old tobacco tins, rusty coffee pots and glass bottles. So many options and ideas! But what I love most about this junk is the history of it. I love to wonder...did my great-grandma use this coffee pot every morning? Did my grandpa, as a young boy, carry fresh milk in this bucket?

Although these are little things, thrown away after years of use, they mean a lot to me. Because they were used back in the good ol' days, when things were simple and you worked hard all day long and went to bed tired. By finding these 'treasures' that my great-grandparents used, I feel like I have a piece of them...the people I never got to know but admire so much.

Left: Searching for junk runs in the family...here is my fearless aunt rummaging around the caving-in cellar of the homestead house.

Right: The Johnson Homestead (In the field just behind the barn rests the junk pile!)