Butter Down

Judy’s Flea Market
Aberdeen, WA
August 30, 2007 - 4:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Judy Carney looks at my camera. “What are you looking for,” she asks blocking the door to her shop. “Books, little treasures,” I say. “Ahhh,” she replies relaxing, “you’re not after Nirvana then?”

I’ve been driving by Judy’s Flea Market for years waiting for it to be open. I just caught Judy and Leonard Carney digging through the mass today getting ready for the next Ebay offering. The store is rarely open now, something to do with code issues, go figure, but today I’m lucky. There are books stacked everywhere, literally everywhere, ten feet high with two foot aisles in a building as old or older than 78-year-old Leonard.

“They used to drive us nuts with their playing,” laughs Judy about the early days of the 80’s seminal band Nirvana. “Kurt’s mom had a beauty parlor in the little building right behind us here and they would practice there. Those boys would come in all the time looking through Leonard’s records.”

“I know the guy who sold them pot,” bursts out Leonard, “but he straightened up, good kid. They were all good kids, really, didn’t understand their music though. I’m more a country music man.”

People have come here from all over to see where Nirvana started in this little hard luck timber town, say the Leonards. “The last couple was from France.” I can always spot them ’cause they have their cameras.

But I’ve come to see them and their million little treasures. I marvel at the piles of books and listen to Leonard’s stories. I wonder how many special places like this are left in America, how many disappear everyday. This uniquely American texture, spirit and resilience … will it survive Walmart and Jerry Springer?

Leonard and Judy started this shop a little more than 20 years ago. Leonard cashed his unemployment check from the plywood mill he’d worked at for 42 years when it closed and started the store.

Since then they’ve survived two earthquakes. “Those were a real mess,” Judy relates. “We’d have one stack tumbled down and the one next to it just fine.”

As Judy hustles off to run an errand across town before the drawbridge goes up for another wood chip barge, Leonard walks through the narrow aisles telling stories, singing. “I used to be a pretty good singer you know, once sang with Tex Williams even.”

Born in 1929 in Hoquiam, Leonard spent 42 years on Grays Harbor working for Harbor plywood, much of it mixing glue. “I was born in Hoquiam, went to school in Aberdeen, lived in Central Park and got my mail from Montesano,” says Leonard listing the string of nearby towns in succession. “You might say I’m a harbor boy,” he laughs. “Yeah,” he says with a wink, “I’m an old harbor boy, I’ve been on both sides of the law.”