The Longest Yard

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The Longest Yard
Four days a year, a 450-mile stretch from Kentucky to Alabama becomes the world's biggest flea market.

Her husband, Seth, is leaning back in his chair, hands shoved into worn overall pockets. "Everybody that comes through here has a story," he says. "You learn a lot from people out here. We had a veterinarian from Baton Rouge up here a few years back. I had a bunch of old halters and mule tops I'd found, and I hadn't a clue as to what some of them were."

Seth points toward where his 20-something son is sitting with his girlfriend and says, "He sat down right there on that bench and got out his chew, and me and him had a chew, and he told me it was a harness for pulling a horse's teeth. We had a good laugh about that, and I would've never known otherwise."

Matt and I buy a stack of architectural tiles from the Gills. The tiles are from the oldest Gulf station in Chattanooga, torn down because a road was widened. We stack them in the truck, and I feel a small sense of accomplishment when I notice that we've breached the rim of our truck bed. We are now traveling with a cast iron sink, a vintage iron bed frame, a wrought iron light fixture, a decorative star handcrafted from recycled barn roofing and a small collection of miscellaneous yard tools. Taking stock, I realize we've gone heavy on metal.

As we prepare to leave, Seth tells me we should stop in Dog Town, Ala. He then gives me a brief history of Dog Town, how the area was a place where, long ago, local hunters would sit around a fire and drink whiskey and listen to dogs chase wild foxes.

Suzie, a little embarrassed by the down-home nature of the story, adds, "People from California think we're crazy when they come through here and we tell them things like that."

Down the road, a seller in Dog Town asks me if I'm a collector of something in particular, such as the antiquated medicine boxes and Matchbox cars he's selling. I say no.

"Well, you're a young person," he says, "you should start collecting now, so when you're my age, you'll be able to sit out at something like this and make a small fortune." He smiles slyly and invites me to sit with him while Matt looks for hedge cutters for hedges we have yet to plant.

The seller's name is Woodrow Spencer, and he's been camping in a small RV van since he arrived from Tuscaloosa, Ala., four days earlier. He inflects his words as if everything he says is a sermon. When he shows me his collection of old locks and keys, I say, "Those are pretty cool."

He says, "Cool. That's a new, modern word for it." Then he looks at me, cocks his head a little to the left, and asks, "You got a voice in there?"

It's a strange way of asking me if I can sing, and it makes me take pause. I imagine my voice is held in an old creaky box along with my collection of stories and memories.

I answer, "Sure, I have a voice in here." And so we sing together, Woodrow and I, sitting in metal folding chairs outside his RV on the shoulder of U.S. 127. He's playing a banjo he made completely of metal and wood. We're quite discordant, and, if you heard us from a distance, I don't know that we'd sound much different than the hound dogs that used to howl into humid Dog Town nights.

Woodrow is making up songs as he goes along. He belts out, "We're a sitting on the side of a road . . . " I repeat whatever he comes up with, and the practice reminds me of childhood singalongs. I feel a little silly, but I'm having more than a little fun.

When Matt comes back from his yard-tool excursion, he's holding a rake with cast iron tongs. Woodrow looks him up and down and inquires, "Is this your boyfriend or your husband?"

Matt answers, "Somewhere in between." Woodrow then shoos me away, and leads Matt over to one of his glass cases. They huddle together, and Woodrow talks in a low voice, then he slips something small into Matt's palm and pats him on the shoulder.

Back in the truck, I ask Matt what Woodrow gave him. He pulls an old, empty locket out of his pocket. It's cheap, with glass cut like a prism. It's something I wouldn't pick up if I saw it on the ground, but now it seems like a treasure because of the way it has come to be ours. Matt cradles it in his hand.

"This is the kind of thing that turns a photograph of someone you love into a jewel. It's different than just sticking a photo in your wallet," Matt tells me. "This is something that will last."

Leigh Ann Henion is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Carolina.

She can be reached at lahenion@gmail.com.