Sunday Flea Market

I managed to head out to the Flea Market on Sunday. Wow, there were twice as many vendors there. Sign of the times. As usual, many of them were selling piles of junk. It took me several hours to go through the market, when I normally could have blown through in just over an hour.

One guy was selling Sthil chainsaws for short money, but I have one so I had to pass. There were several vendors selling fresh fruit and veggies. They even have a little food truck for burgers and hot dogs now. And there were TONS of people. It was a nice day, but there were many more people than usual, about 3x as many.

I have been very frugal of late. I'm worried about the job, and I want to be ready to take advantage of any pile of ammo that becomes available. Plus, I have more junk in my house than I need so it's time to cut down on the crap in the house.

There are a few items I am always looking for. I want more mortise chisels for my woodworking.I need a scorp, and an adze. I also want to get the wooden molding planes, but they tend to be real pricey. I needed a small kitchen table. And finally, I need a twin bed for the guess bedroom for when by buddies crash at my place when their wives are being a pain.

I was digging through one vendors table when I came across a kerosene lantern. He wanted $6, I got it for $4. I found two others in even better shape, and got those for $4 each too. So now I have 3 kerosene lanterns to add to my preps. Two have wicks, but checking online, additional wicks are about 50 cents each.

After doing some research at home, these lanterns should last forever, just need to replace wicks. Kerosene has an indefinite shelf life as long as it doesn't have water in it. I plan on stopping by the local hardware store for some. Now the big deal with these lanterns is NOT to burn anything but kerosene or clear lamp oil in them. Dyed stuff will gum up the wick. If you try to burn gasoline, paint thinner, etc your going to blow yourself up, so don't try it.

All told, for about $30 bucks I have plenty of light for post-SHTF. Turns out you can get a decent lantern on amazon.com for $9. Considering just one of my coleman propane lanterns was $90, plus $3 a propane cylender every 5-6 hours on low, kerosene lanterns are the way to go. Although my expensive lantern is as bright as an arclight when on full, but the tank lasts only 90 min.

Oh yeah, I did get a small kitchen table for $10. :) I love the flea market.