I dove into the throng of thrifters and vendors crowding either side of U.S. Highway 12 for the Packwood Flea Market on Sunday with a mission: Find the “weirdest” thing I could buy for $20 or less.
The Chronicle’s tradition of arming a reporter with a $20 bill and sending them into what’s considered to be biggest flea market in the Pacific Northwest started prior to my tenure as a reporter and has yielded some exemplary finds, including the old South Tower Avenue street sign that lives in my office.
Somehow, despite working at The Chronicle for nearly two years, I had never been to the Packwood Flea Market before this last weekend.
The market is held every Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend, so I really had no excuse.
I told Chronicle Publisher Chad Taylor as much as we were leaving the office on Friday and he quickly handed me $20.
While The Chronicle’s tradition is just to find something interesting to bring back to decorate the office, I challenged myself to look for the unique and unusual among the market’s eclectic offerings.
I found no shortage of strong contenders: A hand-painted Betty Boop tote bag, an Encyclopedia of Knots and Fancy Rope Work published in 1943 and a plethora of likely-haunted dolls.
But the undeniable winner was in the first stall I saw at the market, right next to the Chevron Gas Station: a coin purse made out of a real dried cane toad, front legs included.
The rotating display rack of at least a dozen coin purses, with the informative sign reading “real frog $10,” was the first thing that caught my eye when I stumbled into the market Sunday afternoon.
Of course, I went over for a closer inspection. Not only did the coin purses look like they were, in fact, real frogs at one point — to my horror and delight, the eyes had been replaced with plastic googly eyes.
I had only been at the Packwood Flea Market for five minutes (not counting the 20 minutes it took to find a place to put my car that wasn’t immediately a safety hazard), so I continued through the market frogless to see what else I could find.
After lunch at the Blue Spruce Saloon and another hour and a half of searching through the market, I went back to the frogs.
The seller, Eliza, immediately asked who would be the frog’s unlucky recipient.
Most of her customers, she said, had bought one of her toad wallets to freak out a friend or a relative.
Eliza had ordered the coin purses in bulk from the Philippines, where they were a popular souvenir item, she said.
She started the Packwood Flea Market on Friday with 75. As of Sunday afternoon, she was down to the six or seven left on the display rack.
Proud and mildly disturbed by my purchase, I made my way back to my car. With $10 still left to spend, I couldn’t resist buying a ridiculously soft avocado purse (not a real avocado, thankfully), for $5 from a vendor on the way out.
I ended up putting my new toad friend inside so its googly eyes wouldn’t stare at me the hour and a half drive home.
It lives in my office now, in front of the old South Tower Avenue street sign.
We’ll see what other Packwood Flea Market treasures join it in the years to come.
