In its 50th year, the Orford Flea Market still offers a variety of food and neighborly fun.

Bernie Marvin

Here is a typical view of the Orford Flea Market showing folks walking around the area chatting, bargaining, and telling tales. It is a great two days of social fun and visiting. The Bridge Weekly file photo/Bernie Marvin.

The area has been in love with the Orford Flea Market for 50 years. It has taken place on the spacious Orford Common, and as they say, "If it is not at the Orford Flea Market, it ain't nowhere!"

The event is coming up on Saturday and Sunday, August 1 and 2, from 9 AM to 5 PM on Saturday and from 9 AM to 4 PM on Sunday. It is a very different kind of show, and it is vast, creative, and usually crowded with people who really enjoy browsing and buying.

We have personal experience with the Orford flea market. For the past five years, we have been a participant there, selling my volumes One, Two, and Three of Bernie's Beat books, plus selling Humanitarian Food Rations (HFR) and Meals Ready to Eat (MRE).

As always, we had success selling books and meal pouches. The military food drew many interesting comments from veterans who stopped by our display, including "I remember those hockey pucks we had in our MREs!" He was referring, of course, to the hamburger or pork patty, a delightful round portion of meat that looked and tasted (most) like a hockey puck.

That was only one of the fond remembrances of military food we heard while at the flea market. There were many others, and the comments were fun and quite creative, most of which I cannot repeat here in this family newspaper. The military and humanitarian food comments from some flea market shoppers evoked memories of their days far from home in the military, when they had the opportunity to love or hate MRE meals.

Time spent with Bernie's Beat books and visitors to the Orford Flea Market was delightful, as always. The stories in the books are about local people I know or have met along the way. They are not fiction or opinion pieces. They are stories about life, work, family, and situations. The Bernie's Beat columns and books are fun to write, and they are fun to talk about because people not only buy them, but they also talk about stories of their own that were prompted by just having the books on the table being offered to the public.

But even more fun than that are the opportunities to meet friends who come to the Orford Common for these two days each summer and wander around looking and admiring all those things laid out before them. Acres of stuff, some really old and valuable, and not much junk.

The Orford Flea Market is 50 years old. It is a success and is provided for the benefit of the Orford Volunteer Fire Department. It is a mammoth occasion where the vast, majestic Orford Common is filled with vendors selling everything under the sun and moon. For the past 50 years, the stretch of Route 10 from way beyond the old Equity Publishing building to the north, down to the Orford fire station in the south, is dedicated to flea market parking for the two days of the flea market.

The common is filled with 200 dealers, each planted in their 20-by-20-foot space. For each flea market day, thousands of people meander up and down the aisles, checking out the myriad of wares all along the way. During their visit, they will find anything they want or don't need, but they buy it anyway.

The Orford Volunteer Fire Department offers food at its booth, and the church offers an assortment of breakfast sandwiches and, later, pie and ice cream.

They come armed with shopping lists, backpacks, and shopping carts. They make offers, they bargain, and they buy, or they don't buy. Sellers spend hours loading their wares at home, then unloading them in Orford. As Sunday approaches, many will tell you they don't have to worry about packing the stuff back into their vehicles because they've sold most of it.

The event runs smoothly, and one reason it does so without problems is that Ruth Hook was at the helm of this enormous project for many, many years. She was the go-to lady, the head boss of the flea market, and had done a great job for many years. She cruised the main corridors, plus the nooks and crannies of the flea market in her Gator vehicle. She took names and assigned spaces, and if you had a question about anything at the Orford Flea Market, she was the one who answered your questions.

The Orford Flea Market is an exciting place to visit. You can't escape from the common without taking home some oddity, an unusual knick-knack, a real piece of China, heirloom table wear, or an old photo.

It is a wonderful weekend experience, and as in the past, the weather promises to be beautiful (we hope!)

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