When I was eight years old, my grandfather began taking me to a magical place called “Saturday’s Market”—a flea market where vendors would arrive each weekend with their vans packed full of miscellaneous junk that would be sifted through by numerous potential customers throughout the day.

As a little kid, I wanted things that many little kids want: Legos, action figures, skateboards, etc. Early in our first trip to the market, I was digging through a box of toy cars. If I recall correctly, inside the larger box there was a compartmentalized box designed to store Matchbox cars, and I opened it and began perusing. And then I saw it: the glorious Hulk Hot Wheels car. I had to have it.

The vendor wanted five dollars. I understand now that a child can’t be expected to understand the value of money, and sometimes I still do not understand it properly myself. So my grandfather kindly asked, would I not prefer such and such a car? I think his alternative suggestion was a hot pink one. No, I wanted the Hulk car. He said that we could come back later. We wound our way through the rest of the outdoor vendors, and spent some time looking around inside at the more permanent vendors’ wares. I probably asked for several dozen additional long-forgotten items, and we had something to eat.

Several hours had passed by this time, and it was now time to go. As we walked back through the outdoor vendors to the car, I had one thing on my mind. Perhaps it had been there the entire time. “Can we go back and get the Hulk car?” I asked.

Fast forward seventeen years. My grandpa had spent the five dollars to appease me, all those years ago. And, after doing so, he went and found one for himself. Then, a Thor car. Then, a Captain America one, and on and on. It is strange how habits start.

It became a fond memory. My grandfather and I, often accompanied by my uncle, my brother, sometimes a cousin or two, sometimes my girlfriend (and then fiancée, and then wife) have been going to Saturday’s Market several times a year since I was in third grade. My interests have changed; I went through a CD phase, a book phase, a video game phase, a record phase, a DVD phase. The past few years I have mostly gone to spend time with people I love and comment on the array of random things people offered for sale, as well as to compliment myself on how self-controlled I was by not leaving with armfuls of movies, music, and books.

Our beloved Saturday’s Market, which opened for business in 1957, closed its doors at the end of November 2019. This is the first Saturday that its doors have been permanently closed. Some quick math tells me that means we have been going there for more than a quarter of its existence.

It is bittersweet to think about. On one hand, it was essentially just a large collection of material items, most of which can be found on Ebay anyway; and I will always make time to spend with my family, so it’s not as if the closure of the market will mean less time with them. But on the other hand, there is definitely something to be said for browsing and perusing, not knowing exactly what you will find or even exactly what you are looking for.

Many a time I found a bargain on an album or a film that I vaguely knew of. A $1 mystery CD on the ride home was always fun. I bought Monty Python and the Holy Grail from a permanent vendor there, an amicable gentleman who once spent half an hour helping me search for my lost wallet (we left thinking it was gone for good, then found it on the floor of the car, hidden under Grandpa’s coffee mug). Soon after the home video release of The Dark Knight Rises, I negotiated with a vendor to sell a brand new DVD copy to me for $2; I then walked several hundred yards to another vendor and sold it to him for $5. A few months later I found a box set of the entire Dark Knight Trilogy at Goodwill for $5. My best find of all time was a vendor selling pristine records for $1 each. Luckily, we arrived early in the morning (before items were picked through by hundreds of other people), and I was able to procure seven or eight prime Bob Dylan albums on vinyl—Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited, John Wesley Harding, etc.—for next to nothing.

I will always cherish those memories, but more importantly, the people that I experienced them with. What does it matter if I got a deal on a Bob Dylan album, if I couldn’t share it with my grandfather who first encouraged me to spend the $2 on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II CD when I was in ninth grade? (I hated most of it as we listened to it on the ride home, but I came around.) And I never would have looked twice at a $3 Abbey Road if my uncle hadn’t lent me his wondrous box of Beatles CDs in my formative years. We went to the market for the last time in late October. At the very first outdoor vendor we visited, there was a partitioned plastic box. Inside was a vintage Hulk Hot Wheels car. The vendor wanted five dollars for it.