SHOPPING RURAL AMERICA (with bonus mildly gay content)

  Well here we are in the Lynden Christian Thrift Store!

 

   Everybody in this picture is taller than me  

As you can see it's a big warehouse of a space, and that's because it's the old gymnasium building of the Lynden Christian School K-12.

 I've been going here for over 30 years and making out like a bandit, because the old dears they wrangle into volunteering have not the slightest clue as to value or collectability.  Few even know how to operate a cash register, come to that, and if they're feeling extra flustered they might just lean over the counter and whisper "Go ahead and take it."   

On the one hand I feel weird because the proceeds go to supporting Lynden Christian School, which is an institution that makes me itch for a whole number of reasons LOWEST TEST SCORES 'N' HIGHEST TEEN PREGNANCY PERCENTAGE IN THE STATE *ahem*  

But then on the other hand...

   Oh my Lord, they have the deals.   

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I always go crate digging first. Some mornings you can still find quality vinyl here!  

Sadly today was not that day. 

      

    

Didn't you hate this guy^^^ when you was a kid? This fucker would come on around 4: P.M. Sunday evening with his stupid accordion and play all thisEasy Listening, German hoot and holler Swedish barf music, and your parents would instantly fall asleep like they'd been clubbed. GAAAH Lawrence Welk!!!!

This is what the old dears consider 'A Collectable'. I ask you.  So lets head into the next room, shall we?

Oh damn look we're there. 

  Some of this used to belong to dead people.     

   They have excellent displays that they change out from week to week, always of local historic interest. This week we have Vintage Pep gear on display way up on a shelf where you can't buy it. (I was all 007-ing around trying to take pictures here, since they seem touchy about it, so I didn't get the whole thing. It must have been 25 feet long, all memorabilia.)

    

Let's get this over with first. 

This thing^^^ is 4ft. tall.  Now imagine about 32,500 tchotchkes following this^^^ basic theme and you have the LCTS shopping experience in full.  Old Testament quotes are prominent, as are anything they can lift out of context like this from our man Timothy:  

“A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.” 1 Timothy 2:11-12. 

I wish I had a fuckin' nickle for every time I've run across the above quote in this store over the years.  GAAH.  

*ahem* Anyway. Back to our shopping!

     

  Now this^^^ is an actual collectors' item, if you like Heritage Plates and Franklin Mint - type stuff. Me, I would lose the will to live if I had to look at this thing on my kitchen counter every morning. 

    

 It's Babs! 

   Do you know what this is?  This is a miniature soft-cheese spreading knife for all your Halloween soft-cheese needs.     

About twenty years ago the town of Lynden kind of, sort of, banned Halloween; as in people would go door to door and ask that you take down your decorations because Halloween is a pagan holiday and Lynden is a Christian town (no shit, this happened) so yeah, tacitly banned the celebration of Halloween - as such. No, October was for celebrating 'Harvest', all about farming and the land and making your kids dress up like scarecrows.  Lynden Christian Thrift Store rigidly upheld this stand. They wouldn't sell Halloween decor. It never got past the intake area. They pitched it all, folks...be it as innocent as Casper the ghost, or as bloody as a life-sized statue of Freddy Kruger. Which I saw there. Being shit-binned. 

Now look at them with their Satanic Soft Cheese knives. I guess these days money is green no matter whose Satanic claws have touched it first.

OK, enough of that. Onward. 

      

   See this lady?  This lady works here. In fact, this is all the ladies who have ever worked here. She is your cashier. She goes around and straightens things all day long. She stops to chat, and she takes misplaced things back to their rightful locations. She sweeps and dusts and sorts.  I am grateful for this lady and the job she does.  She makes the LCTS without a doubt the best thrift experience in the whole of Washington.   

I LOVE their yard goods selection! This is only a small part of it - and it's all quality stuff, too. Lots of people out here make their own clothes, and I reap the benefits when it's time for them to let go of their hoards. You can get anything sewing related here, from hand-held Ronco buttonholers to full sized pedal looms, sergers, armature quilting set ups, you name it.  Buttonhooks, leather working tools, felting needles and tailors  hams - you can find it here in good condition and...

FOR CHEEP!

Another thing that Lynden Christian Thrift is good for is old weird cookbooks! Out of shot I have an armload of them.   

   LCTS also has the best glassware of all glasswares that can be selected ever of the moon and Venus! I have found signed Chihuly pieces here, and not just the tourist jellyfishes - the big statement pieces. Fact. I've found Waterford too, and Scandanavian lead crystal, and French Pyrex, all   

FOR MUCHO CHEEP

But what is the very best thing to buy here at LCTS you might ask?  Well let me fill you in buckaroo. 

For all your

CHEEP

   

...reading needs, damn bro, you could do a heck of a lot worse than make a trip out to the Lynden Christian Thrift Shop and visit their tremendous book section!

You know you want to.      

It looks nothing like this.

       

A lot of the people out here homeschool their kids.  And they don't fuck around, either**. They invest in quality materials, and then...dump it all. LCTS is where I've scored most of my hard reference over the years. I mean stuff like the Harvard Classical Encylopedia for TWO BUCKS BABY and The Websters Unexpurgated Dictionary of the English Language FOR A DOLLAR FIFTY OO RAH and hard rocking selections like that.  If you party like I party, go here for your high-end reference, and be assured it will be sold to you

...quite inexpensively indeed.

And then we have regular books that normal people like.  Travel books, hiking books, manuals, magazines. Yes, you can find Fifty Shades of Gray here.  I got a copy of 'Lolita' here years back. Anne Rice, Kurt Vonnegut, they're all here.  Mostly you'll find Hot Romance novels - oh yes, the train enters the tunnel and fireworks do go off - and Dude Stuff about snipers and spies and fast paced thrills and danger and explosions and shit. It all sells 50 cents for a paperback, a buck for a hardcover. The selection is huge!

        

   OH DAMN AND THEY HAVE VINTAGE BOOKS GALORE 

You can read about Jane!  She's a stewardess!

  

   

      

 I mean look at these old hardcovers!!     

I adore the cover of this Teen 'Career Girl' novel!  Reminds me of Mistress Maddie out on a binge!

    

OK I'm sorry but I came back to this book cover about ten times asking myself if I just had a really dirty mind or was this a really...charged...image. I know two things:  This is a straightforward Christian book about Forgiveness, and dammit, that image out of context looks way more homoerotic than the publishers probably intended.    

    Being a bisexual person, this title seriously appeals to me. 

I flipped through it. Basically Janie climbs trees and runs when she should walk and gets her clothes dirty, and all the adults around her express grave worries about her character.  Well, as it turns out, Janie obeys the Lord in all things, and the adults finally just shrug and tell each other 'She'll grow out of this stage.' 

(Sequel:  JANIE WINS A NOBEL PRIZE and all the adults around her shrug and tell each other 'She'll grow out of this stage.')    

OO! Here is when the baby gay stars aligned and the gods sniggered like doofuses:

    Well well well!  I opened it to flip through and see what those rascals on Gay Street got up to on Saturday night, when I saw this on the flyleaf. 

I swear to you, I gasped.

Look who used to own this book -   

In her best Palmer Method.  

      This was a peak experience in my thrifting career, made ever so much more delicious by the fact that it happened in the Lynden Christian Thrift Store. I am a six year old. I know. I know.

Well there you have it.  

Next time here on whatever this blog is called:  GROCERY HIJINKS!  That is if I haven't lost you with the 'Lela Fagg' thing. 

 

      

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     **If you intend on homeschooling a kid all the way through high school here in Washington, your kid must, by  law, pass state competencies in order to receive a transcript. Once Billy matriculates -Suzie will be two kids on by then - Mom and Dad dump the books at the ol' LCTS and I swan in and grab'em 

 FO CHEEEEEEEEP