For collectors in the Upper Midwest, the Oronoco Gold Rush -- held the middle weekend of August -- is something of a calendar milestone. In an ordinary year, it occurs during the Dog Days -- intensely hot and numbingly humid, with sweaty farm families selling sweet corn every few miles on highway 52. Nature's last big push before fall; "Oklahoma!" meets "Streetcar Named Desire." This year, though, the sudden spike in temperature in an otherwise cool summer was like a Great Dane in the middle of a pack of Yorkies. We weren't ready for the heat.
Perhaps that's why my Gold Rush experience was somewhat muted. I like to dash from booth to booth in a race against dealers, rabid collectors, and the occasional decorative arts curator. Unused to the heat, I chafed rather early in the day in some very uncomfortable places, and even though I found a pair of Persian blue Prismatique vases for Paul and me, and a Ceramastone cookie jar for Paul, I didn't have the drive to scour the town of Oronoco for deals that might or might not be there.
If you're unfamiliar with the Gold Rush, antique and junque dealers basically take over the town of Oronoco (population: 300, just north of Rochester) for a long weekend. As far as the eye can see, there are booths selling everything from gorgeous Victorian furniture to Beatles records. To give you an idea, these four photos are taken from the same spot, looking east, north, west and south.
You can click on photos to enlarge them. (And yes, the women in purple are Amish.)
In years past -- and here is where I start to sound like an old coot -- virtually every square inch of land in town was utilized. Used to be, you'd walk into town and find a whole set of Red Wing dishes for $100, and you could haggle it down to $75. This year, there were many vacant spaces, and it felt sparse and a little sad. Dealers seemed offended by the question, "Can you do any better on this?" No one accepted checks. Gas prices and the economy, perhaps, had joined eBay in the slow act of murder that seems to be plaguing antique shows.
All that being said, there is still pleasure to be found in roaming the show and its competitor, also called the Gold Rush, at the Olmsted County Fairgrounds in Rochester. If nothing else, you can play antique show games like "Spot the Bird" (i.e., be the first to find Bob White dinnerware) and "Ugliest of Show." The latter game was devised as a way to make a dull show more interesting. You and your companions look for hideous objects and nominate contenders for Ugliest of Show. At the end of the day, the group votes, and the "winner" -- the one who found the absolute worst item -- buys everyone else a drink. Playing this game, you notice things that your eyes would otherwise never rest on, from the politically incorrect (a porcelain bust of Hitler) to the grotesque (a hand carved piggy bank shaped like a naked woman on all fours, with the coin slot in her butt crack).
Although I was alone this year, I couldn't help making mental nominations. A doctor's office sign that read "WAITING ROOM: Whites Only" vied with a children's board game called "Watch the Rind" (let's just say it involved racist images of black children and watermelons) in a category of "so offensive I can't believe it's for sale instead of being incinerated." But my "winner" was a piece of furniture so outlandishly ugly that I can imagine neither the person who would make it nor the person who would use it:
