Flea market manager Raymond King walks through the “bargain outlet” section of the market on Sunday. The flea market, housed in a sprawling former machine shop, has been a Kyle fixture for decades. (Photo by Wes Ferguson)
by WES FERGUSON
There it is, next to Interstate 35 in Kyle, the massive and multicolored warehouse with the big, red-lettered sign: “FLEA MARKET.”
On weekends, the building comes alive.
This past Sunday, Carl and Gwen Hart were among the several shoppers wandering through the southern wing of the market, a cavernous room called the “Bargain Outlet.” The couple meandered past old wooden furniture and figurines that cluttered every available shelf, not to mention the toy cars, cowboy hats, beads, lamps, and sundry junk.
Carl looked around the room, taking it all in.
“This is about what our house looks like,” he said.
“He’s lying,” his wife said. “It does not. We just like to collect.”
The couple were in town visiting their daughter and newborn grandchild in Wimberley. “While we’re here,” Carl said, “we gotta do a little junking.”
The Harts came to the right place for junk, according to the flea market manager, Raymond King. After 10 years running the market, junk is one thing he most certainly knows.
“Just about anything you can think of comes through that door at one time or another,” he said. “To us nothing is unusual.”
In the north wing of the building, vendors rent booths to sell their wares. One of those vendors, Edna Martinez, was selling everything from pots and pans to bedsheets and toys. She also has a “Christian corner.” With nine children‚ eight of them grown and now raising families of their own‚ Martinez and her husband have a steady supply of gently used items to sell.
“Everything comes mostly from our family,” she said. “Everything is very, very reasonable. It’s more like a little thrift store. We cater to anything a person might need, except we don’t carry large items.”
At another booth nearby, Mary and Fred Chesser were selling packets of “crystal earth,” for growing plants without soil. Fred was also offering some less traditional flea-market fare. He was hawking insurance policies for things like roadside assistance and identity theft.
“When something does happen,” Fred said, “call the company and say, ‘My I.D. has been stolen, and I need help.’”
The flea market is owned by the family of Jim Mattox, a former state attorney general who died in 2008. “He would bring stuff in to sell,” King said of Mattox. “He’d come around and hang around a little bit.”
Long before it became a flea market, the building housed a machine shop that employed many people in Kyle. Old men still come by the market and talk about working in the old shop, King said. Like it or not, the market is a Kyle tradition.
“Some people don’t like it being here, but it’s part of the old history of Kyle, and it’s probably one of the last old-fashioned flea markets around here,” King said. “I think it’s an asset to the community. It gives an opportunity for the poorer people to pick up what they need.”
There’s also plenty for collectors and antique dealers to sift through, King added.
“We get people from all walks of life at one time or another,” he said.
King was standing outside in the afternoon sun. He turned around to look at the big metal building, with its bright paint and corrugated metal.
“I admit it don’t look pretty,” he said. “But it’s functional.”
