Six in the morning at the biggest flea market in New England — brass candlesticks, cold coffee, and the good stuff gone by seven.
Everyone who has been to Brimfield tells you the same thing: come early. What they mean is come while it is still dark, and bring a flashlight, and accept that you will be cold.
At six the fields are all fog and headlamps. Dealers are still unwrapping newspaper. You can hear a table of glassware being set out before you can see it.
By seven the serious buyers have already made their circuit twice. I watched a man buy an entire crate of tarnished candlesticks without asking the price, which is either confidence or a very specific kind of madness.
I found what I came for at a table near the back: a pair of brass candlesticks, unpolished, uneven, priced as a set because one of them leans. They lean on my kitchen shelf now.
Sometimes the long way around is the point.