For the past two years, McDonald has been driving up from Houston to work the market, selling stock from his computer store out of the back of a battered green van. "The first time we came out here, we made $10,000," he says. "But we haven't had a win since."
As it's grown, the market has become more cutthroat, with too many dealers fighting for the dollar, McDonald says. His boards weren't selling too well during May's market, so he was out checking the lot--trying to see who was undercutting his prices--when he spotted the plastic deer.
It was life-size, in pretty good shape, equally useful as a decoy or for target practice. Being a hunter, McDonald scooped it up. "Ten bucks for a deer," he gloats. "That thing new is $80. I can set it up at the end of my hallway and take target practice." McDonald stuck the deer on top of his van, and went back to selling boards.
Around the edges of First Saturday are some distractions for computer geeks. Snuck in among the hacker booths are stashes of telephones, remote-control cars, gun racks, car alarms, and power tools.
Miller says he tries to keep clutter out of the market, limiting it to computer-related merchandise. Since he took over, he's banned stun guns, blow darts, and other instruments of pain. Customers looking for those can go to Trader's Village.
But some measure of flea market still wriggles its way into First Saturday.
Mark Worcester and his wife, owners of a Fort Worth electronics store, make the market every month and purposely bring everything but computer equipment.
Worcester, a veteran of First Saturday since its days in the Heathkit parking lot, buys salvage and discontinued merchandise, a lot of it from Radio Shack. Rows of cordless phones and answering machines, all brand-new, line his tables.
He hauls in bins of remote controls, wall plates, headphones, and cords of all manner and use. "When you buy damaged stuff, you get it pretty cheap. You can buy whole truckloads," he says. "But you don't always know what you're getting." Which explains the table full of Barbie dolls and Star Wars action figures.
"You never know," McDonald says. "You put it out there and see what happens."
Worcester himself recently bought a used compact-disc player at First Saturday for $15, one he figures retails new for about $500. "Whether it works or not, for $15 it's a helluva deal," he says, invoking a peculiar inverse logic understood by many First Saturday regulars.
The problem with selling to a flea-market crowd is that your customers are generally cheapskates, McDonald says in an affirmation of the obvious. If he's lucky, he'll make $1,000 a night, after feeding and paying the relatives he drags along with him to man his booth. But for general junksters like him, First Saturday is worse than most. There are too many computer geeks who aren't looking for cordless phones.
Too many people like Darryl Burrows.
Come sunrise, Burrows' market day is pretty much over. He's a happy, if tired, pack rat. During the night, he has acquired one of those portable carts people use to haul luggage through airports. It is stacked high with techno-refuse, boxes and cables, things Burrows might be able to use, or swap, or sell.
He is sweating even more, dragging the loaded luggage cart across Ross Avenue. The crowd is getting thicker, the neophytes beginning to show, the people who don't even know how many megs it takes to run Windows 95.
Night's gone and Burrows is going. It's too late in the day for a nocturnal-type computer guy.
