Having missed yesterday’s Petaluma Butter and Eggs Day Parade, I felt obliged to attend its follow-up, the 23rd annual Petaluma Antiques Faire. Or, at least my wife felt obliged, seeing as she’s been on a quest for an ever-elusive credenza. I’m not one for antiques, which accounts for my aimless ambling through the throng of vendors congesting Kentucky Street under the banner of “Recycle, Re-Use, Remember.” Permit me to make an alliterative addition to their slogan: “Retail.”? Commerce at the fair was in full force, that is for everyone except the businesses whose foot-traffic was siphoned from the sidewalks and into the street, which must have been particularly goring to the owners of stores festooned with “Going Out of Business” signs. So far, I’m only down $40 for a metal end-table inexplicably fixed with a combination lock. Of course, my wife loves it and I for one can’t wait to accidentally lock my keys in it.

Since my wife forbade me sneaking off to anesthetize myself with a Petaluma Strong Ale (though she has turned a blind-eye to my blogging this post on the sly from an? iPhone), I had to make-do with what was available at the antiques fair to numb the pain of seeing artifacts from my youth sold as antiquities (when did the 80s become ancient?). Besides bludgeoning myself with an electronic “Simon” memory game my only choice seemed to be ether, or at least a glass jar labeled “Ether.” I opened it on the off-chance that it contained a residual whiff (since just a dab will do ya), but that bird had flown long ago and joined a flock of dodos. My wife, however, was kind enough to take a picture of her man-tique peering longingly through its glass, darkly.