The Alameda Point Antiques Fair is a huge flea market that happens the first Sunday of every month out at the old abandoned Naval Air Station.

It’s the sort of a giant estate sale after that eccentric, mad-cap aunt died at the age of 98. The one who traveled the world after she married her fifth husband. They collected Persian rugs and pottery from Japan, Saris from India, pictures of all kinds, new fangled contraptions and some plain junk. And when the men came to haul it all away they found a basement full of pith helmets and big game trophies and all that furniture left over after they went mad for mid-century modern. And way in the back were all the mementos she'd tucked away from her third marriage when she lived in Paris and some trunks her mother left her before she ran off with the hotel man from the East.

And now it's all up for the asking.

The first time we'd gone, last December, I'd been overwhelmed. There was so much stuff. I did manage to purchase some prints, an eel and two shads which I have yet to frame. This time I was better prepared and the weather was much, much nicer.

Mr. P found a tackle box complete with the former owner’s fishing license almost immediately and snatched it up for a song. Unfortunately that meant we had to lug it through the rest of the afternoon.

Tackle box circa 1952

I was in the mood to shop for girly, pretty things. They were not in short supply.

My loot:

Hand tooled leather purse circa 1950

Rhinestone studded glasses

Wallace silver bon-bon bowl and a little sparkley bon-bon to go in it

I also spied a stuffed bob cat and an enormous stuffed boar on a marble stand. But I don't think either would have fit in the Del Sol.