To Market, To Market

The 2nd Street Market (to give it its full name, the Five Rivers MetroParks PNC 2nd Street Market) is a great place to spend a rainy Saturday morning. I spent mine sipping Guatemalan roast from Caffeine, eating breakfast from All Souped Up (crustless mushroom quiche, apple cinnamon muffin, fruit cup), looking over the free books on the Dayton Metro Library bookshelf (you're welcome to check them out, but you don't have to check them out!), and watching a gaggle of toddlers wave balloon wands in time to dreamy music from Michael and Sandy Bashaw. Outside the old freight depot windows, trains went by. Inside, shoppers--their brought-from-home bags and market baskets full of new asparagus, loaves of crusty bread, spring flowers, maple syrup, and whoopie pies in rainbow colors from Hilary at Thistle--drifted by in eddies and whirls like sticks tossed into a stream, sometimes jamming the flow to stop and talk, then popping free a few at a time to move away on the current.

I like the Market in this place, and I liked it when it was in the Cannery nearby (though there was never any parking). But I have to confess I will always prefer the Market the way I first knew it, as an outdoor farmer's market at Wegerzyn Gardens MetroPark. That's where I bought my first tomatoes-with-flavor and sweet corn and brown eggs "so fresh you wanna slap 'em!" from Mike Brown and his gaggle of daughters. It's where the Wildflower Girl (never did know her name) sat on a curb and made up fairytale bouquets picked from her own garden, no two alike and laced with fresh herbs so they smelled like heaven all week. It's where Steve Smith (now ruler of a Flowerman empire) stood on top of his truck and called you out by name if you looked like you were going to leave without armloads of glads in velvety purple-black and shell pink and sunshine yellow splashed with crimson. My apartment always looked like the reception room at a funeral home after a visit to the Market, with 3-foot-tall arrangements of glads in every receptacle that would hold water, because I didn't want Steve to yell at me.

In its 2nd Street incarnation, the Market is less farmer, more market. There's still produce in season (Mike's gone, but Russell Garber and his three-generation family serve up Amish quality), and fresh flowers (Steve's people are there, but no more truck and no more yelling), but there are more artisans and craftspeople than growers. The Wegerzyn Gardens Foundation has a gift shop at the Market (I bought my friend Jean a bird feeder for her new yard this morning), and the Humane Society tempts adoptive families with sweet strays to cuddle. And there are many more opportunities to grab a meal to eat in or carry out, catering to every taste and ethnicity. Up at Wegerzyn, the only prepared foods on offer were the Kolbs' Hungarian sweet rolls, tucked in individual baggies (they're at 2nd Street, too); otherwise, it was all promise and delayed gratification, planning what to do with that spinach and those beets and those little new potatoes, and rhubarb! Back then, the Market was the first stop for checking off the grocery list. Today, it's that plus a downtown neighborhood gathering spot, a tourist attraction, and a great place to spend a rainy Saturday morning.

The link, as it is for so many things in Montgomery County, is Five Rivers MetroParks, which sponsored the market at Wegerzyn and promoted it to a park of its own when it moved to 2nd Street. The MetroParks system moves higher on my list of reasons to be in Dayton On Purpose with every passing year, as I keep exploring the limitless opportunities it provides to Get Out and Walk, Garden, Play . . . and even things I don't do but love knowing somebody does, like Hike, Bike, Ice Skate, and Kayak.

Listening to Michael Bashaw's magic flute this morning, I remembered that it was at Wegerzyn I first heard him play--not at the Market, but at the Art in the Park festival that used to be held in May before the art center closed. That flute is another ribbon that runs through my time in Dayton. Markets move, and rainy Saturdays change to sunny Sundays and the years roll away like train cars, but some good things remain.