A shad is not only a fish but a type of tree. I learned this many years ago from a couple named Rita and Joe. The one thing Joe loved as much as Rita was fishing. And when the shad tree is blooming the shad fish are said to be running.
I don't remember how I first met this couple. I do remember the boys were both young and our friendship grew through a mutual love of the local flea market.
When my kids were both young the flea market was a great place to go early on a Sunday morning. In a small field located just north of Newfane on Rte. 35, vendors and dealers would set up to sell their wares every Sunday from May to October. This was a ritual of ours. When you don't have a lot of money a flea market can be a gold mine. This was before the days were every item more than 20 yrs old became an antique and worth a fortune. This was a place where you could buy books, socks, used toys and a variety of other things for a very low cost. You could give your kids a couple of dollars and they thought they were rich and had the best time going from vendor to vendor looking for the right deal.
Our particular favorite was 'the plastic man'. Every Sunday his crew would unload cardboard box after cardboard box from a large truck, setting them up in neat rows on the ground. They would be filled with crayons, bubbles, coloring books, kitchen items, tape, envelopes, box after box of surprises like Christmas morning. The crew had on canvas carpenter aprons which served as their cash registers and plastic bags tucked under the tie strings. Everything was affordable and it was all amazing. You did your shopping there just like you were going to Wal-Mart. I knew the vendors I could afford and those I could not. I could buy my family socks from one lady, I could get fresh produce at one stand and I even had one man make me a special mirror frame which is still hanging in my house today.
Anyway, Rita and I would walk back and forth through the different rows of vendors while the boys ran ahead looking for those special things that little boys love. Rita would tell me about her life with Joe. The house they lived in with the driveway steep and turning that only a Vermonter would consider having.
I remember they spent time out in the desert during World War II in a trailer while Joe served in the Army. There was her sister (whose name I can't remember) and her husband that would drive up from MA to visit some Sundays and go to the flea market.
Joe and Rita were well into their 70's when I first met them. Their love for each other as obvious as the many lines and wrinkles on both their faces. Joe got cancer and they eventually stopped coming to the flea market. And within a year or so Joe died. Rita sold their trailer which they had moved into after selling their house and property and moved to MA to be closer to family. She wrote me a couple of times but I in the folly of youth was too busy with my life to answer her cards. I deeply regret that now.
Still, every spring when the shad blooms both my hubby and I say to each other 'Joe and Rita'.
They are a lasting memory. So here's to Joe and Rita, the shad running and the shad blooming.
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