Black Oak Burger King

Last month I went on some hellacious picking trips while in central Alabama. Behind the curve as ever, this was my first roadtrip with a GPS, and I was smitten with it. I found one thrift store I'd heard tales of, but had never actually found, and it was a treasure trove -- I spent hours poring over old books, long-forgotten gospel tapes, and I even picked up my first Betamax title. The Foundry is a store run by a rehab center - the proceeds benefit them, and their patients (clients?) work in the store. My pile of CDs and tapes elicited a bonafide Southern "whoo-ee!" from the bagger, who alternated between macking on the lady ringing me up and asking me if I'd ever heard of Percy Sledge.

Thanks to the wonders of the GPS, I also rediscovered another thrift store that I hadn't seen since 2004, since I was down there living at my dad's house, convalescing from open-heart surgery. My sister and I wandered out, for something to do, and found this place called "Big Saver," and man, it was dreadful. It still is today, too, making me wonder how bad a thrift store has to be before it actually gets closed down. Chewed-up romance novels were two bucks, CDs were four, broken answering machines and ZIP drives were $15. If Big Saver wasn't on the same trajectory as two other awesome stores, I'd probably never see it again. But since it's so close to the real goldmines, I'll go make a stop on every trip from here on in, to marvel at its craptitude, hope against hope for a change in management, and to challenge myself to find that one nugget I can sell out of their piles of overpriced garbage.

(I got one there this time, a David and the Giants Christian CD from 1989 or so. I broke my usual picking rule and texted my friend Jeremiah, asking him to look it up and see if it was worth buying - normally, I go with my gut feeling and chance it, but at $4 a disc, mistakes can add up quickly).

I hit the second of my "goldmine" spots after Big Saver, and then planned to head back to Tuscaloosa, where we were visiting my family. But on the way in, as I'd turned from the offramp, I'd seen something odd. In what looked like a decrepit, abandoned Burger King location, complete with twisted and burnt remains of a drive-thru sign, there appeared to be a thrift store! It seemed to have kinda sprouted there, like a patch of kudzu or an impromptu garbage dump off a ravine near a road. The handmade sign outside called it "The Master's Mission," I think, and offered "free clothing to the truely needy ONLY!!!!"

I had to scope this out. I pulled into the gravel-and-broken-concrete-strewn parking lot and walked in through the front door, where a faint ghost of Burger King decal could still be seen. Inside was the kind of place that gives orderly, neat people like my sister full-blown panic attacks -- boxes of crap everywhere, thousands of shirts and dresses crammed onto makeshift racks made of wire and old pipes, dusty dishes piled onto card tables. There was barely anywhere to stand or walk. The "front counter" was an office desk with an adding machine, sitting next to a few suspicious-looking boxes of candy bars for sale. The whole place smelled of laundry hamper and the faraway musk of long-ago deep frying.

Did I dig in? Of course I did, although not as enthusiastically as I might have earlier in the day. Even I have my limits when it comes to shopping and junk-picking, and I was in dire need of a shower, some sweet tea and a nap at this point. But I soldiered on, quickly realizing that this place was chock full o' crap. It looked like they'd raided the dumpster at other, better thrift stores to stock this hopeless outpost. It didn't help that the scrawny white dude at the 'counter' looked more like he shoulda been down the road, manning the thrift run by recovering meth addicts and small time hookers-turned-cashiers. He wasn't chatty, which was good, but he'd perfected the art of staring at you until you felt like you were in his house, against his wishes, rifling through his sock drawer looking for a reason to hold another intervention.

I bought less than half a dozen items at this weird shambles of a store, but one of them was this:



I got it home with my other treasures, listed it, and within a week, I'd sold it to someone in Japan for $40. When I put it up, it was literally the only Black Oak Arkansas shirt on the site.

Black Oak Arkansas completed auction on Ebay

Doing what I do takes a little bit of a leap, one that a lot of people won't contemplate - the idea of going to even a nice thrift store and spending some time digging around bums them out. Even some of the hardier souls I know might have passed on the weird, awkward Burger King thrift store. But I figure, if you're not out looking for adventures, and you're not willing to turn over every stone, then why are you even out on the road in the first place?