Pink Elephant Antiques: Livingston, Illinois

Okay, so we've made the 300-mile drive from our zip to Wrigley Field at least 2,949,218 times and, thus, have seen this parcel of land off of Interstate 55 near Exit 36 in Livingston, Illinois 5,898,436 times. I've always thought one of two things:

What kind of crap is that?
or
Someday I'll stop to see what kind of crap they have there.

Recently, a friend of mine, Preem, posted photos of her visiting the spaceship, which made me think "if Preem isn't above stopping at the Pink Elephant, surely I can too." Sunday, July 24 was it...the day we finally chose Door #2 and exited the highway to see what kind of crap could be had. Because how often does one enter an alleged "antique mall" and find exactly that...crap? I'm guessing 98 to 99.9% of the time. Not that I'm a frequent antique mall visitor, but the few times I've actually made a choice to enter one, my expectations of flea market type crap were met and exceeded. Not today. Or, I should say, not so much today.

We pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Pink Elephant Antique Mall and took photos and self portraits of the unexplained items littering the grounds. We then entered the doors of one-time gymnasium and school and were met by the surprise of not complete crap. To be accurate, there was crap to be had in but not in quite the chaotic, unorganized hoarder-type piled and stacked fashion to which I'm accustomed...tea cups with either super glued or missing handles; a few cards from the 1982 K-mart set of thumbnail reprints of real baseball cards that had obviously been used in place of Cheerios for a rural Illinois toddler at some point; various and sundry indescribable crocheted items...you know, piles and stacks of crap. But this place had a method to their crappy madness. It was seemingly organized with actual cool things to be had. Unfortunately, I was not bright enough to take a single photo during our  hour-long visit, so those I took outside will have to do. See the HERE.

So kudos to Preem for taking a chance and posting it on Facebook to inspire others to stop and look around once in awhile, Ferris Bueller style. Now I'm off to listen to some Sigue Sigue Sputnik, English Beat and Yellow.