Life is beautiful.

'Hello friend. Life is beautiful"

It's the first thing you hear when you walk into Stan's junk store in Wareham, Massachusetts. You turn the corner and there he is, sitting in his lounge chair with his winter coat, and winter mitts on, trying to watch a movie on the beat up television in the corner. Then the inevitable question "Whatcha lookin' for?" in his Minnesota accent. I first bumped into Stan in my travels while scouring junk, antique and thrift stores for whatever catches my eye. It's a hobby of mine. Stan's store is classic. A random assortment of items he has gathered over the years, most tucked away in a corner, gathering dust, and not worth all that much. But that's what makes it so fascinating. You can spend a long time getting lost in the drawers filled with trinkets. I spent a little time chatting with Stan one day.

He told me that he grew up on a farm in Minnesota.  After awhile he began traveling and selling ice fishing decoys that he had collected over the years from folk artists.  He became pretty well known in the world of fishing decoys which are very collectible.  On one of his trips he found himself in the Wareham and Buzzards Bay area and as he put it "My truck broke down so I stayed" 

He used to have a bigger shop in Buzzards Bay but that has since closed down.  He now spends each day in his little shop on the bridge trying to make a few bucks a day to get by.