The Rubber Chicken Awards

I love a good road trip.  I especially love a traditional and familiar road trip.   

In years gone by, my sister, my kids, and I would take a six hour road trip every summer up to the Texas Panhandle to see my Mom and Dad.  

I grew up in the Panhandle.  It always feels like I can breathe deeper up there, 

what with all the wide open spaces.  

When the kids were little, they'd look for "clues" that we were getting closer to Grandmother & Granddaddy's house.  And of course we'd make sure the trip was educational and stop at at least one Historical Marker along the way.  

The kids just loved  those stops at historical markers.  

This week we took a very quick trip to the Panhandle - up Tuesday and back home Wednesday. We were on our well-traveled road with not much time to dawdle, but we did fit in one traditional stop at our favorite antique shop ... Highway 287 Antiques in Quannah, Texas.  

(a friendly trucker on Highway 287 honked at me when I was taking this picture ...

because clearly I was rockin the antique shop :o)

We started a traditional stop at this place a couple years ago when Sandy instituted a challenge:  everybody gets a dollar to spend on what they think is the best treasure, and the winner gets a special prize.

Here's the winning entry from that little expedition.  The Rubber Chicken is the "prize" ...

This winning entry is, by the way, MINE.  Just sayin'.  There was a HUGE barrel FULL of old photographs ... I love and hate that.  It's easier for me to pass up a pen of free puppies than to walk away from old photographs.  I always want to take all of them home to love.  

This trip we issued round two of the Rubber Chicken Challenge. Let me describe Highway 287 Antiques  for you  ...  it's HUGE.  And packed full of everything you could possibly imagine.  It's not the classy-classy kind of store.  It's pretty crowded.  And dusty.  But a great stop if you're up for an adventure.  

There are ...

Books.

Beer cans (empty).  

Bats.

Boots.

Burlap sacks.

Ben Ali's hat.

(you know you want to try that on)

All that ... and a veritable plethora of other quirky items ...

The kids finally went outside to wait.  

It's hard to see, but Ben is giving me the tap-tap-tap on the wristwatch signal.   Whatever.

The $1.00 limit was a challenge, but the competition was pretty tough ...

There was also a ceramic cat and a nostalgic children's book.  But Nathan's frog won.  Hands down.  

His name is Jerry.

To say the shop is really crowded is putting it nicely.  It's is actually so full you can barely walk down the aisles.  But it's a fairly well organized collection.  And the charm of it is that you're walking through yesteryear and you can be absolutely certain that if you just ... keep ... looking ... 

you'll surely find a great treasure.  

Or at least a rubber chicken :o)