The Svensen Grange hosts a flea market every third weekend of the month.

A sign on Marine Drive near Safeway caught my eye: “Svensen Flea Market 9-4 Saturday, 10-4 Sunday.”

I said to myself: “Why not?” It was Saturday, 10 a.m., cloudy, Spring Break had just started, and I didn’t have a single student paper to grade.

That’s how I party these days: a Svensen flea market to launch Spring Break.

I drove Highway 30 east, found the Svensen Grange Hall, parked the truck, and walked in the building. I had no idea what I was looking for. Something would find me.

Vendors had filled out the hall pretty well and I made the rounds admiring the goods. I loved the second place gun dog trophy from 1960, vintage photographs, ancient toys made from metal, birdhouses, aprons and 18-inch dolls of Frank Sinatra and John Wayne.

There was easy banter among the vendors, quiet country music on the PA, and the smell of coffee and baked goods hung in the air.

And then I saw it: a hardback book with the bewitching title of A Field Guide to the Little People. Something about the cover illustrations of gnomes and sprites also beguiled me; where had I seen this style before?

I picked the tome up, cracked its pages, marveled at the calligraphy used for chapter headers, and determined the book was published in 1977. I learned “elf” is a generic term for Little People and the book is exactly what the title advertised—a field guide to elves, sprites, spirits, dwarves, etc. I could take this book into a fresh clearcut off Highway 30 and try to identify my woodland friends, assuming any remain alive after a clearcut. I also learned the book’s illustrator was the same artist who animated The Beatles film Yellow Submarine! Condition: mint. Price: $2. How this far out book of folklore and 1970s psychedelica came to rest in a Grange Hall on the Oregon Coast proved well beyond my comprehension.

I read the inside jacket copy. A few lines seized me: “…it deals with that aspect of reality which most dreamers can see clearly: the world of magic delineated by slanting sunlight, sea-foam, turf-smoke, and voices of children singing in high, lonely meadows. Children and madmen know it…”

It was the best jacket copy of a book I have ever read. I bought the book and felt relieved I had something to read over Spring Break, since this was Oregon and it would naturally rain all week and the Little People would like that. More rain meant fewer tourists taking selfies in the dunes and a speedier regeneration of the clearcuts.

The Svensen Flea Market is held every third weekend of the month.

Matt Love is the author/editor of 14 books, which are available through all coastal bookstores (except one) or his website, nestuccaspitpress.com