I suddenly realized yesterday, when I ended up in Appleton (an hour's drive away), that it had been ages since I'd visited the town's antiques mall. No sooner thought than done (well, actually, it required a drive of four blocks), and I shortly found myself in the midst of scary shelves filled with carnival glass, rhinestone jewelry, and thousands of statuettes.

The shelves were scary because of the universal "you break it, you bought it" rules and the fact that I was wearing a fairly bulky jacket. An attempt to take a closer look at an old magazine took me by glassware displays. Yikes!

What was sobering was the fact that, by the time I'd wandered through half the mall for way over an hour, I'd found a total of five beat-up comics for $1 each and nothing more. You need to understand that I'm a sucker for certain kinds of elderly collectibles. (Anyone out there know where I can buy the card game of the 1920s -- or thereabouts -- called Excuse Me or have an idea of how I can filter for it online?)

I quickly did notice that many of the battered paper items were tagged, "Never read," and "Near mint." And there was one comic of passing interest that I quickly discovered was too repellant to pick up.

Then I discovered the other half of the mall -- with more and more (and more) booths filled with dinnerware, bar signs, and fishing lures. But here there were also some booths to which I shall head the next time I'm in town. One had some cool fossils and geodes I may revisit. I'm especially tempted by a huge chunk of Moroccan rock with many polished portions featuring fossil shells. (What would I do with it? Heck if I know. But it's fancy.)

And back in a corner were a bunch of shelves loaded with a strange variety of keen items interspersed with such why-bother items as Tom Clancy novels. I'd already found a hardcover with dust jacket: Stork Bites Man: What the Expectant Father May Expect with text by Louis Pollock but (delightful cartoon) art by Carl Rose. And spotted the hardcover Sound Off! Soldier Songs (1942, collected by Edward Arthur Dolph) just as a loudspeaker somewhere far off announced, "Mrsfh phlfgsh nim smarf!" I glanced at my watch and suddenly realized that I'd seen a sign somewhere about the place closing at 6 p.m.

Dang! Finally a spot I wanted to investigate thoroughly and not enough time to do so. I grabbed a copy of the mapback Dell Mystery Cold Steal by Alice Tilton. I already had it, but it's one of my favorite mysteries. (Alice Tilton was the pen name of Phoebe Atwood Taylor. The Tilton books featured Leonidas Witherall, a detective who resembles Shakespeare and who begins each adventure by being plunged into wild circumstances that require him to solve the murder he discovers. Zany whodunits.)

And so to the checkout line. But I'll be back.