May 18, 2010
Many, many years back, in the 80’s, long before Photoshop (and before I had a computer either) my family sold pickles at a flea market. Yep, just like you’re picturing, sour and half-sour pickles in big barrels, along with pickled tomatoes and something we called “pickle pops,” giant pickles on sticks.
Honestly, it was boring work for a young kid like me, and there wasn’t much money in it, which just made it that much worse. Business wasn’t so good, and we had time on our hands, so we would spend a lot of time trying to come up with funny signs to try to get some attention to our booth.
As I said, this was long before Photoshop came along and we did everything the old-fashioned way with markers, scissors, and tape.
I was a big wrestling fan and we had a copy of the WWE (then WWF) magazine lying around the booth. I cut out a full-page picture of Hulk Hogan and taped in his hand a picture of a jar of pickles I cut out of an ad. I stapled it to a piece of cardboard and leaned it against a jar on the shelf behind us. To make it look “official,” I even added the WWF and Ba-Tampte Pickle logos. Of course, no copyright infringement was intended, and with one look it was obvious the thing was a taped-up joke.
As you can probably guess, the picture was a hit. People could not walk by without stopping to ask us how we got it. The Hulkster and the WWF were at their height of popularity. Everyone had to see the picture. Despite the obvious phoniness of it, I still chuckled and said “he loves our pickles.” We even flirted with selling a “Hulk Hogan Pickle” but we had a feeling that Vince McMahon’s lawyers might not see the humor.
Eventually we folded up the pickle biz, but I held on to the picture. I can’t say I have a lot of fond pickle memories, but this picture brings them all back.
The Hulkster loved our pickles.
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