The Right Price

By Cody Bond

When it rains, Geneva’s dishes get wet. So do the coffee pots and the Coke bottles, the Bibles, lamps and bike helmets. All the wooden furniture swells; the scrap metal rusts a little more; and Geneva stays inside. During the winter, she shuffles her wares down the long lines of tables and sweeps the leaves. By the time she’s finished, more have fallen, and she starts all over again.

Geneva Jarvis makes a living selling junk. She and her husband, Randy, run the Orange Lake Antique Village and Trading Post, where nothing has a price tag but everything is for sale. Geneva knows what it’s all worth. Sofas are $20. DVD players are $5 to $10. Plates, cups, bowls and saucers are all 50 cents. Her prices never change. She says people are used to them, and she would rather get rid of something than try to get rich off it.

“I don’t care if I make a quarter,” she says. “It’s gone.”

Geneva is 66 years old, with bright, grey-blue eyes and a firm handshake. The lines in her face deepen when she smiles. She’ll admit to smoking two packs a day, unless her doctor asks. She sits low in her seat but stands up straight and walks with purpose. She has raised five sons, and still tells them to watch their language.

Originally from Taylor, Mich., Geneva moved to Miami in 1969 and then to Orlando two years later. She started working as a picker for an antiques dealer and eventually went into business for herself, hiring a young man from Putnam, Conn., who would soon become her second husband.

“We worked together for a year,” Randy says. ”Got married, and here we are 25 years later, eating three squares a day.”

The Trading Post sits off Highway 441, south of Gainesville, just past McIntosh. Geneva says she and Randy finally moved into the little log cabin on the property about seven years ago but have been running their business there for about 25 years. They are zoned and licensed and rarely hear complaints. Geneva’s middle son, Huber Fraunfelter, lives next door with his two dogs, Bear and Blue.

“He’s on watch when we close,” she says.

All told, The Trading Post covers nearly two acres. Most of the inventory comes from estate sales, Geneva says. People leave a lot behind when they die. She takes it all: TVs and car tires, hot tubs, telephones, antique picture frames, fishing poles, poker chips, pots and pans, boxes of marbles, mason jars, gas cans, paint cans, ice trays, Barbie dolls, Christmas lights, porcelain toilet bowls and half-used bottles of glue. The ever-changing assortment of slightly- to-well-worn objects has made The Trading Post a favorite spot for deal seekers and artists alike.

Behind the house Geneva keeps her birds — 36 chatty macaws and Amazon parrots — and a well-mannered llama named Zazoo, who never seems to spit. Birds are the one thing she collects, she says, but she doesn’t bother naming most of them.

“I’m better off not getting really attached to them,” she says.

Geneva enjoys her work — enjoys being outside, finding stuff and meeting people. She knows many of her customers by name and many more by what they buy. She talks about the three ladies who always put on gloves to sort through her stacks of dishes or the gentleman with the moustache who has to argue over every price. She laughs but rarely compromises.

“Business is business,” she says. “And friendship is friendship.”

The Trading Post is open seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., or somewhere thereabouts. Geneva says she’s a little slower getting up when it’s cold out, but if she doesn’t get moving, someone usually comes knocking. She’ll rouse herself, go outside and stoke the rusty pipe stove, and get to work. On an average day, she sees 30 or 35 customers, sometimes more. Gator games usually bring a lot of business, she says, as do the busloads of art students from Santa Fe and UF. Customers pull up in the dirt lot and wander around the tables, taking their time. Geneva waves and chats and haggles until the sun gets low; then she and Randy close up the gate, eat a good meal, and rest up for tomorrow.

“You have your good days; you have your bad days,” she says. “And some days I’m glad it’s raining.”