Now I know what senior citizens in France do on weekends.

They visit the nearest brocante.

A brocante is a very French event … more than a garage sale, far less than an antique sale.

Basically, it’s a bunch of people who bring whatever old stuff they had in the attic, or bought at an estate sale, or picked out of the trash … and put on display for oohing-and-aahing oldsters who remember when whatever tattered furniture or heavy metallic object was the latest in home tech.

We went to the brocante in Pezenas, a nearby city with a reputation for collecting, storing, sorting and selling … someone else’s junk.

The main street of the city was blocked off, and vendors had their … stuff … laid out on the street and curbs.

What stuff?

Ancient broken dolls. Mounted horns. Rickety chairs. Buttons. Oaken chests. A skull. LPs from a half-century ago. Old clothes. Incomplete silver sets. Semi-complete linens. Random art from former French colonies in Africa. Model cars. Family photos from the 19th century. A grade-school diploma from 1912. Kitchen appliances from an earlier era. Jewelry boxes. Land-line phones from the 1950s. Random metal stuff, including a horse shoe, that looked as if it had been taken from a garage that had been padlocked for 80 years.

We looked at a mile of junk. Seriously. A mile. Both sides of Pezenas’s main street. Up one side, back the other. About the only thing I did not see was a velvet portrait of Elvis.

The people buying and selling are a bit … odd … too. Trending toward 70-ish, trending toward free spirits, veering towards former French hippies who like nothing more than buying or (particularly) selling junk.

I was not once tempted to buy anything. Old household items creep me out. In terms of bringing it into my home. Especially when people are charging ridiculous prices for broken stuff that they spent zero money acquiring.

Pezenas is a center of this, apparently. At least three antique stores can be found on the main street.

And perhaps this serves a social function, as well. It keeps the septuagenarians off the streets. By having them sort through someone else’s junk.