HELEN ROBINSON 

FOUNDER OF THE KANE COUNTY FLEA MARKET 

 

 

Written and Photographed by June Grayson  

 

 

 

Every month since April, 1967, Helen Robinson has thrown the biggest party in northern Illinois: the Kane County Flea Market. Let others have their godfathers and their sugar daddies. Illinois has its favorite grandmother, Helen Robinson.  

She makes an unlikely choice for the successful chief executive officer of a huge, privately-held family corporation - this sturdy, 72 year-old midwesterner, proud mother of four strapping sons and fond grandmother of ten teenagers and young adults. Robinson remembers, "I had been to a small neighborhood flea market and I came home and told my husband - `I'm going to run a flea market.' He said, `you get the darndest ideas,' but he went along with me." 

In April, 1967, she rented the American Legion Hall in the little town of Wasco, Illinois, five miles west of St. Charles, invited 14 friends to be dealers, and 400 people paid to get in. 

Each month more people came, so in July of the same year she rented one building at the Kane County Fair Grounds on Randall Road, St. Charles, Illinois, forty miles west of the Chicago city limits. That month 35 dealers greeted the thousand people who attended. She has been there ever since.  

She has never canceled, no matter how bad the weather or what calamities of family life intervened. "When my husband took sick, I took him home from the hospital on Friday, but I was at the fairgrounds on Saturday," Robinson remembers. Even family wakes and funerals are planned around the weekend. The show must  

go on. 

If not the first American flea market, the Kane County Flea Market is now surely one of the biggest. "The Princeton, Illinois, flea market started two years before mine, and still continues," Robinson thinks. 

Dealers in their pick-up trucks and recreational vehicles start lining up on the roads leading into the fairgrounds on the Friday before the first Sunday of each month. Expanded some years ago to a two day session, the fairground gates now open for customers on that Saturday from 1-5 and on Sunday from 7-4. Average attendance is still climbing each year. The highest attendance for one weekend so far has been 25,000. Dealers from as far away as Alaska reserve the 500 indoor spaces in the covered buildings on the grounds. Outside dealers can drive up on Saturday morning, park inside the fences, and set up for business. The most dealers they have ever had in one weekend is 1500. So far they have never had to turn anyone away, either dealer or guest. 

Fortunately, Robinson has always had plenty of room for expansion. The Kane County Fairgrounds consists of several large year-around buildings, many covered pavilions used one week out of the year for livestock shows during the annual July Kane County Fair, acres and acres of tree-studded rolling green grass, and parking fields adjacent to the grounds that can absorb the fifteen thousand cars that sometimes converge here on the weekend. "Of course, the beginning rent was not what it is now," Robinson remembers. In a few years, the Kane County Fairgrounds will move to a new location ten miles farther west with even more room for expansion. Robinson will move there, too. 

Robinson has always known the value of advertising. "There weren't many antique magazines in 1967, but I advertised in all of them, first the Collector News and then the Antique Trader, as well as all of the local and Chicago newspapers." Now her advertising budget is $7,000 a month and her ads appear from coast to coast in almost every known antique publication, including the GLASS COLLECTOR'S DIGEST. She continues to advertise in all of the regional newspapers, as well as the one in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, her home town.  

She met her husband, a tall Texan, when she worked at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, during World War II. The Army had sent his outfit to Wisconsin to acclimate them to cold weather and to learn how to ski. He had never seen snow before. He earned a battlefield commission. When he returned from war duty they married and moved to northern Illinois. They had been married 35 years when Mr. Robinson died in 1980.  

From the beginning, the Robinsons have served good food - no gourmet meals, just your basic heartland fare. "My husband and sister had always been in food service, so it was only natural that they would be responsible for the kitchens. That way we could always be sure of the quality. We serve food that is serviceable and handy and that you can carry around while you shop. We don't really make a profit on the food, but it is a drawing card, especially breakfast," Robinson says.  

One part-time kitchen employee concurs wholeheartedly. "Each weekend I work at the flea market is a really incredible experience. Everyone has so much fun! We keep one food area open all night for the dealers. You would be surprised how much they roam around. When we start frying the breakfast bacon at three a.m., you can smell it all over the grounds. The dealers start lining up hours ahead of the five a.m. breakfast bell." 

The Robinson family has always worked together. "I told my sons from the first, that if they helped me, I would share my profits with them." All four sons have been either fully or partly involved in flea market responsibilities at some time during the past twenty years and two of them still continue to do so while holding other full-time jobs. Pat is in charge of gate-keeping and parking, while Fred is responsible for grounds maintenance.  

The corporation owns its own trucks and service vehicles. They manage their own garbage disposal and sometime improve the primitive roads, hauling in their own gravel when midwestern mud threatens to overwhelm, and wetting down the dirt roads when dust storms attack. They provide their own security forces, although the county police will respond to a call for help if a crime is committed. They run a tight ship. One feels safe and relaxed at this flea market, the same feeling one used to have in America's small towns in the good old days.  

The Robinsons have always relied on family and friends to fill the needed jobs - and on the busiest summer weekends they need 150 workers. They have never had to advertise for help. in fact, landing a job with the Robinsons is considered a real plum for local job aspirants. "They pay well and they are great to work for," says one employee. "Fred won't stand for anything: one mistake and you're out - worker, dealer, or anyone. That accounts for the quality of the whole operation."  

All of the good old-fashioned values still flourish here: church, family, home, and hard work. Robinson honed her organizational skills on innumerable projects she chaired in Wisconsin and Illinois Catholic parishes. "I built three churches," she remembers.  

Kate Johnsen Robinson, Fred's wife, says, "I worked here before we were married. I never missed one month in spite of four pregnancies, and neither did any of my sisters-in-law. We would push the babies around in grocery carts if we needed to, but we were always here."  

At one time in a more innocent era, Robinson delighted in her collection of "naughty boys," as first exemplified by a Brussels, Belgium, statue of a tousled-haired little prince voiding in the woods. "I liked them because I had four beautiful little baby boys myself." Now Helen and Kate both treasure their collections of jack-in-the-pulpit vases (some of which are pictured on succeeding pages). Sometimes, buyers rub shoulders with "Big Jim" Thompson, four-term governor of Illinois, a long-time friend and another antique enthusiast. 

What is selling at flea markets now? "Furniture is always good," Robinson thinks. "Young couples furnish their homes from flea market finds. Pine and oak are always popular, but now they are even buying the 1950s blonde furniture that we threw away. Cookie jars, advertising, costume jewelry, books - especially children's book by famous illustrators - are other hot items." 

At an age when others have long ago chosen retirement, Robinson still seeks new worlds to conquer. They sometimes organize an annual flea market at Navy Pier in Chicago. She has opened a retail store open all week in St. Charles called Helen's Collectibles. And she has staked two grandsons who deal in baseball cards to a store of their own above hers.  

You can meet this midwestern icon any flea market weekend at the information booth in the main building, sometimes flanked by a handsome son or grandson. Here is where she acts as mother confessor to all the dealers and where her strong voice booms announcements of lost children and cars through the public address system.  

Robinson hopes her family will continue the business after she is gone, but she promises, "As long as I can sign my name, I'll be here." 

 

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