My wife and I recently took a business trip to St. Cloud. She suggested that we leave early so that we could go antiquing. I learned long ago that “antiquing” is a code word for “shopping.”

I used to think that “antiquing” meant making something new appear to be old. This is the opposite of what I’ve always been trying to accomplish. I’ve forever been striving to make my worn old farm equipment, cars, and face look like they are nearly new. But there’s only so much that can be done to conceal rust and wrinkles.

As we motored along, we encountered a mercantile outlet called the Grande Depot. This moniker is appropriate, as visiting the joint could easily involve depositing a grand.

A jaw-dropping panoply of upscale merchandise meets the eye as you enter the Grande Depot. It was so overwhelming that I soon lapsed into a shopping stupor. I followed my wife, zombie-like, as she pointed and cooed, “Ooh, isn’t that cute!” and “Oh, look at this!”

My mental haze lifted enough for me to perceive that this store wasn’t for bargain hunters. A hand-crafted Damascus steel Japanese chef’s knife cost more than the birth of our first child. A baking pan that was made especially for roasting a turkey cost about as much as a herd of turkeys.

My wife, being a smart woman, recognized the signs of my incipient shopping zombie-ism. Thinking quickly, she said, “Look! They have a section where they sell beer and wine!”

She had me at beer.

I must have been a good boy because she bought me a bottle of boutique bourbon. It wasn’t cheap, but she must have thought it was worth it to have a non-zombie husband.

As we entered the store’s second floor, my wife’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. This is because the second floor is infested with extremely ornamental Christmas trees. We’re talking about a Martha Stewart-level of decorations, an impossible feat for mere mortals to achieve.

I didn’t see any items in the Grande Depot that were antique. Although I suppose they would be if you kept them for fifty years or so.

The next stop on our itinerary was a store called the Rusty Pick. They certainly had a lot of rusty stuff to pick from.

Many of the store’s patrons were, like us, Baby Boomers. There was also a smattering of younger folks, people from Generation X or Generation Zoltron, or whatever they call themselves.

One of the younger ladies pointed at a ginormous white enamel coffee pot, the kind that can be used to boil several gallons of java at a time. “Wow!” she exclaimed, “My great grandma had one just like that!”

What does it say when an item that’s regarded as antique is something that was commonly used during your childhood? At the very least it says, “Don’t stand there too long or the store’s owners might slap a price tag on you!”

The Rusty Pick had scores of record albums that were pressed back when “LP” meant “long play” and not “liposuctioned posterior.” Many of the records were from my formative years, when bands with names such as Bad Finger and Grand Funk Railroad dominated the AM airwaves.

We had hoped that the mere mention of these bands’ names would scandalize our parents. The rock music from my youth is now deemed to be “classic” — which is just another way to say, “Old enough to have been aboard Noah’s ark.”

The store had a large collection of snow sleds. They were the kind of sleds that featured a pair of steel runners with a rudimentary steering mechanism at the front. The steering thingy that gave the rider the illusion that he or she could maneuver the sled as it rocketed at high speed into a stationary object. It was impossible to steer clear of anything, including barns.

A cast iron water pump caught my eye. It was exactly like the one that lived in the entryway of my childhood farmhouse. You had to pump the handle like a politician shaking hands at a Fourth of July picnic to obtain a simple drink of water. The pump would prime quicker if you cursed under your breath.

Nearby sat a galvanized double boiler. One just like it served as a bathtub for my siblings and me before we got indoor plumbing. The boiler was filled with hand-pumped water that was heated on a woodburning stove. All that manual labor was enough to make you need a bath.

In conclusion, antiquing can certainly be fun and entertaining. Just don’t get lost in a haze of nostalgia.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.