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Accustomed as we are to instant gratification, Americans will only stand in a really long line for one of two reasons. Some lines are necessary, like those leading to the counter at the DMV or crawling through customs at the airport. Others lead to something so exciting it's worth the wait, like a roller coaster, a traveling art exhibit or a 12-hour sale. Barring either of those conditions, lines in this country tend to match the attention spans and tempers of the people in them and stay relatively short.

So I was surprised when I arrived in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, on a Saturday morning last summer. I had trekked six hours from home the night before with one goal in mind: to participate in a taping session for Antiques Roadshow. I knew the event would be popular the show is PBS's highest-rated prime time program, after all, and I had read on the show's Web site that 6,000 free tickets would be handed out to optimistic antique-toters. Even so, I figured there was no reason to head downtown right at 7:30, when ticket distribution began. "It's not like there's going to be a line around the block," I reasoned.

When I arrived at 8:00, there wasn't just a line around the block. The line wound around every block in downtown Des Moines, breaking here and there for major roads and intersections. Well over 6,000 people were waiting to get into the convention center where the taping would take place. Some had come from as far away as Florida and Hawaii. Of the hopefuls, 2,000 had picked up their tickets the day before. The rest of us had to just join the queue and hope we'd make it in.

In case you're not familiar with the show, here's how it works: A team of antiques appraisers sets up in an arena somewhere in the United States. Members of the public are invited to bring their heirlooms, flea market finds and other articles of interest to be evaluated. A camera crew catches the highlights an ugly lamp worth thousands of dollars, a famous painting lost for decades, a rare and expensive coin bank then producers edit the day's work down to a one-hour TV show. Sometimes one 10-hour day of taping will yield two hours of programming, but often each venue turns up only about 15 broadcast-worthy items.

The people standing in line in Des Moines knew those odds. They also knew that, if they were fortunate enough to get a ticket, they'd have to stand in line for at least four more hours inside the building just to get the chance to spend a few minutes with an appraiser. Yet none of them seemed bothered by this. Apparently, this line was either necessary, or the terminus sufficiently exciting, to propel them on. I discovered that, in a way, it was both.

In the course of a day's worth of standing around, I had plenty of opportunities to ask people about their interest in antiques. One 50-something woman who'd brought a bellows-driven vacuum cleaner ("They had to clean those Victorian hotels somehow," she explained) said, "They don't make anything today with the quality they used to."

I could see her point. When my fiancé and I were shopping for bedroom furniture, our budget allowed for a simple set from IKEA or an ensemble from a dealer at the Kane County Flea Market. The flea market set wasn't in perfect condition, and we needed to replace some of the hardware, but the wood and craftsmanship were of much higher quality than any of the new pieces we could afford. We figured, if it's made it through 100 years already, at least we won't have to worry about it falling apart.

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November (Web-only) 1999, Vol. 43