October 15, 2013

The Ohio Sauerkraut Festival

So that is what a half million people looks like over two days…. The streets began filling up at 7:30am on saturday, long before the start of the two day event… and our first sales came shortly after that. Main street stretches about 6 city blocks, and there were white tents lining both sides of main street, and up the side streets clear up to Ohio 73. Sandwiched between the artists were various food vendors made up of local booster clubs, band supporters, lions, fire fighters, and the like… .and the theme of the food involved sauerkraut in every imaginable form, including fudge. Out of sheer curiosity we bought a small bag of this fudge, and it was not even noticable.. texture of coconut, but no cabbage taste. wow.

The two days were wonderful for the weather… mid to high 70s with bright sunshine. Sunday morning surprised us with deep fog, but by 10am the sun burned it off, and we were rolling.

Never before have i seen a crowd walk the streets the same way you drive a car… staying to the right of the yellow line they walked east on the north side, west on the south side of the yellow line. And the crowds came… and came… and came. Saturday we saw lots of people pulling pieces of luggage for putting their purchases in… sunday not so much. We laughed seeing large lawn sculptures sprouting feet and walking through the crowd… i cant tell you how many snow people we saw go by.

And here are some other funny observations:

An older gray haired man was wearing a tshirt that read “A crabby old german man is just a sauerkraut”
There was a guy dressed in the lion costume from wizard of oz, holding a sign that read “Ask Ed why gorillas have large nostriles” – why would i fall for it? I asked him “are you ed” – he said “i will be whoever you want me to be”. Me – “no seriously, i am reading your sign and are you ed?” Him-“Yes” Me- “What is the answer to your sign”…. the guy takes off his glove, gestures like he is picking his nose and says “Because gorillas have big fingers”. Why did i even ask?
There was a tall 6’6″ young man wearing a pink western shirt, pink chaps, pink cowboy boots, and a pink hat… I asked him why – should have seen it coming – “Breast cancer awareness!” Had i looked a little bit more i would have realized he had a belt that had printed across it “I like boobies, save the tatas!” Why did i ask him anything?
A lady stopped into our booth, was looking around when i realized her legs were not tatoos, but pantyhose she apparently took a sharpy to… but they were wrinkled, and there were a few runs… eeek!!!
The boy scout troop was running the hot dog stand… and their leader made them all wear hot dog hats… what a hoot.
A guy who makes guitars – electric guitars that is, from cigar boxes….

Here are some pictures of the adventurous weekend in Waynesville. We are so thankful for the help of our assistant, Don. Thank you for all of your hard work with set up, keeping us stocked, and tear down.

And Waynesville, we were so impressed with how organized you were to get 400 plus artists in for set up, and out for tear down. So amazing to see all of the youth involved in the process, and so community focused.