My Etsy Shop

Monday, November 23, 2009

Gift of The Small Town

I've read several times in the Etsy Forums about the joys and sorrows of Craft Markets or Fairs, both outdoor and now in...and I have a doozey-I just went through possibly the worst craft fair experience of my 30 years of craft-fairing, and I have had a few...and yet, heartwarming, in an ironic sort of way...

To begin with, I hate being upstairs in halls, schools, etc. because your foot traffic is automatically cut in half..but I had no choice yesterday, since it was a four day fair, and I was only doing the Sunday, which is normally the best day...but there was nothing "normal" about this fair...
I was told to pull behind the building, because there was a ramp that led directly to the top floor to make it easier to load and unload my stuff...well, unbeknownst to me, there was a right side and a wrong side..guess which one I took...
A muddy morass awaited me, after our heavy rains, and a large abandoned set of steps that led nowhere, right in the middle of the "lane", so I tried to back out down the lane, but of course all my stuff was piled in the back of my truck so I couldn't see, so I started to turn around...got stuck in some very deep mud, where the drainpipe emptied from the gutters.
Eventually after several people tried to push me out, we called a tow truck.
I decided to set up and wait, why stand around outside..so I did that, and when he came, went out to "help".
When it came time to pay him, I was shocked to learn that he didn't take plastic...having only a cash float of $20 and out in the middle of nowhere, I didn't know what to do..
Luckily, he was a nice guy in a small town, and asked me to pay another seller at the fair who he was familiar with, and he took off...
Breathing a sigh of relief (only temporary, I assure you) I sat back and waited for the hordes of Christmas shoppers to descend richly upon us...
 Apparently, they had somewhere else to go...in 6 hours I doubt if thirty people passed through our little upstairs room, and none of them were buying, at least not from me...
Had this been a large town, I would have been in trouble, the equivalent of not paying for a restaurant meal after the food has been consumed..but this is a place where everyone knows everyone (except me)-and since I live here,  am somehow to be trusted... of course, in a large town, not only would the bill have been much larger, but they would of course have taken plastic-and I've never had a bigtown fair where I've sold nothing...
Still kinda nice that I will be paying the driver the balance when he's "in the neighborhood", and I was automatically assumed to be an honest and upright person.
Naive? You bet...but perhaps I'm assuming they can't judge properly, since they're small town folks...maybe I'm selling them a bit short-because after all, I am an honest person...maybe I'm the one with the problem.

This is a bad season for craft fairs generally-economics, The N1H1 scare, and the sheer drawing power of the malls screaming  *SALES!!!!*  for months in advance..but I learned an expensive lesson yesterday...that, despite the wrong choice of back lanes. I had made the right choice, moving to a small town on a wonderful Island, after all....

5 comments:

  1. The baby chick story is HILARIOUS!!!!!!

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  2. Thanks Holli, but it was bab ducks...did I write chicks? Dozy old thing that I am..in case anyone else is wonderin WTF, link up with Mama Holli's funny Thanksgiving (US) blog...

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  3. Wow that sounds like some craft fair! Ive only done one and it was bad...really bad too...but at least it didnt involve a tow truck!

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  4. soulflower-
    It was pretty bad..but you can generally salvage something from every fair you do-I'm just movin' on..3 fairs this week!

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  5. LOL, that sounds like something that would happen to me. Sorry it was so awful. You know, even stores are only stocking basics this year I heard, socks, underwear, jeans, flannel shirts, nothing fancy as people don't seem to be buying it.

    PussDaddy

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