So, now on to the Almond Blossom Festival.  We arrived there quite early on Saturday...just after 6:00AM and it was still dark.  No spring forward, fall back stuff which would have prolonged the darkness in the morning.  We had to wait a few minutes for a truck to pull out and allow us to get in.   This festival was located in a park.  I was showed our space....and it just happened to be a tiny 10x10 space.  You have this huge gigantic park and here I am with a very tight, tight space. Well, that's what I paid for....but others paid for the same sized space and many had extra room on the sides, etc. As for me,  I would be unable to sell from the sides of my booth and this makes it harder to gather up good sales.  Many others had 2 sides, 3 sides open and there were just a handful with spaces crunched like mine was.  Now that really sucks, don't it?  Kind of, but you don't know the meaning of the word 'sucks' yet.  Let me tell you.

So, we traveled 340 miles the day before, spent money on two-nights motel along with the booth fees. This was not a cheap trip, I might add. We pulled up and parked the van in an area (parking lot) and it was about 15 feet to our booth.  We planned on carrying our stuff over to our space.  So, immediately this guy (I guess his name was Lee Barron, director of the chamber of commerce) tells us that we have to move our van to the other parking lot and unload because we were blocking the way.  Meanwhile, another van goes shooting across the 'grass.'  He yells at them, "Stay off the grass'.  Again he yells and then yet again.  I looked at him and look down, seeing a sun-scorched area with some patches of occasional grass. 

"Uhhhh," I said to him.  "Grass?  What grass?  You have got to be kidding me."  He gave me a weird look, but apparently the people in the other van must not have understood what he's talking about.   No grass, sorry.

So, I looked at the other parking lot and saw that I would have to use my dollie to cart everything over and it was around a 40-foot trip to my space.  No Fahhhhreeaaking way.  And with the other people setting up in the path I would be using, I would have to detour another 30-40 feet around.  I told him that I was getting old and that's really unnecessary for me to do that.  "Oh we have people here to help you,"  I looked around..."Yah right....how come they are not helping me right now?"  He told us to 'hurry up and unload....just put your things near your canopy and then go park,'

Barron was running around like a chicken with the head cut off....  You farmers and Chicken Pluckers of America know what I mean.

Now tell me...WOULD YOU BUY A USED CAR FROM THIS GUY?

My wife and I were both feeling kind of sickly Saturday morning and were really having difficulties setting up.  Both of us hadn't gotten a very good sleep and we were still tired from the drive down there.  So, we began unloading the van, dragging and carry our sacks, etc., over to our space.  We finally were able to pull out our canopy and dragged that over to our space and opened it up slightly to upright it and then continued unloading the van.  We removed more sacks and it was time to pull out the grids.  I had 20 of them in the van and they are somewhat heavy.  I'm not 19 years old anymore, nor am I 29, not 39 and not even 49.  Lots of work....but still I did not have any of Barron's volunteers helping me.  All I saw was Barron  running round headless and brainless yelling at everybody to unload their stuff. Sad...sad...sad!

Barron continued to run around yelling at people.  When he walked over to us again, I explained to him that we were not happy with the way he was treating us and we were going home.  We came 340 miles for this and were spending two nights in the motel and don't appreciate this.  I told him that I was tired of his crap and was not going to stay there and let him abuse us.  We finished packing and gladly hit the road, and as the story goes, we would never return to Quartz Hell again.

Well, fellow vendors.  Don't you just love those shows where you have the  promoters, etc., always coming over and bothering you.  I know that I never have to do this show again and I have spoken to several others who feel the same way.  And I am not doing the Lancaster Poppy Festival next month because it's just too damm expensive...$600 bucks.   SOMETHING IN THE WATER HERE?  Think about this people...you have all these people losing their houses, jobs, etc. and you are charging us outrageous fees for booth spaces.  We are all part of this 'recession' or whatever we are in.  Do you think we are growing money out of our #$@($#_$  ears?  Quartz Hell wasn't that expensive, but that was a different problem.