The Show

I loaded my car on Wednesday.  I knew it would exhaust me to do so but I wanted to be as fresh as I could be for set up and on Friday.  In the process, came the discover that a box had been stolen during the pack out at the February show.  Of course it had to be the one with my best beer steins (about $400 in cost to me) and all of my collector knives (over $2000 in cost!) - so I was utterly bummed out.  To say the least.

Of course, mother freaked out and refused to come to the show.  I tried to get my knife friend to come and take her spot, but he was working a real job over the weekend.  My only other friends in sales only handle firearms, which are not allowed.  So, now I had two booths to fill!

God was with me and I was in the building, unloaded and out in 13 minutes of the gate opening!  WOW!

And then I sat there and pondered how do I take up two booth areas with only enough tables and goodies for one?  And I sat there.  One hour, two hours, three hours - until I had drawn up a plan that would work.  And in reality it worked very well.

Luckily I had bought three extra tables when mother had started making "I am going to be weird" noises.  I also went out and bought some nice green pastel cotton as table covers and made up a light tan label for each item.

It looked sweet and the show operators singled me for most attractive display ...  Again, WOW!

But, it was a horrible weekend of wind and rain and pretty close to no one came to the show.  So, lots of time to sit and think.  And thinking, is always bad for me these days - so little is left of my mind ...  And of the issues in my life, there are no simple answers, nor timely ones.

The typical show bully came through to tell me that my mining mercury crock, found on the Klama River in California, was for curing syphilis, not for mining, and certainly not worth a 15th of what it is - with a chip.  I thanked him and offered that he should seek treatment for his.  He stomped off.  I was steamed, I really dislike the show bullies and there is always one.  But, I remembered to turn it over to God and the irritation washed from me and I could be nice again and not grumpy old Kris.

My show friends Kim and Rick were there and we had a chance to visit, due to the low show turn out.  I really love these brothers.  Rick is the twin of my great-uncle Leonard, whom was the father I never had.  He is also really nice, just like Leonard, a gentle-man in spirit.  Kim is a hoot and there is always much laughter when we can talk, I think his wife is worried I am going to ruin him or turn him into a comedian!  Oh how we laugh!

The show manager came by with her husband in tow.  He is a German and we talked long about his life in Germany and the Ukraine, his grandparents in the Ukraine and their fleeing Russia just before WWII erupted.  He had never heard of "Operation Barbarossa" - Hitlers scorched Earth policy towards the Ukrainian Germans whom did not support him.  He killed off all of the Russians and Jews as well.  Nor had he heard about the women, still held in the eastern camps, marched out of Berlin in 1945 and used as wives and sex slaves by the Russian Army and timber cutters.

Yes, we both cried real tears.

He came back on Sunday to buy a beer stein from me.  But, you have to understand that this dear man is quite old and not all there some of the time.  He was not there then.  He was just responding to a memory that I was a friend and wanted to buy  something.  We talked about steins and beer - his mind slowly returned and he was able to remember he did not want nor need a stein.  As he left ... I was proud of the new me.  Old me would have sold  him the stein but new me knew he did not need nor want one.  He wandered off and I knew I was on the right path for the new me - that I want to be.

I found some odd kitchen antiques I intend to keep.  A mayonnaise maker, which everyone has scoffed at because it is not electric - but I learned to make this with a bowl and a whisk in France!  This 1930's contraption is much nicer!  Again a 1930's blue cobalt lemon squeezer with a separate bowl - I hate having to flip seeds out with a knife from the one I currently usae. A stoneware refrigerator dish with lid.  A book on the German secret service and the original Sad Sack book from WWII - call that issue number 1!  And lest I forget, six buck saws as were used by loggers.  I intend to paint them with mountain/forest scenes and sell them at my October/November shows.  You never know, they might sell ....  But one has beautiful steel and I expect to chop it up and make some knives out of it.  Might work ...

And a joke I heard and almost died over:

How come the cows keep returning to the pot field?
Because the pot keeps calling the cattle back!

Oh gosh I thought I would fall over I was laughing so hard!

ciao!