Saturday. Driving to Virginia, Minnesota for the 35th Annual Land of the Loon Arts and Crafts Festival. A big deal. Lots of vendors. Thousands of folks wandering through Olcott Park looking for something to eat, drink, and maybe, with a little luck, read. The weather sucks: The forecast is for rain, maybe thunder storms, all day. It’s 6:30am and I’m watching drizzle slide off the white hood of my Pacifica as I head north on Highway 53.
I’ve done this festival a number of times. It’s never had the attendance nor the sales (for me) of say, Blueberry Festival in Ely or Phelps Mill in Fergus Falls. Still, it’s been occasionally lucrative and worth my while. So I sent in my check, packed up my van, and decided to give it one last shot.
I should have stayed home.
The highlights of my Saturday at the 35th Land of the Loon are as follows:
1. Listening to my copy of the “Joshua Tree” album by U-2 on the drive north;
2. Selling one of my wife’s concrete mosaic garden benches to a nice lady from Carlton, Minnesota to be placed in her backyard garden as a memorial to her dead husband;
3. Having Range native and well-traveled blues man Paul Metsa stop in and say hello and introduce me to his girlfriend;
4. The music from the main stage of the festival, which includes not only Metsa, but some other great acts as well;
5. The fact that it stops raining by 8:00am and doesn’t rain again until I’m on my way home.
Book sales? Nonexistent would be an optimistic rendition of what took place. I’m depressed beyond a level that Zoloft could even begin to touch.
Don’t people from Virginia know how to read?
I’ve asked this question in the past, when I’ve compared my sales at the now defunct Mines and Pines Festival in Hibbing with my sales at Land of the Loon in Virginia. Hibbing, despite being the hometown of Bob Dylan (sorry, Duluth but he was only in Duluth for a minute as a youth), has always been touted as the “rough” part of the Range when viewed by residents of Virginia (which, by the way, calls itself “The Queen City”). So logically, if Virginians’ opinions of Hibbing’s reputation had any veracity, Virginians would be better educated and better read than their neighbors to the west. Well, guess what? Despite the fact that Mines and Pines was only a third the size of Land of the Loon, I always, and I mean always sold more books at the Hibbing event than at Land of the Loon. Go figure. But I thought, what the hell, I need another event in June, I’ll give Virginia one last try.
A rain-out would have been a blessing.
Sunday. Again the forecast calls for thunderstorms. Again, there’s a slight drizzle that ends before I arrive. The highlights of my Sunday at the Land of the Loon are:
1. Listening to “RealGoodWords” on KAXE radio on the drive up. Heidi Holtan, the host (a great supporter of “little” authors like me) is interviewing a local poet. She then follows up with an interview with singer Andy Williams. Yes, the Andy Williams, who has a new memoir out;
2. Having Range native and well-traveled blues man Paul Metsa stop in and say hello again;
3. The music from the main stage of the festival, which includes not only Metsa, but some other great acts as well;
4. Reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (see today’s book review of the same) and the most recent articles in my favorite Finnish American paper, New World Finn;
5. Having a daydream about my recently passed mother-in-law, Mercedes Privette, who always stopped by my booth in Ely (at the Blueberry Festival), opened her little coin purse with her arthritic fingers, and nervously withdrew a twenty to buy her friend Audrey one of my books;
6. The fact that it doesn’t rain again until I’m on my way home.
Notice that nowhere in this listing do I include “and selling books to Virginians”. That’s because I don’t. Not in any measure. And I don’t sell any more of my wife’s benches either. Which means I have to lug the heavy, concrete works of art back to my Pacifica and unload them once I get home. (As an aside: I wish Rene’ would get a hobby that involves lighter media. I had to lug the bench I sold Saturday uphill three blocks on a collapsible two-wheel dolly over grass to make the sale. And I did it for no pay. Well, OK, I did it for love. Still…)
The road home is depressingly familiar. I listen to “Prairie Home Companion” and rock gently to Storyhill’s music as I drive south. When I get home, I rush to unload the car so I can bring Jack to soccer practice. Of course, he’s thirteen and he’s not even close to ready. I “urge” him to get dressed and then I turn my attention to lifting 100# bench tops and 50# bench legs out of the back of the van.
Shit.
One of the mosaic tops, a beautiful bluebird scene (my favorite of the ones I brought along) is cracked in half. I don’t know how it happened: But a week’s worth of my wife’s hard labor is now in pieces. Despite time constraints, I didn’t drop the piece. It is simply broken and I have no idea why.
Shit.
Jack wanders out in his soccer cleats with a bottle of water in one hand, a soccer ball in the other, a pullover (it’s drizzling again) over his shoulder, ready to go. I put the broken work of art in my wife’s studio, tell her what’s happened, and leave.
When I come back from the practice, after having spent an hour and a half in the Pacifica reading The Fountainhead while 11, 12, and 13 year old boys run across wet grass striking white balls beneath a damp sky, my wife (who should be pissed at me) is not upset. In fact, she’s made me dinner. Rib eye steak, baked potatoes, and all the trimmings, no less.
“Call your two oldest boys,” she says. “Before you eat. They’ve both called here three times trying to talk to you.”
“Why? And what’s with the fancy dinner?”
“Happy Father’s Day.”
I nearly cry.
Peace.
Mark
