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Dan Kegley/Susan Boyd of Atkins talks to a visitor at her booth of decoratively painted objects.

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Festival-goers not deterred by gas prices, say vendors

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Their overall numbers remained about the same, but fewer visitors to the Hungry Mother Festival this weekend hailed from afar this year.
That’s the word from Smyth County craftspeople who along with traveling vendors set out their wares on tables beneath pop-up canopies in the state park.
“It’s been wonderful,” decorative painter Susan Boyd of Atkins said Sunday. “Nice crowds.”
For seven of the eight years Boyd has set up her booth in the park, she has retained a spot along a major walkway connecting the vendors’ areas with parking lots. It’s an ideal place from which to gauge attendance as well as attract buyers.
“With the economy like it is, I expected less of a crowd,” she said, “but it’s been about like last year.”
Her customers, Boyd said, tended to be local this year.
“From checks and credit cards I can tell there are not that many from far away,” she said.
That was James Clapp’s assessment as well. The Chilhowie knife maker has sold his sharp and shiny creations at the festival for 10 years.
“A lot of out-of-towners I’ve seen over the years are not here,” Clapp said. “But people 30 or 40 miles away are picking up the slack. Gas didn’t hurt the crowd. I anticipated that it might.”
In spite of paying about $4 for a gallon of gasoline, people were still willing to spend money, Clapp said. “You’d think it would be off.”
Chris Snodgrass minded shop while his wife, Wendy, took a break Sunday from selling decorated headbands during her first year at the festival. It’s an art form, he said, she first provided to Chilhowie cheerleaders, weaving headband covers of ribbons crisscrossing in school colors.
They were pleased with the crowds, noting Saturday was the busiest of the three days.
Park rangers directed incoming traffic Sunday afternoon to available parking spaces hundreds of yards from the festival—up in the far reaches of the Hemlock Haven Conference Center property. But vendors said the crowd was smaller than the previous day’s.
“It’s a little slow,” said Clapp. “You can’t have three good days!”
The crowds started out strong on Friday, day one of the festival. Seven Mile Ford wood turner Donny Tilson said the crowd was substantial following the 10 a.m. opening.
By midday, the crowds thinned noticeably.
“By lunchtime, it looked like somebody had shut the gate,” Tilson said.
Judy Taminger, a member of the Friends of Hungry Mother on hand to assist vendors, said Sunday that Friday’s crowd, in spite of the afternoon slowdown, was larger than usual.
Saturday, typically, saw the biggest crowds consistently through the day.
What was not typical for the festival was the absence of rain. Usually, vendors scramble at least once during the weekend to drop canopy walls and pull sidewalk displays beneath their shelters to protect them from passing showers.
“The weather has been good,” both Snodgrass and Clapp said.
Depending on where they were located, vendors either enjoyed a natural breeze along the lake’s banks, or made their own with electric fans.
Boyd was one of the lucky ones. A fan hung idle in her tent.
“I brought a fan, but didn’t have to use it,” she said.
The wind did more than cool some vendors. The festival brought the usual assortment of foods and their tempting aromas, from lemonade to salsa to fudge, but out toward Shelter 1, a scent like none other wafted on the breeze from where Sylvia Camper sold an assortment of nuts.
These were coated on site with a hot, gooey, cinnamon-and-honey glaze whose aroma, carried on the air currents, effectively advertised for her, at least downwind.
The crowd, and its appetite for her sweet treats, sent Camper on a mid-festival restocking trip.
“We ran out of pecans yesterday and had to go to Bristol to get more,” she said.