I skated around the show Friday (3 day show) to catch up with everybody and then went to Chicago to visit my aunt so I wasn’t there Saturday morning when the crew from the local South Bend, Indiana TV station showed up to report on the show.

Vidya asked the reporter if she wanted to wear my gourd hat which she did and was seen wearing it in one of the interviews. When she returned it, Vidya asked if she wanted to film herself wearing the costume and they did so Vidya got 30 seconds of her 15 minutes of fame with a sound bite. Our neighboring vendor took the picture which I downloaded from her camera onto the laptop at the Caning Shop booth and they emailed it to me.

It was good being back at the show. I hadn’t gone to one in several years due to my poor health so it was like a homecoming to a degree. We have been going to gourd shows for 15 years and many of the regular vendors, class givers, and exhibitors come to every show so after a while a family atmosphere tends to develop. I am sure devotees who work the festival circuit have a similar experience. Old friends and newcomers, plus lots of visitors.

The folks tend to be Christian middle Americans with good values and a work ethic. At several points in the show you are bound to have some passing conversations about religion, but never in an aggressive way. We don’t advertise being devotees but our close friends know we aren’t mainstream Christians and it doesn’t seem to matter. We aren’t even the only vegetarians — the lady we set up next to every show is one and occasionally we met others.

As a costume wearing skater, I am a bit of a celebrity at gourd shows (big frog in a small pond) so I got lots of “good to see you again”s while floating around. Most of them had watched my decline while still coming to the shows and followed my medical progress through my wife as they saw her twice a year (we do both the Indiana and Ohio shows). Once it was a little humorous as somehow the rumor went out that I had left my body.

Probably the most interesting conversation I had was with a raw gourd vendor I just met who started coming to shows after I stopped going. Besides growing gourds, he hunts feral pigs with dogs. When boars are in captivity, their tusks are clipped, but in the wild they grow out and they can be quite dangerous. As pigs can be hundreds of kilos heavy the dogs have to get to the ears of the pig in order to control it until the hunter arrives. This exposes them to the tusks so they wear a Kevlar outfit for protection. Only their paws and head are exposed.

I returned to the show Sunday afternoon in time to clown around some more and then help Vidya pack up.  More about the Chicago leg of the trip tomorrow.