I wasn’t expecting much success representing the Association at Farmersville, and unfortunately my predictions were correct.

Emily and I spent a few hours Friday night and most of the daylight on Saturday hanging out in the park in Farmersville for their annual town festival. We’d both been at Irish Days as mere spectators the last two years (and Emily many times before that,) so we knew what to expect. It’s all food booths and no other vendors, so I didn’t think we’d fare well, but given its proximity to our home and the cheap cost (just a small donation to the festival) it was worth a try.

The result: one new member, which is better than none I suppose. We also talked to several people who were mildly interested and took membership application pamphlets with them as well as a couple other individuals who talked with us about the history of 66 through the area; one promised to contact us with an old postcard she had that we could scan a copy of. So there were benefits beyond just getting new members.

We had no cookbooks to sell and only moved one photo. And that was to Emily’s mother. But it still counts.

I don’t think the booth was the problem as much as the makeup of the crowd. They just didn’t care, and I can’t say I blame them: they’re not used to this type of thing at their fair. Whether we’ll try again in Litchfield July 18-19 is still up in the air, but I think we’re leaning towards appearing there. We enjoyed it when we did get to chat with folks…they were just too few and far between.

Pictures of our booth are available on my Digital Route 66 Flickr Photostream (in reverse order, because that’s what Flickr does.