Final thoughts on Little Cousin Jasper

The Little Cousin Jasper Festival began Friday morning, Sept 11 when the booths opened, but the formal opening was in the evening. One of the speakers was the mayor, Herb Arihood.
Also on Friday evening, the winners of the king and queen contest were announced. There were a lot more girls in the competition than boys.I thought the court house looked very nice in the evening light.

Saturday was by far the busiest day of the festival. The farmers market set up on Van Rensselaer Street, providing even more vendors.
One of the vendors I talked to was selling mums. I asked if they were from the mum farm that was east of town, near McCoysburg and was told that that farm is no longer growing mums.
There were a lot of food vendors. Most of them were behind the court house, so they did not hear the entertainment for the day.
I have always disliked the junk that some of the booths have. This is an example. But others must find it quite appealing or else these booths would not be there.
There were a lot of booths. If I had more time I could have talked to them all and learned their stories. Maybe next year.
A number of local merchants had booths. Here is the Bargain Barn booth.
The Chamber of Commerce was sponsoring bingo. Tracy from the Chamber was worried that I would condemn her and the Chamber for encouraging gambling. The thought had not occurred to me. Although even bingo can be a problem for some people, for the vast majority of people it is harmless fun For some people in nursing homes, bingo is the highlight of the day.
Sunday morning started with a pancake and sausage breakfast at the firehouse.
The crowd was small on Sunday, perhaps because there is no entertainment scheduled. I heard that the budget for entertainment was as small as it could be. Maybe the organizers should use some of the proceeds from this year to buy a bit more entertainment for next year, including a bit for Sunday.

By early Sunday afternoon the booths were closing up. I thought this booth with a pop machine and a snack machine looked very funny. There were people at a table in this booth earlier, but I do not know they were selling or promoting.
I helped take down several booths. The ladies from St. Augustine could not get their canopy folded, so I tried to help. Eventually we discovered that we needed to press in some buttons and then it all folded up quickly. When the people from the historical society, shown below, were taking down their canopy, I knew what to do because their frame worked on the same principle.
Finally, I put together a few video clips that did not fit anywhere else and uploaded them to youtube. The video shows the SJC band from Firday night, the start of the 5K on Saturday morning, the NERDs band and the Horseshoe cloggers from Saturday afternoon.

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If you need more festival activity, Francesville has one this weekend.