I usually reserve pictures for the Old Woman Slow’s Photos, but I thought I should share these with all of you who wished me well for the Cayce Festival of the Arts today…my good friend Donna Magrath of Evergreen Mosaics finagled around and arranged for her friends (including me) to be in the booths next to her. Good job, Donna.

Edie and Jenn and a recruit from another booth during set-up

(while Edie’s partner Dawn supervised)

Donna insisted we all be there at 7:15 a.m. which is very early for me to be anywhere other than bed these days. Oh, well. It was only one day. Anything for the arts.

Donuts and coffee my first stop at the Festival

The mini-donuts were fried and a smaller version of Elephant Ears at the State Fair.  Thank goodness I only got a small order. Delicious – but somewhat of a shock to the digestive system at 8 a.m.

Mosaic Artist Donna Magrath setting up her booth?

Wonderful Booth Neighbors Edie and Dawn – multi-talented – super nice, too

Donna and her partner Jenn Kirby put finishing touches on their booth

My booth much easier to set up

Thanks to my good friend Brenda Jo Bowen for loaning me her tent which would have been perfect if not for the 100 mph winds that blew ALL DAY LONG.  I had to hold my posters or try to catch them as they flew toward State Street and the Donut truck. After several hours of this, my friend Kati VanAernum dropped by for a visit and suggested the tent had to go before it took off like a kite and landed on an innocent bystander. I had visions of lawsuits swimming in my head so a man I didn’t know who happened to be chatting with me and  who turned out to be a sweet young Republican running for office in Lexington County helped Kati take down the tent while I watched.  This was a day of high drama.

Over 90 vendors participated in the Festival this year

 State Street Baptist Church towered over us in the background

Interesting tidbit about this church – I was the Minister of Music and Youth there in the mid 1970s – forty years ago…a lifetime ago…for three years. I never could have imagined at the time that I would be sitting in a booth in 2016 selling my books right down the street from where I led the choir for three worship services every Sunday. Unbelievable. Inconceivable.

Thanks so much to the friends who came out to see me and especially to my friends Dawn and Karen who actually bought one of the two books I sold! The other one was bought by a woman from El Paso, Texas, who had come to South Carolina to visit her daughter who had just had a baby. I think she bought a copy of my first book Deep in the Heart because it has a picture of the state of Texas in the background on the cover.

Thanks to Teresa for driving me to buy the four 40-lb bags of sand last night to hold down the tent today and for getting up at the crack of dawn to take me to Cayce to set up the booth and for spending two hours with me during the day to see that I had a lunch break and for coming back at 5:00 p.m. to break down the booth and carrying those same four 40-lb bags of sand back to the car along with all the books I didn’t sell and for taking care of Spike at the house when she wasn’t seeing about me or going to yard sales. Whew. No wonder she’s sound asleep tonight.

Which is where I probably should be, too. I had a great adventure, met lots of really neat people and shocked a few others who didn’t like the “L-word” on a book cover; but then you can’t please everyone all the time.  All in all, a memory maker of a day, as Granny Selma used to say, and I wouldn’t trade for it.