Festival economics up in arms

ROCKVILLE, Ind. -- Jim and Gayle Meece sell tea, candy and other homemade goodies from their booth at Parke County's Covered Bridge Festival.\nA look outside their tent, however, shows streets lined with mass-produced crafts, T-shirts and other commercialized products vying for money from the thousands of people who visit the 10-day festival in western Indiana.\nThose with homemade items say the festival should stick with its theme of the early 1900s when many of the county's wooden bridges were built.\nThey believe personally produced products keep the old-fashioned air alive and any money made at the festival should help the local economy, not leave the area.\nOthers selling more pop-culture-based items say they are merely supplying items that are appealing to their customers.\nAnne Lynk, executive secretary of Parke County Inc., said the balance between the two was a struggle between the festival's identity and providing for the county financially.\n"We want to bring economic benefit to the community, but we want to do it in a tasteful way," she said.\nLynk said she wanted to see local people peddling their own wares and teaching the community about its century-old heritage.\nAnd plenty of that happens, she said. A number of booths have been around for years and some people still do demonstrations of skills and trades of old.\nParke County Inc. controls which vendors go where on the square and in the eight other festival communities. But they don't have control of private-property holders, who sell their space to any group they choose.\n"If you have the price of the booth space, they don't care what goes there," Lynk said of the others.\nJohn and Carol Martin said they did think that was such a bad step.\nThe couple from Cincinnati sells T-shirts, flags, signs and other novelty items at festivals around the country.\n"Grandma might want the crafts and the son might want a skull cap, and they ain't gonna get that at the square," Carol Martin said.\nShawn Crickmore, also known as "The NASCAR Guy," sells memorabilia for racing and other sports in his tent a block from Rockville's square.\nThere are niches for some crafts and homemade goods, but super stores and mass production are taking care of consumers' needs more cheaply, he said.\nKaren Sheetz, who sells stacks of rugs at the festival that her family creates throughout the year, said it was too easy to sell manufactured products.\n"I get the catalogs myself. I can buy them myself," she said.\nJim Meece has worked a booth all 46 years of the festival.\nFinding people to replace aging booth operators will be vital to keeping homemade goods at the festival, he said.\n"It was absolutely started as a local place for people to sell their crafts," Meece said. "It doesn't mean they're not nice things (at the other booths). It just means they're not homemade anymore"