East Tennessee History Fair – and a Farmers’ Market All-In-One!

Granted my ears still rung from Friday night’s festivities, but Saturday morning offered more of the strange, great, cool temperatures we’ve enjoyed in August. Maybe it’s payback for July which just simply wasn’t nice. After having around 10,000 Guv’nahs fans downtown just a few hours before, on Saturday downtown hosted probably that many or more for the Market Square Farmers’ Market and the East Tennessee History Fair. It was a pretty cool blend.

Urban Woman, Urban Girl and myself strolled the square admiring flowers and buying vegetables. Urban Girl showed her true colors when she recoiled from helping bag the okra because her hands got wet. She redeemed herself a bit later when she asked if we could return home so she could help shell and cook the peas.

It was fun wandering the market and running into uniformed or otherwise other-era dressed characters mingling with modern shoppers. I’m not sure what Urban Girl made of the uniformed re-enactors, but I enjoyed seeing them and all the crafts-people. I’m not sure what it is about blacksmiths, but I could watch a good one for hours. Something elemental in fire and metal, I suspect. Of course, basket weavers, jewelry makers, potters and old time musicians plied their crafts and trades at every turn.

We ran into Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee and Mary Todd Lincoln, reconciled after all these years. Urban Girl must have been confused. She’s learned that the pictures on money usually depict presidents and from that she’s learned that presidents are dead people. I got her to smile with Lincoln, but I’m not sure she trusted him completely.

She did, however, enjoy making a stamp headband and having a rag doll made especially for her. What a great kid’s event! If you missed it this year, I’d really encourage you to try to make it next year. It really does blend history and fun into a nice little package. We missed seeing Roy Acuff’s fiddle, but I saw him actually play it, so I wasn’t in a rush to see it, lonely and without him. We also missed the vintage films at the Bijou which I really would’ve liked to see. I can’t get too much Cas Walker.