A Mad Cast of Characters

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My wife and I just finished working our booth at the 35th annual Rockport SeaFare. It’s wonderful festival celebrating the sea. We have been involved with it for the past 6 years. There are many things that I love about going to SeaFare, one of them is the good it does for the community, another is that it’s usually has great food, great music and we sale a ton of Jenn’s crosses.
I remember the first time I went to SeaFare. It was during my first marriage. I entered my girls in the “Kids Fishing Tournament.” Neither of them were big fishermen….er…girls, but they thought it would be fun. Beth my oldest was paired with me (as bait person) and Britt, my youngest was with my brother. It started off pretty normal until I noticed a pattern. The moment the bait went into the water the fish (piggy perch) would be on the bait in seconds. I had them put the bait in and count 5 seconds and pull up. Almost every time a fish would be on or the bait would be gone. We worked the pattern for the allotted hour. At the end, Beth had won with the most caught, and Britt had won with the largest fish. I was hooked (pun intended) ever since. The girls both went back to defend their trophies and Britt did win the most caught that year.
Back to my original story, if I had to be honest about it the thing I love the most about it is the “mad cast of characters” that are there. I am a people watcher, and SeaFare is people watcher’s wet dream. I have been a people watcher from a very early age. My family used to sale Bromeliads back in the 70’s at several fairs and trade shows. I always watched how people dressed and the way they carried themselves. Over the years I have seen lots of crazy people in these fairs, but Rockport seems to attract more than its fair share of “interesting people”. Here is just a short list of who I met this weekend in no particular order.

Guy from Stockdale

There was this guy who had been drinking some. He introduced himself as the President of the Chamber of Commerce from Stockdale Texas. He said that he wanted us to come up and be a vender at his show because we looked like good people. He was going to get some great live music and that would bring in the people to buy our wares. He said that his girlfriend is indirectly related to Willie Nelson and he planned to have Willie over with all his “friends” to provide a weekend worth of good live music. I was thinking this guy is nuts or gosh it would be great to see Willie again.

Floral Shrimper Boots

You see all kinds of people at these events. Clothing is always an interesting thing to watch for. I have seen some scantily clad females with little on because of unbearable heat of Texas. I have seen some scantily clad males. I should stop and tell this story. My dad and I were working the Westeimer Art Festival back in the 80’s. It’s a pretty well known show and located in the gay and lesbian area of town. Anyway, we watched this guy dressed only in very skimpy underwear cruise up and down the sidewalk on roller skates while his friends shot at him with water guns the result of which was my first official wet t-shirt contest (I was not impressed). So this brings me to this past weekend, there was this lady, whom I’m assuming thought that she was making a fashion statement. She (40-something) was wearing a floral dress that was very short (very 30-something) and hand painted (floral) shrimper boats (mid-calf rubber boots). Now don’t get me wrong, rubber boots would have been a very good idea with the all the rain we had, but with a floral dress it seemed a bit odd, definitely not “Prada”. But the hand painted floral design on them did little to distract you.

Crazy cross lady.

There was this lady that came up to talk to Jennifer. Jenn only said “hi” but this lady just started in on a rant about how her neighbors had knocked down the cross she put up in her yard (made with sticks and twine). She went on for what seemed like hours, saying that they were devil worshipers because they have an upside down pentagram. She thought that if she bought one of Jenn’s crosses maybe they wouldn’t pull it down. After repeating this mantra numerous times, she just turned and left without buying anything. I was thinking maybe the voices told her to move on. I know my voices were saying that it was time for her to leave.

Photographer/serial killer

During the show a guy came up with a very large camera. He was snapping pictures of everything. He was taking pictures of our booth, of people in the crowd. He came up to talk to Jenn and he announced that he was the photographer for the local art center (no card or identification). He continued to snap shots of Jenn with her crosses and then just turned and left. She looks over at me and just shrugged my shoulders and told her that he was probably just a serial killer and not to worry.

Friendly fry cook

There was this lady who was working at one of the food booths. She must have come over to our booth about 20 times over the three day event. She did buy a couple of crosses but she spent most of her free time talking with us. She gave Jenn about 15 hugs while I lay cowering in the corner afraid of the Big Bertha Boglionne.

Half-shirt girl

Another clothing issue this weekend was a very young female, probably 16-17 you know how hard it is to tell these days, she was wearing a very thin silk type blouse that was backless and tied in the back. The temperature was in the upper 60’s and rainy. Now, I was in 2 layers of clothes and wishing I had brought my jacket with me, and here she was carrying a jacket (that she probably wore to sneak out of the house dressed like that) and prancing around half-clothed.

Karma crosses

This lady came up to our booth in the middle of a torrential downpour. I made a wisecrack that we sold “Karma crosses” and if she purchased one the rain would stop. She was looking around and picked one up. The rain slowed and I pointed out that just by picking one up her “Karma” had kicked in. She eventually bought one and of course the rain had all but stopped. She spent the next several minutes talking and the whole time was straightening my wife’s collar, arranging her necklace, and picking things off of her jacket. I kept thinking that her “Karma” was going to run out by the time she finally left, it didn’t.  

3% red hair in 10 years

A lady came up to our booth with a cute little boy with light red hair. Jenn made a comment that she loved his hair color. This lady started quoting some report that she had heard about that said that currently only about 6% of people in the world have red hair and that this was going to go down to about 3% in 5 years and in 10 years there would be no red haired children born. I was contemplating this when I overheard her say that her husband had bright red hair like a clown. I was almost laughing out loud when I heard this. I was thinking to myself that its no wonder that there are going to be no more red haired children, I mean who would want to have sex with a clown. That’s just too weird.

So all and all it was a very entertaining weekend. I think that the economy, as well as, the wet and cold weather contributed to the clumping of this “mad cast of characters.” Most people with any kind of sense at all were at home watching a good movie and sipping hot chocolate with their family. But it made for great people watching so I’m not really going to complain too much. Hell, I can hardly wait for next year!

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Filed under Family, Personal insight, humor

Tags: Fall, Family, fishing, humor, Music, Personal insight, Rockport Seafare