The Spoon River Drive
From Saturday’s Journal Star letter to the editor:
Re. Oct. 9 Forum, “Spoon River Drive needs support to survive”:Take the Spoon River Drive off life support. Time would be better spent driving around some of the nicer, tree-lined neighborhoods in Peoria on garage sale days. There’s better scenery and better stuff.
How many craft tables and attic left-overs does it take before you want to beat yourself in the head with a vintage Urkel doll? Quaint goes to creepy before drivers hit Farmington. Have a swap meet and save the gas.
If the Spoon River Drive costs $55,000 a year, somebody’s taking a bath. My guess is, it isn’t the vendors.
Travis Lipski
Peoria
Mr. Lipski sounds like a bitter old man whose wife dragged him to one too many craft shows.
Several years back my wife and I were heavily involved in the craft show circuit. We didn’t have the typical junk that you’ll see at these things; we had a quality product that was 100% handmade and we could feel good about selling. We weren’t selling another crafty piece of crap that I despise.
We sold puzzles. Specifically, the old fashioned wood puzzles with wood backs for small children. And we personalized them so the young child could learn his or her name by putting the pieces in the right places. It was my idea to make some for my kids because I like to tinker around in my workshop and I was frustrated that these types of quality puzzles couldn’t be found.
We started off small, but it soon became apparent that we’d struck a cord with other parents who were looking for the same thing. It didn’t take long before our house turned into the puzzle producing capital of Peoria.
We did the local craft shows at Expo, Richwoods, the Civic Center, the Tremont Turkey Fest, the Pekin Marigold, and Spoon River Drive. Spoon River Drive was massively successful. In our first year we had practically sold out by the Sunday afternoon, with another weekend to go! We quit attending the other shows except for the Marigold Festival, to be able to focus on the Spoon River Drive.
We sold in London Mills for a couple years before moving closer to home. The Farmington Park. It was small, quaint, and had hoards of busses come in. The lady who ran the park site was super nice and gave us a prime spot, while trying her best to keep the riff-raff vendors out (meaning they’d have to try to sell their crap at one of the two alternate ‘corn field’ sites on the outskirts of town.) Walking Tacos, Bratwurst for Breakfast, the horribly cheezy Pan Flute guy, and bad country singing on the main stage all added to the beauty of this place.
Our puzzle variations grew, but I was starting to bore with cutting out the same shapes, so I’d tinker around and we started selling push toys, little tike golf clubs, coat racks, mobiles, and other such wood things. Our booth was bright, fun and exploding with color.
To quote George Harrison, All Things Must Pass. As our kids grew, and more were coming, our free time shrunk and the work load grew. The thought of sitting in my basement workshop everynight cranking out sawdust wasn’t appealing anymore, so one day we just quit. Cold Turkey. It was a good run, but we both knew we’d had enough.
July 27th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
[...] either the Morton Pumpkin Festival or the to Punkin Chunkin’ event because during our “craft show days” we were always burned out after Spoon River Drive, not to mention sold out. Still, [...]
September 15th, 2007 at 7:31 am
In regard to Travis Lipski’s remark that the scenery in Peoria is prettier in Peoria than on the Spoon River Drive. Maybe on Grandview Dr. or Moss Avenue but for the rest of the city, I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong, I like Peoria, but it can’t compare to a ride in the country. And, by the way, my wife and I enjoy The SpoonRiver Dr. and just heard from some friends of our who have moved to Tennessee that they intend to come backk up so they can go on it. There are still thousands of people still enjoying it.
October 5th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Far from being a “bitter old man”, at 36 I am a slightly bitter mid-aged man.
The Drive is touted as something unique, I found it to be an extended Marigold fest which is littered with mostly candles, crafts and dare I say it, Junk.
A long stretch of thrift shops and the types of yard crap you hope your neighbor doesn’t put out on their ever-cluttered lawn.
However, my letter was in response to the amount of money spent to pull it off, everyone knows of the event and most of the same people turn out for it year after year.
In any case, my summation of the event still stands, I only omitted the dueling banjo reference out of artistic integrity.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
We have been coming to go on the drive for 25 years at least 6 of us women sometimes more–we spend a lot of money not only with the vendors but the restaurants–hotels –and local stores—this is the vacation that we all plan on every year and we are never disappointed–it’s as much the drive for us as the shopping—Please keep the tradition alive—Of course I would not expect that everyone would appreciate the sacrifice that the locals give in order for us to invade their beautiful countryside. Looking forward to coming again this 2008 See You There!!!