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Brace yourself for our candid account of vehicle troubles and unhelpful fair organizers that pushed us to the edge. The seemingly insurmountable obstacles would have been enough to send anyone over the edge, but not us. We recount how, with sheer grit and determination, we got our vehicles up and running, and home to prepare for our next event.
We open up about our disillusionment, discussing our disappointing experience with the fair, and how it was far from the financial success we'd envisioned. We share the harsh realities and hidden struggles of being a vendor at a fair, from the lack of support from fair organizers and volunteers to navigating the tricky terrain of fair politics. We reflect on the importance of respect and the devastating impact when it's lacking, offering a frank comparison between our experiences at different fairs.
Despite the trials and tribulations, our spirit remained unbowed. We share the silver lining of our experiences, the lessons learned, and how we used adversity as a stepping stone maintaining a positive attitude is pivotal in the face of adversity. We delve deep into the significance of having a supportive community and knowing when to stand your ground. So, buckle up and join us as we navigate the sometimes bumpy, always enlightening journey of vendor life.
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Okay, let's start off with a question what does onions, a fuel tank and an alternator have in common? Well, collectively, they almost pushed me to my breaking point At some point. You can't help but question are these setbacks a sign to turn back or fuel for a comeback? Let me tell you something Everybody struggles. The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it. The choice is completely yours. Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life. If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you. You have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations. Challenge you, humble you and they build you. When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense. Most disagreements, they stem from our own insecurities. You are right where you need to be. Goddamn. I'm so excited to be back with you. Episode 162, share the struggle podcast. I can't believe it. Y'all Don't forget, find all things podcast related. Follow your podcast peeps out there wwwsharethestrugglepodcastcom. We mixed it up with the opener today. I asked y'all a question Onions, an alternator and a fuel tank, in any particular order. What do they have in common? And the fact is, those key ingredients just about broke me y'all. It brought me to my breaking point and for moral support, for love and support for all support, I decided I can't make it through this episode alone. I can't be trusted on my own because I might break something. I've already dropped an iPad and a microphone just while setting up, so things are getting crazy up in here.
Speaker 2:You're getting rowdy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't be trusted. I had to go to the bullpen. I had to bring in some support because I don't know, I'm a little dangerous to myself at this point in time, Don't you think I'm here?
Speaker 2:for your support.
Speaker 1:You're like an athletic supporter. You're a real jock. You know what I mean Drugstrap, yeah.
Speaker 2:Holding me clusters together. Oh, I'll hold your clusters, all right. Yes, we got a podcast to record, all right, good call.
Speaker 1:So here we are again running a little late on this scenario. Again, it's 9 pm on the due night, due date night. However, you would want to. All right, fat boy.
Speaker 2:Excuse me.
Speaker 1:No, that's the dog just knocking over cabinets. I was going to edit that, but he put himself to bed.
Speaker 2:He's good yeah he'll be fine. I'm snoring in a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1:We don't have to restart. It's due day, right? This is the night when audio has to be in, and here we are at 9 o'clock getting started again. But we've got good reason for being so far behind schedule and it is because, for the lack of a technical term to not speak French here, our shit streak has continued. Okay, the shit streak has continued. I hate to keep coming on here, y'all. I don't want to keep coming on Every week, every darn stinking week, and saying, hey, man, we missed it again, we missed a mark, we had another crappy event, but here we are, y'all. It's shared the struggle. We're going to share the struggle, and the current struggle is the events have not gone our way and it would be a lot easier to talk about today if we didn't encounter some surefire nonsense all along the way. So that's why we're here, man, that's why I'm here and that's why my wife couldn't trust me alone.
Speaker 2:If it wasn't for bad luck, we'd have none.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, well, I mean other than bad luck, we got shit luck.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm yeah.
Speaker 1:I used to get invited to potluck not anymore we don't even have a signature potluck meal to bring.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's why we're never invited.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's it. I thought it was.
Speaker 2:because we're on a diet, I always go for the paper plates and paper towels and stuff. Those are easy. If we ever have children, that's what I'm going to tell them to sign up for for school events. Yeah, put me down for paper plates. They're always needed, that's true. No one's ever going to complain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Speaker 2:I will buy them at the Sam's Club and overstock and just be like here. Send this into the class. They'll be like Mrs Liberty. Why are they in a big sandwich baggy?
Speaker 1:Well, you get what you get, you don't get a set. You ain't getting all of them. Man, I took all the plastic knives out so the children could play safe. They're all sporks. I'm more of a sporker myself. Let's get after this. Last week I recorded an episode live from the camper, feeling super optimistic even though we were in the middle of a rain delay. We lost our first day. Matt and I were kind of floating around town. We met a couple of cool strangers one with a gold tooth and shared some great conversations. And we just had those curious conversations. We were just enjoying ourselves, allowing ourselves to be inspired by things, and I put myself in a real positive mood to start the fair. But that positive mood turned rather quickly, virtually, upon opening the front door to our vendor tent. Things changed. Let's start by saying this when we showed up together to start setting up, we went up and dropped the camper off. What day was that? Sunday maybe?
Speaker 2:We went up on a Sunday right.
Speaker 1:And we dropped the camper off and we were chatting with Matt and Sarah and then we found our vendor spot. We had to change the layout. We wanted to do things one way we couldn't, based off of the locale as we're starting to set up. Maybe I shall refer it to him as a how do you say, joe, this is Jumoke. This Jumoke is leaning on his pickup truck and says, hey, can you make sure you give me enough room between my tent, because I haul my trash through there? Now the actual organizer for the vendors actually told us we could run all the way up to that tent, right? She said use all this space. If you've got to move trash cans around, do what you've got to do. So I was instructed that I did not need to leave said Jumoke a walkway whatsoever. But I don't like doing things that way and I don't like setting yourself up for an awkward week when your neighbors next to you just aren't getting along right. So we deal with enough neighbors we don't enjoy at home. I don't need to do it on the road too. So we're like all right, yeah, we'll leave you a walkway. Now, mind you, this is when we identify how shitty our space is, because there's an air conditioner coming out of the building we're setting up next to you that actually protrudes out of the wall right into our tent space. So we positioned ourselves literally an inch away from the side of the air conditioner, where we couldn't go any further away from this fellas tent. So I actually say hey, jumoke. And I didn't call him Jumoke. Yet at this point I spoil your alert by the end of the week I call him a lot more than a Jumoke. But I said hey, you want to come over and inspect the walkway here and make sure he's like no, I'm sure it's fine. It kind of dismisses me altogether. But I literally tell him hey, man, I'm about an inch away from an AC, so I'm giving you all the walkway I can get. And I figured that was neighborly, that was friendly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was genuine.
Speaker 1:That's what I thought, thought we covered all of our bases. Well, when I report to my tent on Wednesday after we were rained out on Tuesday getting ready to get things going. Now, mind you, this fella here has a couple of vendor trailers. I guess you could say well, he does sausage. Actually, I'll put it out there, mr and Mrs Sausage, I'm just going to put that out there. So if you happen to be at the fair and you see, mr and Mrs Sausage, Don't eat there. Number one don't eat there. Number two feel free to tell them to buck off so they have their trailers set up and then they actually have a. They rented a tent space that's completely enclosed you can't see into it, and that's where they do all their food prep, which is kind of sketchy. In the first place, there's just stacks of food in there, and I've seen some of the people working outside on this scenario when they're cutting onions and then stacking them in trash cans and not looking very sanitary, never using gloves.
Speaker 2:No, they're a bunch of grubworms.
Speaker 1:Bunch of grubworms out back filling up your ranch dressing, bare-handed on a picnic table outside next to a trash bin, just going to throw it out there to you you see a lot of behind the scenes things that like we're like all right, I want a sausage sandwich, but it ain't going to be from that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of food that I mean. If you meet me at the fair, I will be glad to tell you any establishments that I feel like are clean or ones that maybe you shouldn't go at. I'll shoot straight on this one. So this whole scenario, I don't think it's the cleanest scenario anyways, and this person has a negative attitude in general and they've been in business and doing this stuff for 25, 30 years, whatever, so just feel entitled that their shit don't stink, their shit don't stink so much that they're taking their shit and stacking it on my tent. And that's where I'm headed, because I go to my tent and there is literally as I open up the back of my tent, a big ass pile of raw fucking onions just about touching my tent. I'm talking about like they are literally dumped right on the side of my tent, so they're almost touching my tent. There's three bags of trash using bullshit just about touching my tent. There's plastic containers for like Pepsi and stuff on the other side of this trash. My initial response would be wouldn't you put the plastic closer to your neighbor's fucking tent and then keep your trash on its own side, which I also want to put this out there to you Behind his vendor spots there's like three or four tables and there's a walkway. There's 10 feet wide walkway. You can haul your trash that way, fuckface. You don't need to run it by my damn tent and bump into my tent every damn time, trying to be Joey Jamoc over here. So the point I'm making is you just want to be a dick, you just want to be an asshole, so they stack their trash right on my tent. So I was actually talking to my friend Matt about it and I was like, man, I'm a little fuming right now, I'm gonna cool down before I have this conversation. And he'd made the comment like don't stand for that, man, because you're gonna deal with it all week and your stuff's gonna get ruined. So I go back to my tent and I'm trying to be polite and I pick up the trash bags and I start to move them away from the tent. And I look up and he's laughing at me. Like he's laughing that I'm moving the trash, that I have to move the trash. So I walk over to him and I say hey, bud, how you doing? You know, I just wanna ask you a question and I don't literally I get so heated that I can't remember exactly how this goes, but I can promise you hand on the Cabello's catalog onto this guy. I come out polite to this guy. Okay, I start off minding my p's and q's, trying to be a good neighbor, because even if you're at the shittiest fare, if you leave a bad impression at the shittiest fare, you might lose your opportunity at the best fare. So I try to be as polite as I possibly can and I'm like hey, man, if you don't mind, could you not stack your trash right on my tent? And he laughs at me and I was like, I mean, I don't think it's funny. And he's like well, that's where my fucking trash is going. And I was like, yeah, no, that's not gonna work. You're stacking raw onions and garbage on my tent. Each one of those tents is three fucking grand and inside those tents is a lot of money. Everything in my tent smells like trash and onions and you're gonna stain shit or make it stink. And he's like well, I don't know what to tell you, I don't care, that's where my trash goes. And I said that's not where your fucking trash is gonna go. And this is where I take a different approach with Jamoc and I say that's not where your fucking trash is gonna go. And if it stays there, I'm gonna drag that trash over here and I'm gonna pour it all over your fucking counter. And that's exactly how I said it. And he looks at me oh no, you're not. Oh, fucking try me. You leave your fucking garbage on the side of my tent. I will walk over here when you have a line and I'll dump that trash all over your counter and all through your fucking booth. That's what I'll do. At this moment, I think Joey Jamoc realizes he might be in a situation that he does not wanna be in.
Speaker 2:He might be pickled.
Speaker 1:Yes, I like that. You wanna get the fair organizers out of here. I don't give a fuck who you get out here. Get the pope. Don't be putting trash on my damn tent. Boy, was I foamed up in this place?
Speaker 2:Were you foaming at the mouth?
Speaker 1:I was just about.
Speaker 2:I was shaking.
Speaker 1:I was so pissed I wanted to hit this. I'm a bitch so hard, oh man, I was so fired up I walked off steaming Willy Beamon I was oh man, I can't tell y'all Cleveland steamer, cleveland steamer the whole way. I would've dropped the Cleveland steamer right on the counter then I would've deep fried it and served it with ranch. I tell you what.
Speaker 2:That is nasty.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, the old adolescent me would've lost shit. I would've tried tipping that onion. Stand right the fuck over. I'm telling you right now I would've want ballistic. I can't tell you how many times I had bad ideas running through my head about like I was, like I'm gonna fill that, I will fill that hot full of his trash. I will go around this camp, I will go around this entire fair, get every damn trash can and I'll open his door and I'll fill that thing right to the roof. So when he comes in in the morning he gonna have trash as far as the eye can see. Courtesy of me. I had all these bad, intense I mean. You know y'all would think different about me if I told you all the things I thought about. Yeah, you would start to wonder and you would maybe think, hmm, I don't think he's that nice of a guy If I let you know everything I was thinking about. But I didn't do any of that, y'all.
Speaker 2:I'm out of my peas and cues.
Speaker 1:I was just blight, I just didn't look at him, we didn't talk. He actually had his employee come over and clean up the onions and I literally leaned out and said thank you. Every second of it hurt, still does.
Speaker 2:It's fine. You might not have done something, but I did.
Speaker 1:Oh boy, did you deep fry a turd?
Speaker 2:No, I simply waited until he everything was picked up and he had hauled his trailer away, his stock trailer, and he had dumped all of his oil barrels right outside in the trash, outside in the parking lot, just a big trash pile. He walked right past the trash bins and just left them there. So when organizers came around checking to make sure everyone was picked up, I simply said that's from Mr and Mrs Sausage, in case you were wondering and he said that bastard. I said yeah, really rude, huh. You walked right past the trash can and dropped his garbage right here and took off. How?
Speaker 1:rude and the person you were talking to. Actually they own a food stand down the way and they were number one, it's a super clean stand. Number two, they had a line out the door all week, every time, every day. So that should be what this Joey Jamoc should aspire to. Be right not to you know, I'm telling you, he left his buckets of oil, like you said, just scattered alongside his trailer and then just drove off and left them in the field. He didn't even pick them up, and I mean he would just pile trash. He would leave trash behind his display all day long instead of just hauling things off so that it's not a nuisance. They would just leave them there, which also like I don't wanna be eating my food next to your pile of garbage either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because they had what tables like behind the booth, Just a shit show, Right next to the trash. Can A?
Speaker 1:total, complete lack of respect. Man, that's just. That's really all I have to say. But it starts you off in a very disappointing way and you know, if you guys heard me last week and previous weeks talking about being at this fair last year and the bad luck that we had you know where. You know, our computer got compromised, we had an incident with the camper. We had all these. You know, it's just I don't know what you wanna call them Just troublemakers coming in the tent arguing with us. We really had a negative reception and for some reason I decided I'm not gonna give up on this fair. We had good numbers. We're going back.
Speaker 2:Because let's just go down in history. I said I do not want to go back to this fair last year. I know, I know.
Speaker 1:But it ended up being, financially, one of our better decisions last year. So I went with it and we're just gonna say a couple things. Here's the positive Nobody else gave me a hard time all week, except for our neighbor. It's discouraging when a fellow vendor is the problem, but overall received rather well. I didn't get any like. I mean people didn't. They didn't receive us with hugs and kisses, but we didn't have people coming over, you know, complaining about us or arguing with us. So that was refreshing. And we did continue to make good connections and meet new people, which is we will do that at any event that we attend. That's our goal. So those things, those are highlights. To get back to the lowlights, this was not a good financial fair for us. Again Last year it was a really good fair. We finished off by greater than 50%. I haven't done the final math on it, but I know we didn't attain a 50% rate. With that said, I think it's still this might have still been our most profitable fair to date this year. So you can look at that as a positive. But, we're not going back. Oh, we're not going back and we're gonna get to the reason in a moment. But again, this is another event where we're down and this is really making me nervous about our estate. And you know, number one, identifying fairs as really our bread and butter and our biggest contributor to our business, and they're all off, all off dramatically, which all I can hope for is our biggest fairs are upon us. They're coming on quick and hopefully people are waiting for the big fairs. If not, I don't really wanna do the math on the scenario, if not. But you know, we're just gonna keep on praying day after day that you know luck is coming our way and that you know opportunity will shine and we'll make good business. So, again, not a good financial week, but I will say that I was happy you joined me on Friday evening, right?
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And you came up and we finished pretty decent on Friday and I don't know what day it was Was it Saturday or I think it was Sunday before we started packing, right when I found the issue with the old pickup truck. So I was walking back to camp and I noticed something hanging from underneath the truck. Thankfully I went back in the daytime to reorganize before we started packing and then I noticed the actual fuel tank strap the strap that holds your fuel tank in broke off. Thankfully there's two of them. The front one was attached but the back one completely gone, and our fuel tank, which was at this moment completely full of fuel because you fueled up on the way in so you could haul the camper home, was about six to eight inches from smashing on the ground and ripping off the fucking truck, which not cool bro.
Speaker 2:Not cool at all.
Speaker 1:Thankfully for you, you married a redneck, so I crawled underneath there with a couple ratchet straps and with every ounce of strength I have to bench press with one hand from a ground position of nearly six inches off the ground to press the fuel tank up into the air and ratchet that sucker in. But she's in there, okay, I'm glad we've seen it. Had we not noticed it at night and then you hitched the trailer on it, this could have been a real sit-show, like a legit big time catastrophe. Thankfully, I'm gonna count our blessings and thank the heavens for that one that we saw it and we were able to patch it up enough to get home. So that was vehicle obstacle number one. Right Now, sunday, as the fare starts to wrap up, I go to the ambulance and I'm gonna move it closer to our tent so we can start packing some things up. She didn't wanna start. Okay, she gave me. She bucked a little bit, she didn't. She was like you know what I'm not so sure why. I want them ready to work y'all. I don't think I'm ready and you know I had a coach that threw it. She fires up. I pull over. We let that big old diesel run for at least 20 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We were loading things up and what do you know? She won't start. So now I bring the truck over because the ambulance is stuck in the field, won't start, hook the jumper cables on it. It's now down pouring. While I'm doing this I'm soaked, trying to get the cables on and I get things connected. I would say how long did we jump the vehicle for? What do you I mean?
Speaker 2:30, 45 minutes. That's what I'm thinking it was at least 30 minutes, 45 minutes.
Speaker 1:We're pushing an hour of charging both batteries with our truck. Finally, after, mind you, we carry everything by hand, we carry all the grid walls Brune stick. Yeah, you actually found a broom stick and we're hanging close In the trash can. We're hanging close and running them in. So multitasking we carry everything, I don't know, 100 yards or so from the truck to the tent, load everything up, finally get the truck to start and we said, alright, let's lock everything up and we're gonna go for a ride. I'm gonna charge these batteries up. We drove around for about an hour and there's actually little indicator lights in the ambulance. It'll tell you that you know your batteries fully charged or what. So we're driving all around. It's taken forever for this thing to kick in. Eventually we pull into camp. Light turns on green. We're good to go Fully juiced. So I have a breaker on the seat in the ambulance that turns the power off. I hit that switch, I popped the hood and I actually have breakers on each battery where I can. That can disable power to those batteries. So I pop both of those off and I say you know what? We're gonna be good, right, tomorrow's gonna be good. So we get up. On Monday you have to be at work. So I go down, start breaking down the tent because we left it up. So we're dry off a little bit and You're getting the campsite ready. We got all that stuff settled and you know we're. We're running ahead of schedule and you had the idea let's go get a coffee before we hitch up the trailer. So as we had to get coffee, we realize the truck's overheating. Check gauges comes on. I look down temperatures pinned in the truck. We get to the gas station, dunk and donuts just just a couple minutes down the road Pop the hood, pop the radiator. She's super hot. Steam's blowing everywhere. We're just about out of antifreeze. Two big old jugs of any freeze later filling her up. All I can think of is, while we were trying to charge the ambulance for nearly an hour the hood was mostly shut because it was pouring rain out and somehow we must have overheated it and kicked all the antifreeze out. But I'm thankful at this point we didn't have the camper hooked on yet. We weren't on the road when she started to overheat. But here is I guess that's vehicle issue number three to start off with a fuel tank. Then we won't start and now our truck's overheating. But we resolved that issue and we're like okay, thankfully we did it. Now let's enjoy our coffee. We're good to go. We get back to camp, go over to start the ambulance and Donuts she gone. She won't start. This begins our day-long battle of Trying to jumpstart the ambulance. Can you maybe give the, the listening audience, a little perspective as to how things were going at this time for us? Just, I'd like some interjection here from you as to what was it like. Stuck at the fairgrounds again, we know we got there on Sunday. This is the following Monday. I'm ready to go home, y'all.
Speaker 2:It was terrible, it was hot, miserable. We didn't have anywhere to hang out because the camper was already on the truck. That's just unplugged, so we just kind of sat in the grass With my ten toes up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, had we known the truck wasn't gonna start. But, like you said, could let the camper hooked up, could have been in the AC, could have been doing whatever, wouldn't had to get up early and rush around. That's another thing, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cuz I didn't make it to work until 2 30 in the afternoon and I was supposed to be there Normal day seven forty-five. I was going in late so I was supposed to be there at 10 30 well, you got to work.
Speaker 1:At what time did you say it was?
Speaker 2:The ambulance didn't get home with us.
Speaker 1:We'll just put a little spoiler alert. The ambulance stayed there. We have triple a. We call triple a. The first person Said they would be there within an hour. They dropped the tow and then that continues on for a while. For about an hour we're dealing with this where you know we're not hearing anything back, and then we're trying to reach out and end up talking to triple a and saying you know, if someone could jump us, our jumper cables aren't that strong. That would be good. You know we could try that. And this continues on and we had what? Two or three phone calls with triple a Plus multiple text messages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have two or three companies like pick up the tow and then drop it when they realized that it was an ambulance, because they didn't have the right equipment.
Speaker 1:So then over an hour or so, maybe in closer to two hours later, a garage finally calls us and we start having a conversation and he says yeah, man, I there's no way I could tell that thing and I was talking about a jump. And he was like Well, let me talk to you about last night, what happened. And he was like you drove it around for an hour and it won't start today. Your alternator is bad and if I jumped that thing and you can actually go down the road with it, you're gonna be on 95 heading back to a runder and you're gonna lose all the power to your vehicle. And now you're in the middle of the interstate with a disabled, friggin ambulance. He's like so I don't think it's a good idea to jump it. At that point we realize we're pretty much KO'd here. And then we tried getting a little triple a again. Our friend Chris, you know, works with triple a. So he reached out to them and they said I should triple a, told us you're not covered, that vehicles not covered, we won't tell it. If you want to upgrade your policy To cover something that large, we won't tell it for a week. So this point we know we're screwed. We'd lock the ambulance up and you and I head home so you could get to work. And I called my cousin, joey, who's a mechanic, and Asked him if he would go with me back to top some. He was more than willing to help. I called the local Napa station here, ordered a Alternator. So I came home, you took a shower or was getting ready for work, I ran down the street, grabbed the alternator, which was like two or an 80 bucks, and my cousin met me here and then we had it off the top. So it's an hour away from home again, right. So now I'm making the tops from journey for the second time and we get all the way up there, pop the hood and my cousin looks in there and says well, they sold you the wrong alternator. Are you kidding me? He's like no, it's definitely the wrong alternator. Well, let's pull this one out so we can bring the correct one with us. So we start disassembling you know everything to get the alternator out. Now I'm gonna say this this is one of the things that you brought up when we were there sitting around. We sat around. From what time was it? Nine ish. Yeah maybe eight, nine o'clock, until we left. At what time? Mmm, probably 12, 30, almost one so from like, let's say, eight there nine o'clock to one o'clock, 12 30, we had two vehicles with the hood up, we had jumper cables, we had tools. We were trying all these different things. How many people came over to check on us? Not one. How many people do you think were organizers for the fair that we saw?
Speaker 2:probably three. I.
Speaker 1:Literally throughout the day. I went back with my cousin as well. I saw multiple people that work for the fair, multiple volunteers, multiple vendors. None of them came over to check on us. Yeah, I will say one kid, who's probably what is he? Probably 12 years old. That kid came over to see everything was okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you say? What are you? He came over and was like.
Speaker 1:Are you installing a new turbo? No, buddy, that's an alternator and I don't think this thing needs a turbo. But thanks for checking on us.
Speaker 2:He was, he was nice. But how, yeah how. Even a child knows that something's wrong, and they don't even they're not Mechanically inclined.
Speaker 1:So how does organizers for the fair. You've collected my money. Like one of the people in particular that I saw, he helped us check in when we got to camp. I talked to him multiple times at my tent.
Speaker 2:Dr Beg is the same one that drove his tractor Over next to us and dropped the bucket. Yeah, right next to us. Never once did he turn his head and be like hey, are you all set? Are you okay? Do you need anything? Hey, if you have to leave that there, it's okay. Nothing, not even, not even a head nod.
Speaker 1:Any of that would have been. Would have been, it's fine.
Speaker 2:I'll just go fuck myself, don't worry about it. And like tractor trailers were in and out of there, in and out of there the entire time, taking the equipment to the next fair. Not one person was like hey, are you all set for me? Okay?
Speaker 1:a lot of it was. I gave y'all. I gave y'all money. I've been here for a week. It's just two years in a row I've camped here. I've paid to be here. We're a big part of your fair. Any vendor needs to, needs to understand that when you're a vendor, you're a part of that fair. You're you're representing them. You know they need you there. You are help, you are a big part of that fair. You being there is an attraction. So don't beat yourself up. Don't go into these fairs thinking you know what, like I need to be here. I've learned that, though, they need you to be there too, and that's one of the things Matt and Sarah really has driven home to me. So the fact that nobody at this fair would come over and even check on us, offer us anything, that right there is what sealed the deal for us not going back in the words of you.
Speaker 2:They need you more than you need that's true.
Speaker 1:We've heard that line a few times. So it's not the down numbers, it's not the shit bag neighbor vendor, it's not you know the nonsense that you might deal with. It's the fact that there's no respect. You're not coming over to check on us. I'm not going back that fair is off my list just by your complete lack of respect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just think that being disrespectful in general, that was enough. Like they just, they just didn't even care.
Speaker 1:No, not one ounce of care that clearly. It was proven to me that the only thing you were concerned was With cashing your check cash in my track.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was already done and over with and they've already spent that money, so I'm out Top some fair.
Speaker 1:You will not see me back and I hate to say anything negative because I I fairs are a lifeline for us, you know, and our Business depends on them and our reputation are our customer base and I'm so damn thankful for the fairs that we have right for sure. I love the Oswie Valley fair. I don't care if I make $15 when I'm there. I really enjoy that fair and I love Freiburg. Freiburg has single-handedly kept us in business. Freiburg means so much to this family. I am beyond excited to go back to Freiburg. Everybody there treats us with absolute respect and it's a true blessing to be at Freiburg. Incredibly excited to go to the Windsor fair for the very first time, which we'll be doing in a couple weeks. That's the mad crush that we're having right now. So I'm incredibly thankful for these fairs. It's this heartening when one just doesn't respect you and treats you negatively.
Speaker 2:But I mean in the vendor world, when you're in the circuit, these are the type of things that you hear from other vendors like, hey, I'm not gonna go to this fair. The Organizers are really disrespectful. They don't care about you, they just want to cash your check and like. These are the things that you know. Sometimes we have to learn on our own. Yeah because this is kind of a smaller fair, so we kind of put it on our docket just to see if we could, you know, make make ends meet. And so unfortunately, with this one in particular, we saw first hand that they really just unfortunately don't care.
Speaker 1:It's also annoying when fairs will do this thing. They'll go around and highlight certain vendors and they'll take, you know, pictures and post them and talk about them being there. And I ultimately feel like fairs. A lot of them are afraid to promote us. They don't like, they feel like we're opening up some kind of political conversation. But it's this heartening when I can guarantee nobody puts more time and effort into their display than we do. All right, but sure nobody puts more time and effort into the presentation that we put out there. To not be highlighted by fairs is, you know, at least of the fairs that like to do that. And it's one thing when you're at a fair that has, like you know, like 500 vendors, but when you're at a fair that has like 20.
Speaker 2:Hmm, you know yeah, like this one in particular. Let me just think so inside the craft barn and then out on the midway I'll Say there was probably and this, and this is kind of like a flex, like I would say, 12 vendors, 15 maybe, that sell Items like other than food, food stuff yeah. Yeah, yeah, I would say 15 if that, and and I think out of those 15 there was One in particular that definitely sells t-shirts, but the other ones are just the tents with all the random top trash keys in them, and they probably do have a t-shirt or two. But as far as like vendors with apparel, there was two, three, three and then Soldiers solutions for me the other thing in this is you can take some out because they're they're part of the carnival right.
Speaker 1:You can take some of those vendors out because they're. They have a whole separate contract.
Speaker 2:When you're on the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you're a fair that's open. Let's see, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, six days and you have, you know, 10 to 15 vendors that sell tangible products. You could highlight each one of your vendors. For sure like to a day would cover. That would make your fair look busier and you would give the same shout out to each one of your vendors, because they go ahead and do it for a bunch of them and Obviously, we weren't one of them, but more so than us. I thought it was offensive that they did not highlight Ledgeway Farm, because there's no reason for them not to be highlighted. They have an amazing setup.
Speaker 2:Matt and Sarah display yes.
Speaker 1:Matt and Sarah's trailer that they actually set up this little awesome like wooden trailer set up with all their soap, and it's phenomenal. They were doing milking demos a couple times. Today they have their goats on site. They spent multiple days building that. There's no reason why that shouldn't have been highlighted. So it's just, it's the little things like that that just kind of seal the fate for me on places. I understand it. When you're at a big, massive fair you can't highlight all your vendors. I get it when you're singling some out and not doing it intentionally. That just seems ridiculous to me. So those are some of the negatives. So if I get back to working on the Alternator with my cousin, we pull out the one that is in there and he calls a friend that works at, actually at a Kenworth dealership and the parts department and he sends him a picture of it and so he could kind of actually try to find us the right one, because this is a heavy-duty vehicle. It comes off an ambulance, so he deals with, with big vehicles. So Anyways, he's like I think I identified the one that you need. It's gonna be in Westbrook. Now we're in Topson, we get the alternator out and now we drive from Topson back down towards South Portland, so that's got to be another half hour 40 minutes. Yeah. So let's say I drive 40 minutes down to South Portland, get to this dealership so we can actually see the alternator that we have, identify the one that we're gonna need, find its location that's in the Westbrook, napa. So then we leave their drive over to Westbrook and then now, shocker, the new alternator is $400 and they won't take the one back that I purchased in Bitterford, near both Napa locations. I use my phone number. It's on record. It literally says Bitterford, napa, right on the freaking box and they won't take it back. So now at that moment I'm out like $800 in alternators at this moment. So we get the alternator from Westbrook and then Joey and I drive all the way back to Topson again for the whatever the freaking time that is, and then proceed to throw the alternator in as we're losing all daylight. We get everything in Just before we lose Like basically all light. Actually have a cool photo I'm gonna post of the Sun was setting and we had just finished and Joey was jumping the truck. So we ended up charging each battery with jumper cables to try to charge the alternator. I want to say 15 minutes per battery I have two batteries in my truck and then we did 10 more minutes on the primary battery and we went to start it and absolutely nothing. You can hear it trying, but we just weren't getting anywhere. Multiple times of trying to Continue to charge and to restart and I just got so discouraged. You and me were checking in with each other and I Was like I, I think we're fucked here. Man and you know, no tow truck at this point actually wants to haul us home because it's too damn big and if they do, it's gonna be a thousand dollar charge. It's gonna be $800 to have a big-ass tow truck come out and then drive an hour each way, right? So I'm just beating myself up. At this point. Joey's trying to call a friend to see if we can have two trucks with two such a jumper cables on each battery. The next idea is he's like well, I guess we're gonna have to take these batteries out, bring them home and charge them overnight and then come back. But at this point we haven't been greeted so well. Everybody at the fair, I don't know what I mean. Can we leave our vehicle here? I'm just so discouraged. I just want this over. You know, I've spent all damn day at the fair trying to straighten this out. I don't want to come back again tomorrow and our timeline for for business. I have a massive Custom order for Bentley saloon over 400 items that I have to get done. I have other custom orders that I need to get done. Plus, we are gonna try to drop new designs on all y'all for the next Fair. We have so many things to do, our biggest display coming up yet to date. All these things are moving in the back of my mind Trying to get a new camper ready. We're trying to sell the other camp. All these things are moving it, and when you're sitting around idle Just waiting for a vehicle to charge, it's the longest time of your life, man. So and a last-ditch effort and I'm literally texting you saying it's just gonna work, I'm gonna be coming home soon. Me and Joey are chatting about not taking the batteries out. We just kind of look at each other and and he could see I'm getting ready to start it again and he's like I can give it to it and I turn that some bitch and I am oh yeah. Was that beautiful that was miraculous. Because it sounded beautiful. When old glory came to life, hot diggity, damn it would fall. So I thought you were sleeping you got thirsty.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, come here, Bubba oh.
Speaker 1:Don't encourage it.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to get him on the carpet.
Speaker 1:I was gonna be there as likely to be parents, right, don't encourage him.
Speaker 2:No, I'm trying to get him on the carpet.
Speaker 1:You're babying him.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not, he's my little baby. Come here my little baby.
Speaker 1:Okay, quit, that's it. Oh, now you all got mine.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sorry. What did you just say?
Speaker 1:No, because mine was sleeping no no, no.
Speaker 2:That's why I said it was mine.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, no, I'll do the same thing with the kid when it's sleeping. That'll be my child. It's running around like a savage, dragging their toes around like a knuckle grinder over here. Anyways, I don't know where I was. I just got started, y'all, and Big Joe followed me home. I'm going to tell you right now I was ready to sell that girl.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, you still are someone that I thought.
Speaker 1:Well, coming home. She's strong like bull. There was lights popping up inside the truck. I forgot we even had Gages were working that I never seen before. Power like your dream of Just oh man Just coming out of the loins with power, I tell ya.
Speaker 2:Well, let's be honest, the alternator that was in there was probably from 94.
Speaker 1:I think it might have been. It might have been the original. This truck has so much more um gusto that it's. I'm telling you, wait till you're in this thing and you feel the unbridled power of this 94 whammy. It's. She's a spring chicken, dude. I mean, I was passing people.
Speaker 2:She's not a spring chicken.
Speaker 1:I was passing people, I was accelerating out the gate man. It felt like a whole new weapon.
Speaker 2:She's 29 years old.
Speaker 1:I mean you were born in 92, right that goes, two years younger than you.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And nobody's saying to put you down. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:I didn't say put her down.
Speaker 1:Well, I just wanted to check on you.
Speaker 2:You did.
Speaker 1:Oh, I was close. I was selling her what I'm telling you it was. It's a whole different animal right now. It feels like a whole different vehicle. I'm gonna reserve judgment until we do another event. What is he doing now?
Speaker 2:Bubba.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, it's. He's snoring, oh man.
Speaker 2:He's fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the people listening don't think it's fine.
Speaker 2:They love him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you were new to the show and you're like I think I listened to some coach with a respiratory issue, like I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2:That's my husband with CPAP.
Speaker 1:Yeah, seriously, what it sounds like it's an English bulldog is what it is An English and a French. And I'm gonna wrap up this recording because he's old. Oh, my God it's like a motorboat suffocating.
Speaker 2:Bubba is old.
Speaker 1:Come on, I don't know what we're talking about. I blacked out.
Speaker 2:OldGlory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like to remember old bulldogs and old Glory.
Speaker 2:Old Glory. He's lit up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, she's running strong like bull. We're gonna take her to our next event and see how it goes. Absolutely Maybe she'll come out of it and she'll stick around. If not, we'll see. But, man, I can't tell you how thankful I am for the fact that she didn't come home on the back of a flat bed that you know I'm not, you know waiting around for a garage to fix it. I can't thank my cousin enough, literally, for what he did. So it's been a little while y'all since we've done a winning Wednesday weekly shout out to my cousin, joey, for saving my ass, for driving all around Southern Maine to get an old Glory home safely. Hmm, I tell you what. So that's it y'all. That's how you can take a bag of onions, a fuel tank and an alternator and get me to about lose my shit. That's it. That's it. You get to this point and we had this conversation where you have to ask yourself are these signs from above to say stop, like I've told you multiple times, stop. I'm trying to show you multiple times, don't continue doing what you're doing. It's not working. You need to abandon ship or go in a different direction. Or is it that final layer of discomfort? before you start to get into discomfort before you reach a new milestone, before you flip the script, before you start to achieve and believe, before all those great things start to happen. So it's so tough, man, where you're in that purgatory, where you're like is somebody telling me to turn back and run? Or is somebody telling me you're about to achieve greatness, you just have to get through the nonsense. That's where we're at y'all. We're in business purgatory where we don't know what's happening. We're treading water and I can barely swim. I know I technically can't swim, but I feel like the business is barely swimming. Normally, if I'm a swimmer, I would swim towards the bottom because I would sink. I do tend to feel like I'm sinking. It's frustrating. It's a tough year, it's a battle, but I continue to remain as positive as I could possibly be. Sometimes my level of positivity might be lower than I expect for myself, but I'm doing the best I can. I think that a lot of people in this free world of ours would have turned back already. They would have given up just with one or two of the mishaps and missteps that we've been dealt so far this season. But we're still punching. We're still here. We're still trying to figure it out. Our biggest events of the year are yet to come and we have some other thoughts and theories and ideas. You know how to ruin a positive moment. Oh man, what I'm trying to tell y'all is a lot of people would shit and quit, a lot of people would put up a fight and hope things go all right and I'm going to have to fall in group two. We're going to keep on fighting because I know we got the support of all y'all out there and I can't thank you enough for that, because without y'all, man, we be gone. Because this, this Dude, what, what do you have against me? Like I don't, I don't understand it.
Speaker 2:That's my boy.
Speaker 1:My kids hate me.
Speaker 2:That's your kid over there, the sleeping one remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she is right now. I can't, even, I literally can't form a positive sentence because of all the distractions. Can you leave anything positive to end this episode? I don't want people coming here going man. I just listened to Keith cry for 45 minutes about how miserable his time was.
Speaker 2:I defended old Red. That was a positive note.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tell him that story.
Speaker 2:So I go to the local Dunkin Donuts. Okay, bubba, mom's talking now.
Speaker 1:I see how it is.
Speaker 2:I go to the local Dunkin Donuts and I pull in with old Red and there's this old timer sitting on the back of a Yoda, okay, and he is just sipping his coffee, enjoying life, just chit-chat. And so I see him and I go inside get our coffee and I come back out and I see him sitting with I'm gonna just assume his grandson. And so I notice that they're looking at old Red but they're giving her like a stank eye. Okay, and only I can give old Red a stank eye.
Speaker 1:Old Red is the farm truck now right?
Speaker 2:Yes, Everybody knows that's our Dodge.
Speaker 1:She started off as a beautiful young majestic prom queen, but now she's a farm truck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's got some rest spots. Quite a few, some imperfections, some scarring, okay, but she hauls the camper and she hauls the horse trailer like a champ. So I happen to, like I don't know, look in the back and I see these two like mean-mugging old. Red okay, and so I was like mm-mm, no sir, not today, not today. I throw old Red in reverse and I come right up next to this Yoda and I said hey, what's the matter? You never seen a farm truck before.
Speaker 1:They just look at me like I think you use the words working farm truck.
Speaker 2:Yes, working farm truck. And they just looked at me all cross-eyed like I had a dick on my forehead and I said get yourself a rail truck. I threw it in drive and took off and I got to the end of the road there and it was my turn to go and maybe I chanced it a little bit and I gave it the gears yeah, Right out of there.
Speaker 1:Peed me to the corn.
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:I was so surprised he took it personal on old Red for as much as you've told her off through the years and the fact that you went over and put that old timer in his place. Something to get a rail truck that right there is why we're married.
Speaker 2:Yup, I told him to buy a rail truck because he was sitting on the tailgate of a freaking Yoda.
Speaker 1:You tore down grandpa right in front of his grandson. Oh, I did. There ain't no coming back from that.
Speaker 2:Oh, I did.
Speaker 1:His grandson's going to be telling his dad. This girl in a pickup truck told grandpa his truck was a toilet To eat it To buy a real truck. I bet you, by Christmas, grandpa's going to buy himself a new truck. If I can't be having these young farm girls run around telling me I'm driving a fake, pick me up.
Speaker 2:It'll be all pepate out with all the chrome and all the lights and the bells and whistles and all the things and you still won't get it dirty.
Speaker 1:Yup. So, I'm glad you defended old Red.
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you defended old home nice and strong, and that's the, that's the positive there. But what a freaking week. Last episode I told you how positive I was about the week and how we were going to crush it, and we kind of got crushed, but we're still kicking y'all. We're still here.
Speaker 2:I still have a pulse. Yup, we got a battle royal of a week and a half ahead of us.
Speaker 1:If y'all looking for a night out on the town this week, I will be DJing a Bentley Saloon this Friday I don't remember the friggin date of the top of my head 17th, 18th something. We're in August month of August 7 to 11. I'm going to be DJing and it's another costume night and this is a cartoon character night.
Speaker 2:It is the 18th.
Speaker 1:All right, 18th, feel free to come out and cause, play your way to the saloon and enjoy yourself, because we're going to have ourselves a good old time and then we'll be getting ready. Next time you hear from me, I'll definitely be talking about the Winds of Fair, as we're getting prepped for the biggest display, the biggest display we have ever put out. There's a lot of moving parts right now, a lot of turning and earning in the background. There's a lot of things, a lot of challenges, that we're trying to overcome. We're going to share those with you next time. But, man, when you are dealing with some of these obstacles and some of these frustrations, it's so difficult to remain positive and continue to spend money and to continue to invest in your business, because during this time, we weren't making the money where you need to make. I was doubling down on the business, investing in another tent, investing in more products. I spent like $6,000 on products during the week when we weren't making a dime. I'm telling you, it's pretty demoralizing to sit around for an entire day and make $200. So it ain't easy. At the end of the week, we averaged out to do okay, not a great event for us, but not enough of an event to make you say I'm not going to do this again tomorrow, because we're going to continue to get up and do this day after day until we make this work. I do have the faith that it will work and with all of y'all pushing and believing, I know it's going to work. So I appreciate you for continuing to provide that positive motivation, because sometimes I get down, y'all, sometimes we get down, sometimes you feel like you're getting kicked around and you're going to stay down, but I hear from some of you that believe in all of us and that makes a difference. So I can't thank you enough. If you've got anything over there you want to add to this little ditty.
Speaker 2:No, that's it.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was convincing.
Speaker 2:I got nothing.
Speaker 1:Give me something positive.
Speaker 2:I think you've done a great job.
Speaker 1:Were, there's podcasts today.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You just saying that.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not just saying that.
Speaker 1:Alright, I'll take it Well. On that note, I thank you for supporting our American dream. Now go wash your fucking hands. You've got no these damage. That's it and that's all. Biggie Smiles. If you found value in today's show, please return the favor and leave a positive review. Share it with someone that is important to you. Hit, subscribe and help us grow our tribe. Are you interested in sponsoring the show? Maybe you're looking to be a guest on the show? Find all that you need to know about the show at sharethestrucklepodcastcom. Subscribe to Grow Our Tribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcasts, amazon Music, iheart Radio and all other major platforms, and don't forget to like and share our official Facebook page at Share the Struggle Podcast. If you're a loud, proud American and you find yourself just wanting more, you can find me on YouTube, on Facebook or the face page, as my mama calls it. Just search loud, proud American. If you're a fan of the Graham Cracker, the Instagram or the Tickety Tuck for the kids to be a Tickety Tuckin', the Tick Tuck you can search loud, underscore, proud, underscore American. If you want to join the 2% of Americans that support American manufacturing, head on over to wwwloudproudamericanshop and get your hands on some of that made in USA. Apparel and join the mission Mission 2%. Together we can bring back American manufacturing. A big old thank you to the boys from the Gut Truckers for the background beats and the theme song to Share the Struggle Podcast. You can find the Gut Truckers on Facebook. Just search Gut Truckers and show your support to those Mother Truckers. I truly thank you for supporting my American dream. Now go wash your fuckin' hands you filthy savage.
