Twelve Days of Christmas, Part VIII: Dad and St. Charles, my favorite craft show

*My stepson joking around at St. Charles with my father, who has a look he typically reserved for customers who asked for a discount or if he used real leather.*

An omelet cooked on a rock. A rainy night marred by mosquitoes. Sleeping in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of August. A two-mile walk to McDonald’s for lunch. And nearly being run over by a moving truck.

All of that happened at my favorite craft show, the Festival of the Little Hills in St. Charles, Missouri. Despite those hiccups, I loved working that show with my father, who had a booth there for more than 30 years.

“We did that show for the first time not long after we switched to leather from stained glass,” Dad said. “We’d gotten a lot better at finding good shows, and we heard about that one. We applied and got in. Boy, was that a break for us.”

Many shows aren’t easy to get into. The top-tier ones, at least in the Midwest, had an application process that included sending photos of your work. The board for the festival had high standards, so getting in was a nod of approval in the crafting circuit.

It didn’t take long to realize why my parents’ peers in the business wanted to be in the show, held in Frontier Park less than 100 yards off the Mississippi River. Featuring music, a large contingent of Native American performers and artisans, dozens of crafters, a plethora of food and plenty of beer, the festival was packed from Friday night through Sunday afternoon.

During the first year WebbCraft did the show, the entire family went. Dad, Mom, my brother and I were busy, taking breaks only to grab food and use the bathroom.

“We made more money there than we had at any show besides a Christmas show in one of the malls,” the old man said. “It was exciting. That kind of money was a big deal for us in those days.”

The omelet on the rock came the following year. Mom worked a different show, so it was Dad, my brother and I in St. Charles. On the second morning of the festival, the old man wanted to introduce us to the Native American culture, mostly because it was part of our heritage, as my grandfather was one-fourth Cherokee.

We walked from our booth to the north side of the park, where an elder man in a traditional Native American outfit sat next to fire. Dad asked the man for an omelet, and he cracked several eggs on a rock in the fire.

I watched tantalizingly as he made a perfect dish with cheese, ham and vegetables for just $3. It was one of the best breakfasts I’d had in my 10 years, and I learned more than I possibly could in a history book listening to the man talk.

“And you guys thought I was just taking you to breakfast,” my father said.

The mosquitoes and pickup truck came the next two years. On the former, Dad decided it would be a great idea to sleep in a tent behind the booth. It rained, of course, stirring up some rather vicious mosquitoes. That was a long night with anything but sleep. On the pickup truck, we drove to a vacant parking lot a mile from the show and slept in the back of my father’s truck bed. That was a long, hot night with anything but sleep.

“Money was tight,” Dad said. “And I never worried about sleeping outside after sleeping in a cage for 13 years.”

As for McDonald’s, that was as much about going on an adventure as anything. I’d leave the show early in the day when it wasn’t quite as busy and navigate my way through the old neighborhood on the outskirts of the show, buying enough food to get us through the next 10 hours.

Our run in Frontier Park lasted five years. We were juried out of the official craft show in the early 1990s. “Politics,” the old man said. “I was never good at kissing ass.”

What he was good at was improvising and making connections. During one of the festivals, Dad met a businessman who owned much of the property in the historic district of St. Charles, where many of the crafters had booths.

“This guy had property that wasn’t part of the show, so I asked him if he would considering renting me space,” Dad said. “The space cost a little more, but it was worth every penny.”

As it turned out, the old man had his eyes on that space for years. It was arguably the best one in the festival, located in an opening connecting the park to the historic district. Virtually every person visiting the show had to walk through that section to get to the other area of the festival.

“Getting juried out was the best thing that every happened to us,” Dad said.

The summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school was the last time I did the show with my father. Twenty years later, though, a few weeks after the old man tweaked his back, my stepson and I drove from Kansas City to St. Charles, surprising Dad at his booth.

We spent most of the weekend helping customers, keeping his booth neat and helping the old man pack up. While loading up his van, an old lady in a giant truck came within a foot of plowing over me as I carried a heavy box along a sidewalk. Good old St. Charles.

I did have enough time to take Rory down to the park and show him around. None of the crafters I grew up with were there. The goods were different, more modern. I don’t recall there being a Native American section. But, I’ll always have that omelet, and the memory of hanging out with my father at his best craft show.