Country Capitalism

1 · Crossing into Gallia County

Josie wheezed up the last rise on State Route 588 just as morning cracked open behind us, spilling light across the hollows. Below, the Bob Evans homestead sprawled in orderly rectangles of groomed pasture and whitewashed rail fence. A half-century ago, the story goes, a farm boy named Robert Evans lured truck drivers off U.S. Route 35 with the smell of sage-heavy sausage and a promise of bottomless coffee. By 1971 he’d hatched the notion of a harvest homecoming—one weekend every October when neighbors, traders, and the merely curious might gather “down on the farm” to eat, barter, and remind one another why God invented autumn. That seed became the Bob Evans Farm Festival, now past its fiftieth birthday and drawing, the brochures brag, something like thirty-thousand visitors over three days. (Celebrating 50 Years of Tradition Down on the Farm ... - Bob Evans)

I’d come chasing that origin myth. A man who folds generosity into sausage links seemed tailor-made for the Hope & Generosity Tour. I pictured county-fair grit: 4-H kids wrestling Holsteins into the show ring, pie contests judged by church ladies with stern palates, fiddlers trading licks from the flatbed of a grain truck. Instead, as Josie rattled onto the parking plateau, what reached my ears first was pop music piped from a PA and the electronic jangle of a credit-card reader approving someone’s purchase of kettle corn.

I pictured county-fair grit: 4-H kids wrestling Holsteins into the show ring, pie contests judged by church ladies with stern palates, fiddlers trading licks from the flatbed of a grain truck.

2 · Midway of Merchandise

The festival grounds unfurled like a county fair clipped of its livestock: a midway of tents, each flapping against autumn wind. Under canvas I found rows of merch—“hand-poured” candles, laser-engraved cutting boards, tie-dye hoodies that would have puzzled Bob in his bib overalls. Craft vendors are tradition here, the program insists—more than one hundred of them at peak, hawking everything from gourd birdhouses to welded-horseshoe yard art. (53rd Annual Farm Festival - Bob Evans) But commerce felt less accent than engine. Card swipe, receipt print, shuffle on.

Food stalls clustered like piglets round the mother-sow of profit. Funnel cakes. Corn dogs. Frozen lemonade. And of course sausage sandwiches—$8.50 a link, slathered in onions. They smelled divine; they always have. Still, I missed the older country-fair alchemy where a church youth group flipped burgers to fund mission trips, or the Lions Club sold ham-n-bean dinners from a steam table dented by decades of use.

Down by the hollow a carnival whirred. Third-hand rides—Tilt-A-Whirl, Berry-Go-Round—moaned each time the wind shifted, the metal joints complaining like old mules in harness. Parents tugged children past the games of chance; five or ten bucks—depending on age—garnered the wearer unlimited rides. The midway barkers looked tired already, Friday morning, two whole days ahead of them.

3 · Echoes of a Simpler Fair

Memory works like a barn cat—slips in uninvited, curls on your lap, demands stroking. Mine wandered to the Black Walnut Festival in Spencer, West Virginia, circa 1998. There the carnival rides were just as suspect, but everything else pulsed with local nerve: the FFA auctioning pumpkins, the VFW slinging hog roast by the pound, the marching band leading a parade where half the county turned out because the other half was the parade. That fair reeked of sweat and sawdust, but also of ownership—a community showing off its handiwork to itself.

At Bob Evans I felt mostly like a spectator pulling dollars from a billfold so national brands could tally ROI Monday morning. Maybe I’m guilty of nostalgia, longing for a world that existed only because I was small enough to look upward. Yet talking to older vendors confirmed the shift.

4 · Voices from Behind the Tables

I spoke with a couple that drive three hours from Athens County each year to sell their handmade “farm crafts.” They’ve been at the festival since 1992. “Back then,” the husband said, squinting against the sun, “you could trade crafts for beef and call it square.” He laughed, then his face tightened. “Now it’s bookings, booth fees, credit card swipes, and sales tax. Folks still smile, but they’re counting pennies inside.”

He said the tenor of the fair changed about the same time its ownership changed hands. Back in 2017 Bob Evans split itself into two parts: the restaurant business and the product side of things. “Hear tell they got somethun like, well, a bit more than half a billion,” for the restaurant side, he said. With that deal came the rights to the festival. Community swapped out for commerce. 

5 · The Story Bob Told

Around noon I slouched toward the homestead—a white clapboard farmhouse trimmed in forest green, now a museum. “Closed until further notice,” a sign said. I jiggled the door handle. Unlocked. I invited myself in. 

Inside, displays told the corporate legend: Bob Evans grinding sausage in a home kitchen, selling it to truckers; franchising a diner; growing a brand across the Midwest; donating back to the farm that birthed him. For decades the festival channeled that origin story—one weekend to honor farmers and artisans, with horse pulls, sheep-shearing, and hayrides ringing the hollow.

The pamphlet with a schedule of events noted the “Ready Go Dog Show,” in which canines race down a ramp and launch themselves into the air over a pool of water to snatch a flying Frisbee out of the air. There was a timber demonstration with all manner of cutting and chopping going on. A tap-dancing troupe performed several times during the day. Sadly, although listed on the schedule, a note on the pamphlet read, “Due to recent weather events, All American Pig Racing will not be attending this year.” Oh, I almost forgot the hilarity (and horror) of the public axe throwing booth…

All these activities were competing against two main stages pushing Nashville hopefuls through rented PA. Some visitors found them; most stuck to the craft aisles where the money churned.

7 · Looking for Stories, Finding Sales Pitches

I’d arrived hoping to gather material for the Tour—testimonies of generosity, neighbors lifting neighbors. Instead I was pitched essential-oil diffusers and artisan jerky. I asked a festival volunteer where I might find local 4-H exhibits. She frowned. “We haven’t had animal showing for years. Health regs, liability.” Liability, that deadweight noun.

Across the lane, two girls in matching Bob Evans T-shirts—paid brand ambassadors—handed out coupons good for a free stack of hotcakes at the interstate exit twenty miles north. They told me corporate runs the festival marketing now “to present a consistent guest experience.” Their script was polite, their smiles weary.

8 · An Old-Timer in the Shade

I finally found resonance in a corner of the grounds where a single bale of straw served as seat for Emerson “Emory” Steele, eighty-four, retired from dairy long before the price crash. He nursed a cup of coffee, watching passersby. When I asked how long he’d attended, his eyes lit: “Since before they called it Festival, back when Bob still walked the barns.” Emory remembers pot-luck suppers on fold-out tables, fiddles after dark, and “neighbors just talkin’, catching up before winter shut us in.” He glanced at the vendor tents. “Now it’s handbags from Carolina and popcorn in a souvenir bucket. Not sayin’ that’s wrong. Just sayin’ it’s different.”

9 · Economics of Change

A festival of 30,000 guests costs money: shuttle buses from satellite lots, portable toilets, security, performance fees. Ticket price is five dollars, kids free. Booth rental climb every year,  vendors told me. Some proceed to other craft circuits—Dollywood Harvest, Ohio Renaissance, Gatlinburg. The festival’s overhead demands volume. Volume demands spectacle. Spectacle displaces intimacy. It’s a familiar trajectory: success crowds the seed that birthed it.

10 · The Sausage Sandwich That Saved the Day

Late afternoon I bought a sandwich anyway, more for story than hunger. Pork patty grilled, onions caramelized, bun steamed in sausage grease—aroma so nostalgic it punched straight through my cynicism. I carried it to a hillside where an oompah band blared “Roll Out the Barrel.” Children rolled too, tumbling down grass until their mothers shrieked with mock alarm. The golden hour slid over us, and the farm—vines along the split-rail, pond gleaming copper—looked like a painting you could almost trust.

It struck me then that maybe resilience sometimes masquerades as commerce. Maybe the women in the candle booth need those sales to patch a mortgage. Maybe the dog wrangler's labor pays tuition for a kid back home. Profit and community are not mutually exclusive; they’re uneasy bedfellows in every county of the republic.

11 · When the Generators Drone Off

By dusk the generators coughed silent. Vendors zipped canvas, carnival lights blinked out one by one. I lingered as the crowd shrunk to dozens instead of thousands. A janitor in a reflective vest swept corndog sticks into a push cart ambled by. I asked if he liked the festival.

“The checks clear,” he said. “My boy runs a craft booth—engraving Bible verses on shotgun shells. Folks buy ’em for Christmas tree ornaments.” He shook his head, half smile, half bewilderment. “Tween the sweepin’ and the crafts, we can make his college payment without loans. I’ll sweep all night ifin’ I have to.”

There it was—resilience again, dressed in neon signage and barkers’ shouts but breathing the same ragged breath I was to hear throughout my travels.

12 · Driving Out Under a Hunter’s Moon

Josie and I spent the night hunkered down in the free “primitive” camping sites, primitive meaning no amenities like electrical hookups or blackwater dump stations. Josie stuck out like a chipped domino tile among the sea of RVs and fifth-wheelers. 

The next morning Josie grumbled awake. We rolled onto the county road, the festival grounds shrinking behind us. In the rearview, the Ferris wheel silhouette looked strangely noble against the dawn. I still carried disappointment, but it sat next to understanding in the passenger seat, neither pushing the other off.

Here is what I know after one long Midwest day:

• Traditions morph; sometimes they sell tickets to survive.
  
  
• Nostalgia can blind a traveler to the quiet ways people still gift each other hope.
  
  
• Even a corporate festival sets a stage where a janitor sweeps his kid closer to freedom.
  
  

Bob Evans once said he liked to treat strangers like friends and friends like family. The festival bearing his name treats customers like guests, which is not the same thing, but it isn’t nothing. Somewhere in the merch maze, if you watch close, the old handshake culture bleeds through. A vendor rounds down a price for a veteran; a volunteer refills a stranger’s water bottle without charge; an elder farmer spends a half hour telling a boy from the suburbs how corn turns sunlight into sugar.

I drove west into the dawn, windows open, sausage grease now a memory. Today another town would test my expectations. Maybe I’d find a story that fit like the blue ribbon on a prize 4-H steer. Maybe I’d find only commerce again. Either way, the work is the same: roll in, greet the dust, listen for the wind that won’t lie down. Because underneath every sales pitch hums that resilient power line, and if you tune your ear just right you can hear it singing:

We’re still here. We manage. We mend.

Maybe the old days smelled purer because the scale was small enough to mask the math. Maybe every generation mistakes evolution for loss. I won’t pretend my disappointment didn’t matter, but I tuck it beside the sausage sandwich memory, let them argue like siblings in the back seat while Josie hums broken lullabies.

Festival, fair, marketplace, or memory, one truth remains: people gather because they cannot bear isolation. They will line up for rides slightly unsafe, queue for food served in paper boats, trade dollars for trinkets if it buys them a day of shared air beneath a harvest sky. Community may come merchandized, but it still beats, still breathes.

And that, too, is worth the ink.