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 was laid out in rectangles, outlined by whitewashed rail fences. As the legend has it, 50 years ago a farm boy named Robert Evans lured truck drivers here with the promise of sage-heavy sausage and a bottomless coffee cup. 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. It seemed to me that the festival would be ready-made for the type of persons I was seeking for the Hope & Generosity Tour. I pictured a Norman Rockwell country fair, all gleaming 4-H kids showing their livestock, pie-eating contests judged by church ladies, and fiddlers on flatbed Fords performing for passersby. Instead, as I stepped from Josie's cab I was met with pop music streaming from a PA system and the sight of handheld electronic card readers swiping credit cards approving someone's purchase of kettle corn.
I pictured a Norman Rockwell country fair, all gleaming 4-H kids showing their livestock, pie-eating contests judged by church ladies, and fiddlers on flatbed Fords performing for passersby.
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. But I was missing the old county fair alchemy of a church youth group flipping burgers to fund mission trips, or the Lion Club ham-n-beans dinners, served up from a steam table.
A pop-up carnival featured third-hand rides—Tilt-A-Whirl, Berry-Go-Round—that creaked a little too often for my taste. 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
My mind wandered to an article I'd read once on the Black Walnut Festival in Spencer, West Virginia. 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.
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 just guilty of nostalgia.
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 · Ready Go Dog Show
A festival 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.
6 · 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.
7 · 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.”
8· 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.
9 · The Sausage Sandwich That Saved the Day
In the late afternoon I finally caved and bought a sausage sandwich. The grilled pork patty with onions, bun steamed in sausage grease, was devine. I felt my cynicism waffle a bit. I sat on a small, slopping hillside and watched children roll down the lush grass as wide-eyed parents kept a close watch.
Sitting there, it struck me that perhaps resilience might sometimes masquerade 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.
10 · 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.
11 · 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. Driving off I took a mental inventory of what I'd learned:
- 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. If you watched close, the old handshake culture made itself known. A vendor shaving a few percent off the price for a veteran; volunteers refilling water bottles; an elder farmer giving an impromptu lesson on how corn turns sunlight into sugar to a handful of children.
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 process remains: roll in, greet the people, listen to stories.
Community may come merchandized, but it still beats, still breathes.
And that, too, is worth the ink.