10/11/2026
Hi folks! My name is Carl. Some of you may have run into me today in the parking lot. Some of you, quite literally, tried to run into me in the parking lot today. Don’t worry, no hard feelings. I just wanted to take a few minutes to speak with you all honestly.
We all know there were some issues out there today. We can’t hide from that. If you need a person to yell at, go ahead and take a few minutes here. Trust me, we are ALL listening and paying attention. We also are not going to try and spin anything and only acknowledge the positives said. If some of us do today, it is because more than one person left the show in tears because they felt so bad for the vendors and public. So, those saying “You should be ashamed,” a person who has poured her heart and soul into this show for the past 30+ years has gone to bed in tears because she feels so bad about this show today.
But, I also find it awfully heartbreaking that we, the MHRL, can provide 40 years of a show that many consider the best craft show there is, and one bad day is enough to cause you to say “NEVER AGAIN!” Is that how you all treat everybody in your life? One mistake and you are done? After 40 years? If so, I’m not going to try and argue with you.
Today was crazy. Today was bad. Today was a whole bunch of things happening at once. From what we can tell at this early point, today stood a chance of breaking entire weekend records. That was a BIG part of what happened. The crowd was about to become the biggest we have ever seen.
We chose to shut it down for a bit, because as some of you have commented, we started seeing some safety concerns. We might not have been at true capacity, but we felt we had hit a safety concern.
If you were back in the parking lot with me, you also know people were getting angry out there. I did my best to try and make the situation a little better. We all did. We realized at one point that a priority had to be to get the people out of there.
I’ve been involved with the MHRL in one capacity or another for 30 years. If you were at Boone, you possibly saw me. You also saw my wife. You also possibly saw my kids as they were raised helping out there. We are all the same people who were out at Boone County for all those years, with one member having been there since the beginning.
If you loved the Boone shows, please have faith in us being able to create something special still. We knew we were going to have bumps. While the traffic was a major issue, we believe the other issues were nowhere near this and easily fixed. We spent an hour after today looking at the traffic.
Speaking for myself, I just ask you to NOT turn on a group of people who do this for a love of their community and a deep desire to help a needed issue of mental health. These are extremely good and caring people. They are crushed that today went as it did.
If you are still reading, thank you for reading. I’m not going to get into an argument with any replies. I can say no more than I did really. We really did do our best today, but there were just a whole lot of little (and one big) things.
Have an amazing rest of your weekend. It is supposed to be wonderful out there.
(My son Zach took the picture. He’ll get mad if I don’t give photo credit)
