A Brief Word About Art on Chocolate 2017

Never give up hope.

The week before Art on Chocolate 2017 in downtown Hershey, we were looking at 100% chance of rain and unseasonably cool temperatures.

Weather predictions in the midstate are notoriously unreliable, but day after day, as we pulled together the equipment and worked on the books, the numbers didn’t change. We braced for the worst.

And got it.

The rest of the day was like that. The rain moved between mist and steady. There was no lightning, so the event wasn’t called off. Many retailers called in sick, so there were gaps in the rows of tents.

We settled in with our Kindle and notebooks for a long day.

Except it didn’t happen.

We had our best Art on Chocolate ever! We sold about a dozen books and gave away Teresa’s cloth grocery bags with each purchase. We met customers who bought some of our books previously and came back for more. We met new customers. We met people and talked to them just to talk to them.

We had fun.

Afterwards, we concluded that the people who came out in the rain and cool weather were determined to have a good time. And they came out to buy.

We had a great time. Sure, the rest of the week I was down with a low-grade fever and chills. Standing in the wet in sneakers and light jacket was not one of my better ideas.

But we had a great time, and look forward to next year.