Global connection
Event attracts the curious from America and beyond
By Larry Meyer
Argus Observer
Friday, July 10, 2009 11:22 AM PDT
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| Monique and Marc Antoine (left), France, visit with Tom Cook (center), Thunderegg Days chairman, and Malheur County Judge Dan Joyce at the Thunderegg Days Festival in Nyssa Thursday. The couple are touring the Northwest. They take a month-long tour of the United States every year. |
NYSSA — People come from near — just across the river from Nyssa — and far — from France — to Nyssa’s Thunderegg Days festival.
According to Thunderegg Days vendors, there is a common theme with most visitors: They like the show, and they like the people of Nyssa.
Nyssa is once again playing host to one of the more visible festival success stories in recent memory today and Saturday at the Nyssa School District grounds.
The festival — which showcases rocks and crafts — attracted about 40 vendors this year.
That number is significant in more ways than one. More than anything, the number of vendors is living proof this festival — once on the verge of disappearing — is not only back from the brink but going strong.
“Twelve years, I’m thinking. It’s been a longtime, since the early 1990s,” said Glen Schiller, a vendor from Emmett, about his time at the festival.
Schiller said his motives for attending the festival are simple.
“I go to unload rock,” he said. “I’m here to make money.”
This year Schiller said he is not sure how well he will do because of the economy.
“I do fairly well here (in the past),” he said. “It may not be a good year. Times are not good.”
Schiller said there are not as many rockhounds, and he has diversified his inventory as the show has evolved. Included in his display are a number of plants that have sold very well and he has repeat customers for them. By late morning Thursday, he had sold 11 plants.
“I’ve sold no rocks,” he said.
Two longtime vendors, Gerald and Joy Scarrow, Jerome, said the festival is in their blood.
Both have traveled to Nyssa for the festival for 33 years.
“It’s like a family reunion,” Joy Scarrow said. “We enjoy meeting friends.
Their son was about 18 months and when they started coming to Thunderegg Days, Joy Scarrow said. “He came every year for a long time.”
She said she remembers the days when rock clubs would come together in groups and fill Nyssa’s South Park with their motor homes and other RVs.
There were club members from British Columbia and Kansas, she recalled.
“They came many, many years,” she said.
Comparing this year’s event to those earlier shows, Scarrow said,
“This is the nearest like it was when we started.”
The Scarrows’ friends, Joe and Rita Arellano, Jerome, have been coming to Thunderegg Days for more than 20 years. Rita Arellano also complimented the Nyssa community regarding how they have been treated and fondly remembers Emil Wohlcke, who managed Thunderegg Days for many years.
“He would bring us a sack of onions,” Arellano said, about when they would meet in Quartzite, Ariz.
Wohlcke would give a sack to every vendor who had been at Thunderegg Days and always had fliers on the next Thunderegg Days for them to hand out.
Also at Thunderegg Days, Thursday was Chuck Murphy, Fruitland, who used to come to the event in the 1970s, and had stopped, but restarted four years ago.
“I like to do it,” Murphy said.
Out-of-the-area guests at the show were Monique and Marc Antoine, who live just outside of Paris, and are on their annual visit to the United States, this time touring through the Northwest.
They were in Ontario to meet a friend from Idaho and were told about Thunderegg Days and drove over.
