[AT] Florida Flywheelers

[jtchall at nc.rr.com]

Good thoughts Farmer! The tractor club I helped found, folded after 16 or 17 
years, It was right after the death of the gentleman who owned the majority 
of the working exhibits. Somehow we had peaked around years 6-8 and then 
began to lose spectators and then exhibitors. I think a lot of energy at a 
show comes from the excitement of those hosting it. Once it merely becomes a 
yearly task, there will be no new members and the work load just becomes a 
burden instead of a labor of love to the members that don't just quit. We 
slowly farmed out everything, the food booth, parking, tractor pull, 
lawnmower pull, car show. Pretty soon we weren't doing much of anything 
ourselves other than being administrators.

One thing that killed our engine exhibitors was the tractor pull. Bottom 
line they did not like all the noise and dust. We tried not to start it 
until after 4PM, but they just didn't like all the noise those guys made 
getting set up.

I never could figure out why we couldn't get anyone to come on Sunday. It 
was embarrassing to charge admission some years. Once we started having a 
large lawnmower pull on Sundays (one year it lasted 7 hours), the only 
spectators we seemed to have were only interested in the pull.

My thinking is if you try to cover all the bases like we did and can't do so 
in a large capacity for each one every year, somebody is going to get ticked 
off and badmouth the show and you'll lose a bunch of exhibitors. One year we 
had over 100 cars, another we had over 30 Leader tractors (hosted their 
national get-together with tractors form as far away as Florida and Ohio). 
In hindsight, we should have focused only on being an antique ag show with a 
tractor pull and put all our extra efforts from adding other events into 
improving what we had that worked so well in the beginning.

John Hall


-----Original Message----- 
From: Indiana Robinson
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 8:16 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Florida Flywheelers

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 6:25 PM, David Rotigel <rotigel at me.com> wrote:

> I'll be leaving for Zolfo on the 11th. FLYWHEELERS just is NOT my kind of
> show! But there seem to be many who enjoy it.
>         Dave
>
>

Is there some reason that you can put your finger on Dave as to why it's
"not your kind of show"? or just a general feeling? I suppose that we all
have some shows we like the most and some a little less. I have been to
shows where I just didn't care if I went back but couldn't really say why.
There just seemed to be a bad feeling between many of the exhibitors.
Sadly one of my least favorite shows is the local show only 3 miles from
me. They have several great guys that have tried very hard for years to
make a good club and show out of it but it just gets worse every year. Back
when I was first in it they would have well over 300 tractors in a show.
Last summer I drove past the fairgrounds and I counted about 2 dozen
tractors. A friend of mine who shows engines all over the place is
currently trying to revive the show. Some of you may have  met him, Richard
Dingman. Usually takes a trailer full of stuff and sits with it to talk to
folks.
The club had two big problems for a show. The first is that most of the
members are pullers. Don't get me wrong, I don't pull but I like to watch.
The pulling problem is that the local pullers roll in for the pull and then
roll out. They will not take part in the show.
The bigger problem in the past was about a half dozen guys that for no
better way to say it were royal asses. Arrogant and blustery and really bad
about bullying many of the younger newer guys that wanted to be part of the
show. They got their jollies walking around in a group mostly belittling
what everybody had brought to the show and at times really insulting them.
Once in a meeting one of the young guys made a suggestion about the show
and they treated him so bad that I was embarrassed to be there. They didn't
like me much, I don't keep my mouth shut well.
:-)
Needless to say very soon we didn't have any new guys... then just almost
no guys. That was when I quit.
It's kind of sad that most of the counties around us have very nice shows,
some quite successful. Those shows exhibit a whole different attitude
toward the public. Some are out in the sticks and they all charge to get
in. The local show is free and at the edge of town but nobody will come.
It's kind of hard to charge to see a couple dozen tractors.
The grounds can make a big difference in some shows but it takes more than
that. I once took my little Farmall Cub to a tiny show about 60 miles south
of here that was held in a smallish parking lot in a state park in that
county. A tiny show in a small space but the friendliest bunch you could
want to be around. They were also very anxious to interact with the public
which is something I favor in a show.

I guess I am just fishing for thoughts on what helps make a desirable show
or an undesirable show maybe including some of those less obvious factors.
I have not been involved in the local show for some years now but I would
really like to see it become a real show again. Maybe I can do something to
help.




-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com
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