It Feels Good to Buy Handmade

by Jerry Kermode
Throughout the early 70s at the end of the hippie movement, it was a time to reflect about the craziness of the 60s; the Vietnam era and the civil unrest that had come before. One of the things that has made America great is the people and things we’ve done with our hands and our brains; the entrepreneurs. And that’s what crafters are. And so my feeling is that the general population wanted to be around the people who made things by hand doing what they could do best. It was a good thing to be around us and everyone bought a funky little coffee mug and people hung out at the parks and played the guitars. It was a fun time. We did our first show in Laguna Beach in 1970 and I remember it rained so hard that we made the newspaper because we had a couple of friends with guitars and a violin and everyone huddled under our tent singing and playing music. I don’t remember making any money. Both the hippies and the rich people flocked to those shows. It was just a fun time to buy really high quality stuff made by the people standing in front of you. An acknowledgement of what America was, and still is today. And I think people are reaching back for that because those were the things that really had meaning and made people feel good.