Oh, those Guccis! When the household was fairly new they were the inspiration for creating “Quiet Camping” areas because of several incidents and one in particular really stands out.

I’m not sure what year it was, now, but my kids were quite small. ‘87? Maybe ‘88? …but at a summer event (July Coronation, maybe?) I was registered as a merchant and on the end of Merchant’s row, right next to their encampment. I believe it was the first time they set up their big pavilion, which was really lovely and held them all…. except for the pyramid of beer cans out behind, which they were famous (infamous?) for, that grew all weekend until they started packing up and that pyramid got impressive.

Yes, they were noisy… all night….only stopping around dawn. Most of my kids slept right through it (4 of ‘em at the time, noise was pretty common), but one of them kept me wide awake until that last Gucci dog was hung….

I was a wreck all day. I think I’d had maybe 3 hours of sleep and I was not only running a merchant booth (most times opening for business around 8 or 9am!) but chasing small children, since we didn’t have our eventual booth set-up that had “containment devices” for our herd.

During the evening a bunch of merchants got together over our very late supper, complaining about the noise. I would love to claim that I’m the one that talked to Fiann, a bag-piper, but I didn’t. Someone did, however, because at 7am on Sunday, about an hour after the Guccis finally quit, he showed up in full regalia outside their pavilion.

I was already up and watched with a big grin as he launched into the Star Wars Imperial March!!!! The Gucci pavilion rose up into the air and then settled back down with the walls poofing out, and in accompaniment to the groans and retching from within, the beer can pyramid quietly collapsed. Cheers rang out from the whole merchant area!

Page created and published 6/7/25 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 6/7/25