Dear Fair Family,

Being disabled at the fair presents certain challanges. An incomplete spinal cord injury prevents me from walking more than just around my booth . Several years ago, after crutches a couple years , I started renting a motorized cart , but find it at the fair hard to get my batteries out to either end of the fair to be charged.

Sunday of this fair 2006 I took my charger and batteries to the shady grove and asked the tech if I could plug in my charger . I had already seen that all the outlets at the energy park were cram packed with cell phones and heard the same about the warehouse. The tech asked me how long my cord was and plugged it in for me. While setting up my charger , another person from shady grove crew came over and asked what I was doing and I then told him and asked again whether it was ok . He told me the System batteries were topped off and he didn't see a problem with it. After going back to check my batteries at shady grove a couple times , my batteries disappeared.

Later, the person from shady grove that told me the system batteries were topped off so no prob shows up at my booth with the information that my charger took down the shady grove system. I felt awful . And told the guy so. He proceded to give me a severe scolding and told me his boss was real mad .and that I had to come get the batteries from energy park and no one knew where the charger was.

I told him there was no way I could walk down to energy park and that I would have to send someone to get them. He then said he would try to round them up.

Half an hour , later he shows back up with his boss (Bob O Shultz) . Bob O proceeded to bitch me out and yell profanitys at me and my family for about 15 minutes. He showed me where he had written profanities on the sides of both batteries . And threw the charger about 10 feet against our booth..The batteries and charger were both rented and needed to be returned with the cart.

I am totally sorry if my negligence blew the system and understand why the guy was mad ...but it was an honest mistake that I surely won't make again....PLEASE mark these outlets at shady grove so that no one else has to go through this .

We later received a deligation from energy park that was very sorry for what happened but I felt they were there trying to diffuse any repercussions or to convince me not to file any kind of grievence.

We love the work that energy park does for the fair. and applaud their efforts . And thank them so much. But what happened was just not right...In 29 years that I have been involved in the Oregon Country Fair , I have never felt like I did after that treatment I received..

It seems as if there is a need for more charging locations at the fair . the line up of

cellphones at all stations shows the need. We are an alter access abled fair and I'm sure I am not the only one that has experienced this . Can we look into ways to deal with this problem?

And again my apologies to the folks at Energy park.

Greg Shewczyk

Drift Creek Farm - Booth 662

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