At St. Augustine Catholic Church in Waynesville Tuesday morning church volunteers make some of the 12,000 cabbage rolls slated for this weekend's Waynesville Sauerkraut Festival. (Glenn Hartong/The Enquirer)

WAYNESVILLE - Al "Cap" Stubbs was sitting around with some fellow merchants on a summer afternoon, mulling ideas on how to bring people and money into this northern Warren County village.

They talked about a sidewalk sale to lure people to shop the antique, craft and knick-knack stores. Some suggested doing it the same day as the fire department's big fish fry.

Stubbs' one-word suggestion that day in 1970 made everyone stop:

"Sauerkraut."

"No one knows why it slipped off his tongue at that moment," says his widow, Opal, who at 97 years old still walks to work at the family's Little Red Shed antique store. "We only had it once or twice a year, but we never made a to-do about it."

But Cap Stubbs' epiphany turned out to be just what Waynesville needed.

Fun facts

Hours: 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday Cost: Free, though parking, food and souvenirs will cost you. Food and shopping: There are 58 specialty food tents and more than 500 craft booths. Parking: Waynesville is easily accessible from Interstates 71 and 75 by Ohio 73 and Ohio 42, though parking is not allowed on either state roadway. Police and signs will help direct people to park. Shuttle bus service is available from the high school parking lot. Entertainment: The central stage is at North and Main streets. Information: www.waynesvilleohio.com or www.sauerkrautfestival.com

Thirty-five years later, the annual Ohio Sauerkraut Festival, celebrating a food that's not even a local crop, attracts nearly 300,000 people over two days in October. Organizers say it's not unusual for the 29 local non-profits that run the food booths to each rake in $10,000 to $20,000 selling everything sauerkraut, like sauerkraut fudge.

Also: sauerkraut pie, sauerkraut pizza, sauerkraut brownies, sauerkraut on-a-stick, all kinds of sandwiches with sauerkraut ... and cabbage rolls.

Tonight, vendors' 10-by-10 food tents go up like clockwork. And come Monday morning, Main Street will reopen so the 70 plus antique stores can resume regular business.

"By midnight Sunday, you won't even know it happened," Joseph Coons, executive director of the Waynesville Area Chamber of Commerce, says, adding: "Minus the smell."

It takes a village

Things to know about the Ohio Sauerkraut Festival:

• The cabbage is trucked in - by the ton. • Consensus choice for worst recipe - sauerkraut ice cream. • You can't buy beer with your sauerkraut-covered brat, because Waynesville's a dry community. • While it got its name in Germany, sauerkraut comes from laborers on the Great Wall in China who pickled cabbage in wine (so says sauerkraut.com). • Waynesville's isn't the only one. Providence City, Utah, held its annual sauerkraut festival last month. And Phelps, N.Y., the former home of Silver Floss Sauerkraut factory, calls itself the "sauerkraut capital of the world" for its August festival.

But planning and preparation for the weekend goes on virtually year-around, and it seems almost all the 2,725 villagers get involved.

One big task is getting the cabbage. The chamber of commerce had more than six tons - or 12,300 pounds - of Snow Floss Kraut-brand sauerkraut shipped in from Fremont, Ohio, Sept. 28, for about $5,000 for this year's festival.

Members of St. Augustine Church work for more than a week to turn 4,000 pounds of the pickled cabbage to make cabbage rolls.

The ladies of the Order of the Eastern Star get together for "chop chop night" - it was Wednesday this year - to cut the loads of onions, sausage and peppers that will be added to the sauerkraut pizzas.

They dry the sauerkraut by bundling it in pillowcases and spinning it in a washing machine.

They'll team up this weekend with members of the Masonic Lodge to staff an assembly line that will produce cooked and uncooked pizza, by the slice and by the pie.

"It doesn't sound good, but boy, it's a good seller," retired teacher Pat Mason says. "We have people just standing in line. I'm not sure what time we open, because we have people standing there at seven in the morning to have breakfast pizza."

Meanwhile, Der Dutchman, an Amish restaurant, bakes 400 sauerkraut pies, 3,500 oatmeal-sauerkraut cookies, over 750 sauerkraut brownies, and nearly 200 loaves of rye, wheat and white bread for the chamber to sell.

At Lytle Christian Fellowship, members pulled more than 1,000 pounds of pork, which will be added to 22 five-gallon drums of sauerkraut and lots of mashed potatoes to make a "sauerkraut sundae" of sorts. The church usually makes $12,000 over a festival weekend, money that allows the congregation to meet its annual budget, says lay elder Chris Colvin.

The entire 20-person village police force, only three of them full-time officers, is on duty through the weekend.

Nearly all the stores are open. And other villagers pitch in to help with parking.

"It's a lot of work, no doubt," says Colvin, a married father of three. "But when it's all said and done, it's well worth it."

More than just kraut

The heart of the event is actually a craft show. The bulk of the 500-plus booths are vendors who sell homemade items like wooden toys and jewelry made from broken china. And antiques buffs have plenty to check out in the village that also claims the title "Antiques Capital of the Midwest."

Most vendors stake out their spot along Main Street for next year (marked by spray paint on the curb) as soon as this weekend's festival is over. The sellers come from 35 states because the crowd is so large, and some will sell out by Sunday afternoon, Coons said.

"By 10 a.m., if you stand at either end (of Main Street), you will see it is packed," Waynesville resident Joette Hightower says. "You just wonder, how do I get from point A to point B?"

A handful of jurors walk through all weekend. If they find vendors selling "flea market" items or products they didn't make themselves, they'll be kicked out, Coons says.

There's also a best cabbage contest that will be awarded Saturday afternoon. The festival used to have a "sauerkraut queen" and princess, but dumped the idea in the late 1990s in favor of scholarships for local high school students.

Culinary innovations with sauerkraut have evolved over the years. Locals say one of the worst was the sauerkraut ice cream that was served about 15 years ago.

"It was terrible," Coons recalls. "It was absolutely terrible. Everyone tasted it and put it in the trash."

At the first festival here - Oct. 3, 1970 - 528 pounds of sauerkraut were dished out to 1,500 guests. This weekend's attendance is expected to top 300,000.

But there are still some people who turn their nose up, says Shirley Howe, owner of The Nesting Place, a Main Street antique store.

"My friends always tease me," Howe said. "It's fabulous, I tell them. ... The food, you just can't beat it."

E-mail esolvig@enquirer.com