Archive for October 4th, 2009
Subtitled: My gosh, do you people EVER stay at home?
Our destination was the 36th Annual Fall Festival of Folklife. We were up and on our way early in order to actually find parking somewhat close and to be in and out (theoretically) before naptime. Neither of those things actually happened, by the way.
This festival is kind of a big deal around here. There are heritage areas, special exhibitions of (what else?) folk life, juried crafts, marketplace crafts, a number of different musical acts (4 stages), several interactive children’s play areas, and a ginormous section of fat laden and very bad for you carnival type foods. They also had a petting zoo (With a bull. Who on earth would let their kids pet a 2000 pound BULL?) and a whole section of rehabbed old (really old – like Model T) cars.
Did I mention the food?
We wandered for ages looking at all of the handmade crap crafts and, amazingly, bought nothing. Not that I wasn’t enticed by the seemingly never-ending rows of homemade candles, soap, and jewelry, not to mention the wooden tater bins and charmingly folksy hand-painted signs, but I somehow managed to resist the temptation of the many hand tied fleece blankets and your name spelled out by bible verses printed right there while you wait on a portable inkjet printer for ONLY $24.95.
To be fair, there were some extremely talented crafters there – especially the wood workers – however the stuff I liked was priced waaaayyyyy out of my price range.
But oh, the food. The willpower to resist that? It was nonexistent.
Let’s see:
2 humongous ears of roasted corn dipped in butter
1 dinner plate sized serving of hand cut fries
1 12″ Philly cheese steak
1 gigantic Italian sausage with onions and peppers
1 hot dog
And I think there was more but I kind of zoned out after the corn and the best Italian sausage I’ve ever had in my whole life.
We ran into some friends and chatted for a bit (it always makes me happy when I run into people I know that I don’t work with – not that I don’t like my co-workers but I do see them every day). Since we live in a fairly large urban area that doesn’t happen terribly often so it’s neat when it does.
We tasted some barbecue sauce and nearly died when I bit into the hot sample. I’m very tolerant to spicy foods so J was both shocked and doubled over laughing at me as I frantically scrambled for Ava’s juice and a few of her cheerios (I loathe Cheerios!)…anything to cool the fiery burning in my throat.
And we listened to some music. Music that reminded me of my childhood – an old school Southern Gospel quartet singing true 4-part harmony just like I grew up listening to. J, being somewhat Catholic, had never really been exposed to music like this and, despite his antipathy toward organized religion, he really enjoyed it, too. It should go almost without saying that Ava loved it.
She kicked back and listened intently, singing and clapping along with their entire performance.
I even bought their CD as part of my Mom’s birthday gift. They were so excited to sell me one, too. I was the first person to buy one that day – almost made me want to buy another just because they were so thrilled (and because I felt bad being the only person who’d purchased one).
After they were finished Ava headed right for the closest play area and we spent the next 40 minutes watching her shovel hay and dirt into an official John Deere pint sized wheelbarrow. Seriously, who knew it would be this captivating?
Note: Video is in quicktime format. You’ll need this to view if you don’t already have it installed.
Please overlook the music in the background. They were playing a CD (loud) while waiting for the next act to come on stage.
Please also overlook the poor-ish video quality. The purse camera (with memory card intact this time) was put to use as a video camera.