I recently attended our local food festival. There is no doubt this town loves to eat, we have very high obesity rates here. People try to blame it on the winter weather but I know that’s just a load of crap. Come on people, just say no to eating like hogs and leave the weather out of it. These festivals are springing up all over the country, apparently we are not really obese enough as a nation, we have to add some more food. The object of the festival is to stand out in the sun, drink beer and wine, rub elbows with lots of strangers and eat, eat, eat.
I’ve been to such events in the past, and I hadn’t planned on attending this year, until I saw the entertainment line up- 37 vineyards represented in the wine tent and The Marshall Tucker Band headlining the stage events.
I called a friend and suggested we slide on down to catch Marshall Tucker, and try our luck at finding a local wine we had not already discovered. She agreed that after thirty years it might be interesting to see what Marshall Tucker was up to these days, and she enthusiastically agreed that the local vineyards could benefit from our expert opinions on their products.
We got there, found parking (Thank You God!) and found the event three times larger than it had been the last year. Besides twice as many food booths, a whole new section had been added. Vendors. Tents of hats and clothes and sunglasses and jewelry. Apparently when you are over eating and guzzling beer in the hot sun, you want to look good. It was a food festival for heaven’s sake, do we always have to be multi tasking? Do we have to shop too? Can’t we just eat?
We made our way to the wine tent and dug in because of course, we have our priorities straight. The lines were long, but a little polite elbowing and pushing and we managed to circle a few times drinking 237 thimble size samples of wine. We were soon one sheet short of three sheets to the wind. We tried white wines and red wines, sweet wines and dry wines, and even wines made of strange things like honey and raspberries. We finally made a landing at one winery that had some really fine semi-sweet whites and a few sweet grapy reds. We shelled out the big bucks for a couple of glasses of our favorites and wandered over to the food alley.
The food alley was packed. I mean sardine like packed. I was shocked, it was already after eight and nobody in this town eats after six, so I figured we were a shoe in for a short wait in any line we liked. But no-the whole town was on a carbohydrate bender. I searched high and low for any food that I could get in the next five minutes, (the wine made me hungry!) and finally settled on Polish food, which I guess, has a terrible reputation, because there was no line! It suited me just fine, I love good kraut and they had some tasty potato and egg pierogies that were not only vegetarian, but one of the few foods in sight that was not deep fried or barbecued black.
Meanwhile my friend, determined to get something called popped shrimp, (or was it pooped shrimp?) was being crushed in the swell of humanity floundering around in front of the shrimp booth. Apparently those shrimp are a popular item because there was a near riot when one of the booth’s employees hung a sign saying “sorry, no more popped (or was it pooped?) shrimp”. The Outrage! My poor friend and her 534 good friends in line had to settle for something a little more tame, just plain shrimp.
While my friend was still in line, still waiting for a few crumbs of what ever they had left, I began to take a closer survey of our surroundings. The wine tent stood where it had for the last few years, the food alley looked the same, only longer. I realized the main stage was not in sight. What the heck! Then I noticed the normal every- year-in- the- same- place line of porta potties was missing as well. Something was just not right here. This called for some investigation. I looked at the guy standing to my right in the crowd, shrimp in one hand, beer in the other, quickly alternating left, right, left, right, left right to his mouth. Sauce dribbled down his chin. I asked what the hell they did with the stage. He nodded up the street and continued his wolfing and guzzling.
My friend finally made her way back through the crowd. She looked like she had been front and center stage at a Van Halen concert. Believe me, I know, I’ve been there. Her hair was a mess, her clothing rumpled, her sunglasses crooked, her face flushed from the lack of oxygen. She was hunched over her little boat of shrimp, just trying to get someplace with enough elbow room to get shrimp from boat to mouth. Luckily she had left her wine glass with me when she entered the fray, I stood on the sidelines and managed not to spill a drop in spite of the pushing and shoving going on around me.
While she consumed her catch, I watched the crowd. I immediately noticed the lack of lipstick. At first I thought it was a fluke, maybe everyone had eaten so much their lips were faded. Then I looked closer, no, no that wasn’t it. Some of these ladies had no lipstick on, but many of them had lipstick the color of their lips. I was standing there wondering if I stood out like a lighthouse on a foggy coast, me with my bright red lipstick. Even the hookers were not wearing colorful lipstick. They were, however, wearing some really bright shoes, short skirts and miniaturized shirts. I came to the conclusion that this lack of lip color must be some odd cultural phenomena that I was uniquely unaware of.
Fed and watered, my friend informed me it was time to take our rightful place at the stage so we wandered through the crowd in the general direction of the afore nodded to new stage location. I informed my friend that the porta potties were missing. This brought an unexpected yelp of dismay and a string of cussing. Apparently she was in need. We agreed they had to be there somewhere, and began to diligently search in every nook and cranny of the crowded street. We tried the side streets, we tried behind the trucks, we tried behind the stage- oh! We found the stage! We wandered to and fro in vain and finally agreed, the porta potties were missing. Now normally, this would not have been a dire emergency, however, after consuming about a gallon of wine each, nature was calling.
We figured an emergency like this required expert help so we finally found a group of police officers standing around, hand on belts, scanning the crowd looking for purse snatchers, staggering drunks and all sorts of seedy characters. I approached and got their attention by yelling “I need help” in a high, off key, whiny, legs crossed voice. They snapped to attention, hands grabbing nightsticks and guns and handcuffs. “The porta potties, I yelled, someone has stolen the porta potties!”
Honestly, I was relieved by their bewildered looks. I knew if there had been a porta potty heist, they would have been informed already. They looked at each other, bewilderment turning to grins. I was visibly shaken and they seemed to find that funny, as they all, in perfect synchronization, pointed down the one street, off to the side, we had not checked. Right there, not a block where we all stood, was a row of porta potties so long it seemed to disappear into the night.
For the first time that evening, lady luck was with us. There were no lines. We finished our business and headed back to the stage area, threading ourselves through the crowd as far as we could go. It appeared that the food booths must have closed because every one of the estimated thirty thousand in the crowd was now right in front of the stage. Mt friend, who is on the short side, had a brilliant idea and suggested we go stand behind the lighting platform. There was a wide swath of open pavement there because the platform stood at about the height of the normal adult human.
Which I am. Which she is not. She was just the right height to stand tall and look under the platform which gave her a full, un-obscured view of the stage. About that time the band came on and I thought, what the heck, if I remember correctly, I’m gonna be dancing anyway. And dance I did. Those Marshall Tucker boys, even at their advanced ages, still had what it takes to get the crowd moving. They played a few old favorites, then they got down to some really fine jammin’.
They were tight, tuned and on the spot fantastic. If you get a chance to go see them this summer, go.
If you are old enough to remember when they were famous you will remember the pied piper flute playing that winds its way through many of their tunes and has the ability to take your mind away. My friend and I both fondly remembered times long ago, LP’s spinning, kicking back, sparking the LC, ( as I’m told is the current vernacular) and wasting away the afternoon listening to those Gainesville guys.
At one point I noticed a woman dancing in the crowd, tie died T-shirt, gray hair, granny glasses and Birkenstocks. She had to be 70. She had that far away look in her eyes of someone who never quit sparking the LC. She probably listened to them before they were famous. I watched a small group of hip-hopping gang bangers come up behind her and start dancing around, making fun of her. But ya know, it wasn’t long before they were caught up by the pied piper and in stead of making fun, they were just dancing away down the same path as that old woman.
The pied piper isn’t picky though; anyone with an open ear can hear the path and follow it off. The kids had to be all of 15 to 17 years old, and I bet they had never even heard of The Marshall Tucker Band before. I bet they didn’t know the band was named after a high school gym teacher the band members all disliked, although they might have appreciated that. I’m pretty sure they would have appreciated all the sparkin’ the LC that has occurred everywhere the pied piper has played.
That was my favorite scene from the whole day. I stood and watched as really good music made a bridge between two worlds.
The band quit way too early, on account of the town having a curfew for loud music. I was appalled that the curfew would apply to an event like this. Apparently it’s OK to be a glutton, drink in the streets, and shop ‘till you drop, but none of this dancing and listening to a loud band past
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