It's Fall Festival Time!!

In Evansville, the first full week of October means one thing to the majority of the populace:  the Fall Festival.  Now, I've heard it said, and will pass it along here even though I don't know if it's true, that Evansville's Fall Festival is the 2^nd largest street fair/festival thingee after Mardi Gras.

 

I do not generally go to the Fall Festival and I have friends who are just shocked everytime they invite me and I tell them no thanks.  Post-op, now they assume it's because I can't eat what all they serve down there.  But no, I'm sure I could eat a lot of the food there.  I just do not like 1) large crowds; second, eating standing up; and C) paying highway robbery prices for bizarre food. 

 

The first time I went was as a child… probably 8 yrs old.  I know Holly and Haley were there so it was before they graduated high school.  There was food, there were rides, and 3 billion people!  I don't recall, but I assume I had a good time but I never really had a desire to go again.  Been there, done that, you know. 

 

Now, post-high school, my friend Karen insisted it was the most fabulous event on earth.  She would save an entire week of her vacation time from work to take the first week of October.  She would be down there every day.  Against my better judgment, she convinced me to go with her one afternoon – meaning it probably wasn't even all that crowded.  The Fall Festival that year was where I won the monkey in the picture with Dad that was a part of my October 5^th Blog entry.  The monkey is the one on the left. 

 

Then about seven years later, another friend, regular Rambling's reader Rebecca (Becky), convinced me to go with her one evening luring me in with talk of the world's best chicken and dumplings.  Wrong!  My mother's chicken and dumplings are the world's best.  Sigh..

 

And there have been a few (VERY few) times that I've been suckered into going with the gang for lunch over the years.  One time that stands out in my memory, Jennifer found a $20 bill on the ground as we walked from the car to the madness.  I was jealous, but she bought us each something with it, so I got over it.

 

Last year, mom and I had to go down there to the bank to meet about our mortgage application during Fall Festival week.  Afterwards, we purchased and split a celebratory cupcake from the booth directly outside the bank.

 

For the past several years… I think this year is #3, or maybe #4.. hmm… yeah, it's #4, or #5....  Anyway, I've "volunteered" to go to the Life Choice Center two blocks from Franklin Street and the madness, to help de-bone chicken for dumplings (again, not as good as my mothers, but the people who make them seem to think that the person making them was given the recipe by God Himself) and make piggy toes (cocktail wienies, wrapped in bacon, covered in brown sugar, and baked until they are caramelized and wha-ha-ha they are good).  I could eat my weight in piggy toes.  I mean, they're meat and sugar.  What's not to love!?  I guess I can't eat my weight in them this year.  Too bad.

 

Life Choice is a home for unwed mothers in our church's former church building.  Mom and I will be there at 8 am on Saturday.  We'll get a primo parking spot which, a few short hours later, people would be willing to PAY for, and we'll go wrap those wienies!  At noon, we'll reward the person who just happens to be weaving down 12^th Avenue at that moment with the parking spot and we'll go home.

 

Meanwhile, where is Ashley with the deep-fried Thin Mints she was going to get me!?