Friday, September 09, 2005
Labor Day Weekend
Over Labor Day weekend, my husband and I took a break from all the bad news by escaping into Midwestern Americana.
Driving out of South Bend, there’s lots to see on the outskirts. Early birds are picking through treasures and trash at yard sales. “Escape from the corn” challenges a signpost for a corn maze, pointing west. Bikers are mustering for their annual sponsored ride for Jerry’s Kids and the route is already lined with camps of folding chairs and coolers. At one township crossroads, firefighters hold out gumboots to collect donations from cars stopped at the lights.
Further out, the cornfields and soybean fields are punctuated with gas stations and churches to top up your physical and metaphysical fuel tanks. One church offers high octane inspiration with a billboard that reads: “God didn’t drop out of school, he was suspended.” For several miles, I puzzle over this odd gallows humour. Is there some website where small town pastors log on to Sermons"R"Us.com, searching for the perfect billboard pun to hook those drive-by congregants? I recall my current favourite: a poster with a picture of the Bible and the caption: “Will you come back to Church if we promise not to throw the Book at you?”
When we get to the Marshall County Blueberry Festival in Plymouth, we find carnival rides and softball games and a midway crammed with every kind of kiosk and food booth. The air is full of Boomer rock favourites and the smell of grilling brats. Mustang Sally shimmies with scorching caramel corn, adding to the sensory overload.
There’s a chainsaw artist clad in protective goggles, leather chaps and a muscle shirt to display his tattoos. His art is to make things that look like what they’re supposed to be: an eagle on a post, a muscular mermaid who could fillet any landlubber, and a black bear rampant holding a “welcome” sign. And if you’ve ever worked a chainsaw, trimmed a hedge, you can understand this guy’s skill as he tickles out the nostrils of a bear with his chainsaw from a blank log.
Booths are selling all kinds of knick-knacks and gismos, from instant cappuccino cheesecake powder to shingles painted with one-liners: “It’s Already 5pm Somewhere” and “Bless this Mess.” We pick out a green and yellow fridge magnet that says “Nothing Runs Like a Deere,” and “Made in China” on the other side.
Elbowing through a boutique crammed with floral dresses for the yard goose in your life, I discover some more risqué outfits. There’s a padded bikini and cats-eye sunglasses to turn your ugly gosling into a poolside swan. Why not dress your goose as a Thanksgiving turkey or a grey-clad pilgrim? Some outfits hint that sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. For the cross-dressing Notre Dame goose, there’s an emerald green leprechaun outfit complete with fighting red Irish beard to tuck beneath her fiberglass bill.
Mid-afternoon, we sample the midway’s food offerings. Dipping Dots, “The Ice-Cream of the Future,” turn out to be tiny pellets of ice-cream that look like aquarium gravel. Though tempted by the deep-fried Oreos, we settle for a deep-fried Milky Way candy bar and live to regret that decision.
But where, oh where, are the blueberries? We hit the Blueberry Festival Blueberry jackpot at stalls run by local groups. Right by the House of the Lord hamburgers we find the Seventh Day Adventist blueberry donuts and the Culver Young Farmers electric blue blueberry ice-cream. We follow this up with a wedge of Ladies of the Moose blueberry pie. All of these local booths are donating 10% of their profits to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Our festival appetites sated, we round out the day with a visit to a corn maze. West along Kern Road stands the Old Farm “Escape from the Corn Adventure”. The cornstalk walls of the maze are a bit sparse from the low rainfall, but within a couple of minutes, I’m happily lost. After the hubbub of the fair, it’s peaceful to be out in the rustling corn. Under a darkening sky, we spiral our way out of the maze, then drive slowly home.