It Doesn't Matter Much to Me

Well this weekend was THE event. The one weekend of the year that the whole town drops what it is doing, joins in the festivities, and celebrates. That's right folks, it was the 66th Annual West Virginia Strawberry Festival.

This was my first Strawberry fest so I was intrigued. Everyone was telling me how great the festival was kept asking "are you going to the Strawberry Fest?" The hype factor was definitely high. With expectations that high, I was just hoping it would deliver.

Events were going on the whole week, I decided to check things out on Saturday as there was the "Grand Feature Parade." Saturday morning was a warning as to what I was about to get myself into as I was running errands and a typical 5-7 drive to Wal*Mart took a good 20+ minutes. There were cars everywhere and along Main Street [note: you know you live in a small down when the main street is called Main Street] at 10:30 am people had their chairs staked out to watch the parades. I finished my chores and headed out for a 20-min walk to "downtown."

As with all small-town festivals, there was a carnival and food vendors. I have no interest in carnies and getting ripped off so I skipped that. As it was lunch hour I did get a doner kebab to eat. Now these are all over Germany (due to a large Turkish immigrant population) and the OFOMOL has all but forbade me to have one, so here was my chance. The guy at the booth commented "ehh, you've been to europe?" I guess I ordered with a German accent...and we made small talk about all the doner places there. So I have five one-dollar bills in my hand and he says "that'll be $7." What? I'm already holding the doner in my hand and now I have to get more money? And $7 for this thing? I guess that's why there were no prices listed, if we knew how much they were charging we wouldn't buy them!

So I ate my doner while checking out the "Classic Car Parade." Now I'm no grease monkey but to me it seemed like they had quite a liberal definition of "Classic." to me, "Classic Car" implies lots of cars from the 30s-60s in good condition. Well there were some of those...but there were also plenty of cars in not good condition, plenty of cars from recent history, and plenty of custom jobbed modern cars. I mean when you see a mid-90s Mitsubishi Eclipse, you begin to question the cars. There were also plenty of trucks that had 3-4' of ground clearance including one that said "size matters" on the back. Ho hum! There's a saying that guys that put a lot into their cars have to make up for other inadequcies...I'm just saying. There was a couple behind me, who, upon seeing one of said trucks said, "it's great that you [the drivers] spend $3 to pull your car out of your driveway." Oh snap! No she didn't?!

I walked around more before the Grand Feature Parade started. A few observations:
Plenty of Confederate Flag, Git R Done, and NASCAR paraphanalia abound
All the people sitting in chairs for the parades would probably benefit from the extra metabolism it takes to stand.

So I stake my place on the sidewalk to watch the parade and soon see my friend Jason and his lady friend. They ask me if I am ready for a 3-hour parade. I do a double take and I'm like "what? you're kidding!" But no, they are not. This parade is really 3 hours long. Boy I wish they served alcohol here. Since none of us are native to the state we precede to rip on all the people in the parade and the whole festival itself. At one point there is a cowboy group (really, they were from Texas) on horses. Shortly behind them was a wagon with a guy who's job it was to SCOOP UP THE SHIT FROM THE HORSES!!! I kid you not. Now I don't know how he got assigned that job, but he must've done something really bad to draw that straw.

During the parade the conversation of Strawberries inevitably came up. One would think that they would sell Strawberries at the Strawberry Festival, but no, the only Strawberries to be found were in Strawberry Shortcake being sold. That was it. I thought that maybe Strawberries are a popular thing to farm in these parts, but I guess not. They just needed something to celebrate in this town.

The other amazing thing was the number of people in town! I don't know where everyone came from (out of the hills) but the place was crowded with overweight people wearing confederate flags who came to waste money on carnival games & overpriced food while watching a 3-hour long parade of people scooping up shit.