Live at the Troy Strawberry Festival

Festival dois, and oh the drama that occurred at the thirty-first annual Troy Strawberry Festival. Diaper derbies (our ringer failed in his mission, fucking baby), Jimmy Buffet cover bands, hastily assembled arts and crafts, strawberry ribs, salsa, donuts, fried or un-fried, all consumed in under an hour. Luckily the three injured by a lightning bolt were eventually released from the hospital and the Eva Trostle controversy didn't rain on the parade (which I missed btw). More than anything, the fest is a chance to rekindle memories of my youth. I haven't been to one in years, but it's comforting to know that not much has changed, civic pride city-wide. The local color that shaped me is still intact, and the older I get, the more small-town America becomes appealing. Even the town characters that will one day appear in my memoirs are still trolling around; Efrim (the bike-riding, tin-can, collector), Crazy Sherry (the downtown obscenity screaming misanthrope), and of course Dottie (she looked exactly the same 20 years ago when I delivered her paper). Her and the Country Four show no signs of stopping their boot-scooting life of entertaining the village with down-home, fiddle-flavored, versions of "Okie from Muskogee," no matter how lyrics like "We don't get our trips on LSD" make the masses chuckle.