Live at the Piqua Heritage Festival

Hmmm...Blame it on my upbringing that I'm especially suspect...nah...prejudice against people from Piqua, OH. Of course it's full of dirtier, less-educated, proletariats than its more bourgeois neighbor to the south, Troy. We did after all invent the industrial mixer, the bar code, and the strawberry.

But during Labor Day, Piqua slays my hometown with its history. The Piqua Heritage Festival re-creates those bygones that Troy never knew existed. Being a former Indian conquest, a village conquered by the French, and (still) a vital point of dock along the popular Miami-Erie Canal, Piqua breeds history buffs; pure Caucasians that dress like natives and mountain-men (no mountains in Ohio?), full-on pre-colonial, overnight camps (that prolly rage on homeade moonshine after dusk), and farmers that pride themselves on organics (my father grinned ear to ear with his ear of field corn).

This is the end of my festival season (with perhaps the late arrival of a demolition derby, fingers crossed), but its always the most humbling. My mother remarked this hobby, of re-enacting the life of a plumbing-less nation, is just as much a hobby as golf (for the rich and famous). I tend to agree, though hopefully my future here is behind the lens -- little chuckles towards the guys in buttless chaps, smoking cracklings, churning butter, and telling kids 'bout the good ol' days, will be suitable fantasies with which I'm better off avoiding and (through mindless observation) generalizing for my own amusement.