Celebrating Corn and the County Fair

Yee Ha!Today is the annual Corn Festival here in Swantucky. There will be a parade featuring corn. Then there will be games and booths and food featuring corn. There will be beer which has little to do with corn but in Swantucky, there is always beer. According to the weather man there will be rain which will make the corn grow but would suck if there wasn't beer. We take our corn seriously here people so come on over and grab a beer.

Our county Fair is in a week and a half and it is a huge deal. Its one of the biggest in Ohio and if you want to haul your camper out there to camp, you have to call on April 1st to reserve a site and if you are fortunate enough to get one, you NEVER give it up. We dont camp often so in our woods is a 1972 camper that sleeps six. We haul that baby out once a year and clean it up and take it to our site and set it up. One year we took a large refrigerator and we had a storm that actually blew the fridge over and tore the screened room we keep there. We spend each night going from campsite to campsite visiting with whomever is making a hobo dinner that night. A hobo dinner consists of sausage, potatoes, cabbage and you guessed it, corn. This has been our Fair routine every year now for 16 years and we are proud to say that our little camper is the ugliest one on the entire campgrounds. Dont knock it, its a Swantucky thing. We used to haul several horses up there back when we showed horses and were 4H advisors but now with our busy lives, we are lucky if we get to actually sleep out there one night. It's still nice to go out in the evenings and drink margueritas and watch the horse shows. As I said, no matter what, NEVER give up your campsite. NEVER!

One year, I had pneumonia and ended up in the emergency room at 4 am and the hospital wanted to admit me but alas we checked me out and went back to the fairgrounds because we had kids showing their horses in a couple hours. We showed up only to be yelled at by the kids parents because we were 20 minutes late. Bear had open heart surgery but his priority was Jen and I going out and setting up our campsite so we wouldn't lose it and go back on the waiting list. We did it for him and after we did, Jen ended up in the hospital and I had to take it all down by myself. It always rains, most often storms, always turns cold after days of seering heat with no shade, people are always stressed and nasty by the third or fourth day and bitchy, but there is the food and the rides and the corn and most of all the tradition that makes us return year after year to the same campsite and take it all in.

So here in Swatucky, we take our Fair seriously. We take our corn seriously and we take our beer and margueritas seriously and if you live here, the one thing you honor is tradition. Time to pull the little camper that sleeps six uncomfortably out of the woods and clean her up. Oh yeah, did I mention that the license plate on it is from 1982? It isn't ours either. I think the person it was originally registered to is dead now. Ahhhh, life in Swantucky! As usual, we will be enjoying the scenic route of the back roads hauling out to Fair. Rednecks who celebrate corn do NOT mess with tradition! You, fellow Swantuckians are the view from the back of my horse today. Rock on!!!

Blessings
Tena