In Middleton, sidewalks have been pre-programmed to roll themselves up at 6 p.m, so I was determined to catch the Fur, Feather and Fin Festival at its height. So, at two o'clock on Saturday afternoon (it's a weekend festival), we set out, excitement only slightly lower than when I watched for dark clouds all the way to the Mid-South fair each September of my youth.

The festival takes place at the Community Center, a concrete block one-room-and-kitchen building next to the baseball field, which is next to the town cemetary. For years, my mother's family held big July reunions, using various facilities in other towns until this center opened. I'm not sure how many years we met there until my generation and the next began to shows signs of entropy or apathy or something. Now a handful of people meet at my mother's house. But I remember times of loading the car with food, of dancing around other women in the tiny kitchen, the first one there getting down to the important thing: making the coffee. At that time, my mother's siblings and their wives couldn't make it through the day without a cup of strong Folger's in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

I remember one big frenzy of barbecue and side dishes and dessert and my uncle Bill's repeating, "Now don't forget those watermelons I've got on ice back there." Then came the inevitable part of any reunion of this family, everyone seated on each side of the long table, finding little to say to each other. The older ones found it natural; they'd grown up with this silent affection, the affirmation of each other's presence. With my cousins, though, there was seemingly no common ground, though we'd been close as matches in a folder during childhood.
Who is this stolid man, sadness like Botox across his face, I'd think of the cousin whose bed I lay across on countless days as he learned to play the Rolling Stones on his guitar? No doubt, he thought some similarly unknowing thing about me.

Outside the Center, there are some large "grounds," kept cleared periodically by a bush-hawg, as they say. Here it was that the festival should appear, I thought. And we could see as we approached a few kiddie rides beyond the ball-park fence. No problem parking, except that it was strange to find only one other car in the lot. Two minutes later, we walked into the midst of the festival, July-dust stirring around our feet. On our left, the kiddie rides sat like silent enigma, like sphinxes in the desert for a future generation to decipher. Not even anyone around to operate the rides had any kids been around to want them.

On the right, two small tents jammed up side by side, tables displaying secondhand bric-a-brac that would turn up in the "free" box of any garage sale in Fayette County. Turn in a circle, nothing, solid quiet, could be in the middle of a distant pasture, surrounded by woods. Finally, I discovered tracks in the grass where something had been parked at one time. It was enough to make me believe in the Rapture except that the teenagers who took our entrance fee as we parked surely were not evil enough to be left behind.

No food available anywhere? That's positively unChristian. I threw up my hands. Trevor has learned long ago not to be surprised about anything he finds in West Tennessee. Still, I was determined to be festive. I remembered the art show in the Community Center. Sure enough, there were several cars parked over that way. We walked through the dust, crossed a bridge, and approached the door where a couple of Women's Club members waited to collect another five dollars.
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Just learned that my favorite uncle died this morning. I will continue this saga tomorrow: The Fur, Feather and Fin Art Exhibit and Sale
posted by Sandy at 10:52 AM

My husband seems to have become a festival-goer, at least in theory. When we were visiting in West TN a while back, he was quite distraught to learn that we'd missed the World's Biggest Fish Fry in Paris. He said we'd go there next year and to Humboldt to the Strawberry Festival as well, not to mention Mule Day in Columbia. That's right, isn't it? I don't think I've ever actually been to any of these towns. The mention of the mule festival reminds me of a film I used when I taught in Melbourne. It was a Clive James documentary.

Know Clive James? He's an Australian/English wit who makes fairly devastating cultural documentaries and travelogues. The one I used was about Nashville but there were some rather unexpected scenes. One transposed the Columbia mule parade to make it appear as if it were normal traffic down on 2nd. I tried to make a point about how cultural stereotypes are perpetuated, but I think I just implanted an image of Nashville and mules.

It's actually no wonder Trevor's so fond of festivals. He's been introduced to some of the best in the state: BBQ in Memphis, the one in Bell Buckle (RC and Moon Pie, I think), and the Feather, Fur, and Fin Festival. The latter occurs in my home town, Middleton, every July. Plastic flags line every street. It's a festival of fairly recent inception, actually. There must have been some enterprising city father or mother who decided such a thing might make the town as famous as Humboldt.

And I am not making up the name, though it's the exact name that the comics chose for the fictional festival in one of the Tuna, Texas, stage plays. It's all too appropriate, actually--not at all like Nashville's choosing the catfish for our public art displays this summer because, I suppose, it's the best we could come up with in the animal/fish/fowl world that might be faintly associated with this city.

Any Thanksgiving in Middleton can be well begun by driving down any highway and admiring the staring-eyed deer draped over the pick-up hoods. And I spent many a day with my daddy at Pickwick, drifting far too close to the dam in a very small boat, hoping for a good catch of fish for supper. Now, I'd never been to the Fur, Feather, and Fin, believe it or not, until last summer. Can't imagine why not. Too much competition, I guess. There's a dollar store AND a hardware in town. But my sister had gone the previous year and had given a particularly glowing account of the lawn tractor race. So I was determined not to miss it.

Tune in tomorrow for Fur, Feather and Fin 2002
posted by Sandy at 6:44 PM