short + rose: A festival and a fair

I rarely say this because I’m usually so irritated with the weather here, always too hot and humid, but the past few days have been gorgeous. It’s still too warm for my tastes, but the mornings and nights have gotten a little cooler. And the skies have been so clear and blue, a really nice time to be outside. Saturday was the annual Heritage Day in my hometown (Covington) and I drove up. I left Doug at home; I think he had had enough of Covington over the last two Friday nights. I don’t mind going alone, I enjoy driving alone, as long as I have music and my coffee I’m good. The weather was pretty close to perfect, if it had been about 10-15 degrees cooler I would have been in heaven. I met my mom and my BFF Amanda on the square, which is where this whole festival/day happens. Also, I’m not sure if it’s like this in other places but most small towns in the South have ‘squares’, it’s kind of like a tiny little downtown, sans the tall buildings. The courthouse is the center of the square in Covington and it’s surrounded by shops, banks, a few offices, the community theatre and a couple of restaurants. Over the last few years they’ve redone parts of the square and it’s actually really nice (not enough to make me move back though).

There were a lot of vendors and booths and demonstrations, there was even someone spinning. I didn’t know her but she’s from the Memphis Spinning Guild and had some beautiful angora from her own rabbit she was spinning. My mom, Amanda and I walked around for awhile; I bought a few things and saw a ton of people I know, several we graduated high school with. I also got a monster sized blister on the back of my heel, I wore my 'Alice' Crocs and I’ve worn them before walking around a lot but for some reason I never got a blister until Saturday. We stopped and ate lunch on the courthouse lawn and people watched. I also talked Amanda into helping my load one of my purchases into my car. After last weekend’s disappointment in not finding the wicker loveseat I coveted from Pier 1 I was extremely lucky and happened upon this sweet little red wicker chair on Saturday, complete with floral cushion. So I bought it as soon as I saw it thinking it would be perfect to sit on the patio in. So Amanda and I drug the chair to my car, several streets away from the vendor’s tent and them we tried to put it the backseat. It was like a Laurel and Hardy movie, we tried every which way to get that thing in the car. Eventually I held the door back so far I was afraid I would break it and Amanda jammed it in the backseat (after we took part of my backseat out). The chair didn’t sustain any damage but some of the red paint rubbed off on my car door.

A little while after the chair fiasco I decided to head back to Memphis because Doug and I were planning on going to the Mid-South Fair. I haven’t been to the fair in at least eight years. The last time was with my friend Jason and we only went to see Kenny Wayne Shepherd play on the main stage. But this was the last year for the fair to be in Memphis on the fairgrounds, next year it's moving about 45 minutes away to Tunica, Mississippi and I don’t know how interested we’ll be in driving to Tunica. It was actually a nice afternoon to go. I was afraid it would be crazy busy because it was the next to the last day and the University of Memphis football game was just getting over and the stadium is right next to the fairgrounds but we were able to get in quickly and park. The food smell was so overwhelming, I know that almost everything served there is greasy and sugary and unhealthy but OMG it smelled so good. We ate Pronto Pups, which I think is the most fabulous fair food ever. We went to the petting zoo too and I felt sad for the animals, but I did get to pet/feed some sheep and an alpaca (so soft). We saw the car show, the craft entries (art, knitting, sewing, etc) and some other random people trying to sell things. We skipped the rides because I have an really, really weak stomach and riding something that spins in a circle very fast after eating a Pronto Pup and a Fiddlestick sounds like a pretty horrible idea.