That Time I Went to Lawnmower Races

 

On a recent Sunday afternoon, as I was a still a bit bleary eyed after Penn State’s thrilling win over Auburn the night before, I headed across the mountain to Mifflin County to Middle Road Speedway…to watch…are you ready for this? Lawnmower racing.

Apparently that's a thing, lawnmower racing. 

Even though it's within 30 miles of my house, I'd never heard of Middle Road Speedway until it—don’t ask me how—came up in a conversation with a waitress earlier that week. Wait, you’ve never talked to a waitress about lawnmower racing? I thought I was the only one! 

The track was a bit hard to find—there wasn’t a lot of cell signal where I was, so using GPS was a waste of time. I drove around a bit, soaking up the bucolic splendor of rural Mifflin County (Trump country!) before stumbling onto Middle Road. As far as I could tell the only thing Middle Road was in the middle of was the middle of nowhere.

I’ve been to another central Pennsylvania dirt track, Hesston Speedway, so I thought I knew what to expect. Wrong! Hesston has buildings, flush toilets, lots of bleachers, and actual parking lots. It’s like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway compared to Middle Road Speedway. Middle Road has no buildings, a no flush toilets, a bleacher (is there such a thing as one bleacher?), and no parking lot. This is a racetrack for minimalists.

 

The track is a dirt oval, smaller than some suburban lots. It’s 1/10th of a mile, which makes less than half the length of a high school track. It’s ringed by old tires and some chain link fence.  Presumably they’re there as safety measures rather than to add a soupcon of gritty urban ambience. There are a few and I mean a few, sponsor signs fastened to the chain link fence, but they’re of the local variety, such as Charlie’s A Cut Above Chainsaws rather than for national brands like Goodyear or Valvoline. 

 

 

The track hasn't changed too much since someone posted this 2011 photo on Facebook.

I parked my truck on the lawn and walked over to the bleacher. There was a group of spectators sitting on lawn chairs arrayed behind their car, but I was the only person to brave the bleacher.  It looked as if it might have been decommissioned by a Little League team sometime before World War II.

There was a concessions trailer across the track from the bleacher. The announcer mentioned EMTs were from the McVeytown Fire Department, but I didn’t see an ambulance. If someone needed to go to the hospital (as in, if you suffered grievous bodily harm falling through the bleacher) they were going on a lawnmower. 

I made myself comfortable-ish and wondered how many people died each year from falling off a single bleacher at a lawnmower race. 

One lawnmower was zipping around the track. And I do mean zipping. It was faster than any self-propelled lawnmower I’ve ever driven. But it wasn’t really a lawnmower, since the mower deck had been removed…presumably in the interest of speed and safety.

In addition to shedding their mower decks, the little tractors obviously had a bunch of modifications (new gonkulator, etc.) to increase their speed. They didn’t sound like the lawnmowers in my neighborhood.

A short while later I was joined on the bleacher by a nice twentysomething couple. They vaped a lot. And I mean a lot. It didn’t take long before the fresh yet masculine scent of my Old Spice was replaced by an intoxicating mélange of vape-sourced strawberry shortcake and lawnmower exhaust fumes. The woman said that she hoped the afternoon’s races wouldn’t be as “redneck” as they were on her last visit. She told me that a couple of the drivers got into a fistfight that day. 

Obviously, I’m a horrible person since I thought, “Oh, a fistfight…that would be a great story for the blog!” Your human drama meets my jaundiced eye! As Charlie Sheen would say, “Winning!”

It wasn’t long before an announcer came on the PA and said that warmups had finished and that they would be starting the main events shortly. He promised that “the girls” would come around selling tickets and 50/50 raffle tickets. 

 

During the ticket selling interlude an old Ford pickup carrying a big water tank drove around the track wetting it down, as they do to a baseball infield. 

The rig looked homemade but it did the trick.

“The girls” eventually made it over to the bleacher. I wouldn’t have called them "girls". I would have called them women who were younger than I am but still too old to know the names of any rappers.  Effervescent they were not.  Perhaps they had been sentenced to perform community service hours for displaying a Biden/Harris yard sign somewhere in the neighborhood?

Tickets were $5, but if you upgraded to the pit pass, $10. I had a ten spot and so told them I wanted the pit pass. They told me that they weren’t selling those—I had to go across the track for those. But they said, I didn’t need one anyway since no one would check. I could walk over there for free. Clearly no one explained the concept of upselling to them. 

I told them that with my admission I’d take $5 in 50/50 tickets, even though I think 50/50 raffles should be relegated to their natural environment: Knights of Columbus functions.

The 50/50 jackpot at the Penn State football game the day before was in excess of $30,000. This time around, if it reached $75 I would have been surprised. And yes, not that anyone asked, but I think it’s crazy to have a 50/50 raffle at a Penn State football game. Everyone knows that 50/50 raffles should be left to the Knights of Columbus. 

I turned around and gave my raffle tickets to the vapers. I said, “this is for saving my seat while I walk through the pits”. I found this terribly amusing since we were the only people on the bleacher. They looked at me as if I were crazy. Perhaps vaping dulls one’s response to irony?

Since I had the “all clear” to see the pits, I went right away, before someone decided that I really did need the $10 ticket.  There were maybe ten or fifteen utility trailers that had been towed by pickups. It looked as if each trailer toted a few lawnmowers. The mowers were higher mileage than the ticket selling "girls"…I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

In addition to mowers there were some go-karts too. Apparently there are several different classes of these tiny speedsters. Most of them had some sort of race car body that looked as if it was made in a Mattel Vac-U-Form. Some had roll cages, too. I marveled that an adult with arms and legs could fit in any of them.

I got the hairy eyeball from some of the people in the pit area. None of the racers were doing much talking—it was sort of Clint Eastwood-y. I cocked my head to listen for the theme song to the Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  

And since I know nothing about lawnmowers or anything else that has an internal combustion engine, I didn’t’ stop and say, “Wow, I’ve never seen a Gravely with a gonkulator like that.” That didn’t seem like a high percentage way to make new friends. I didn’t linger.

 

Yes, there was a merch tent. FYI, the feet with the pink plastic Birkenstocks are not included in the sale of a purple t-shirt. 

 

As I was walking back to my seat, the announcer came back on the PA to announce the playing of the national anthem. Fortunately, it was a recording of some symphonic band and not a live performance by someone’s relative. Unlike at Beaver Stadium, the announcer did not need to remind spectators to rise and remove our hats. Everyone did it without being reminded. 

 

The announcer worked in a minimalist booth that was more Gilligan's Island than Mies van der Rohe. In fact, if you added some palm fronds and bamboo, Mr. and Mrs. Thurston Howell, III would have felt right at home. What they would have said about lawnmower racing is anyone's guess.

After the National Anthem, the announcer read the name and hometowns of the drivers as four lawn mowers drove onto the track for the first heat of the day. As they took another warmup lap they kicked up plenty of dust—even though the track had just been sprayed down--and made even more noise than during warm ups. 

At the end of the warmup lap, as the racers came around to the front stretch, the starter waved the green flag—just like at NASCAR—and they were off.  The scrum of zippy mowers made it to the second turn when one driver lost control and his ride went into the fence. The red flag came out stopping the race as the driver got up, and dusted himself off. He seemed to be ok, but something was broken on his machine (the gonkulator, no doubt) and he pushed it off the course.  

Once the remaining mowers got going, the race was equal parts exciting and scary. Those little mowers are quick. My grandfather would have said that they went like scalded cats. 

In the second race, there was a more serious wreck. One of the mowers went into the fence near the pit area, wiping out a couple of the sponsor signs and a bit of fence. The EMTs walked over at the speed of guys who’ve just had a hip replacement. Even my vaping buddies commented on how slow the EMTs were. I started to think that the EMTs were Christian Scientists hoping that prayer would fix whatever was wrong with the driver.  It took a while, but eventually the driver stood up and waved to the crowd. 

After that wreck the drivers seemed to get the hang of it, high tailing it around the course, occasionally on two wheels in a turn. And if you’re thinking that these men (and the occasional woman) have bodies like jockeys or fighter pilots…wrong. Lots of them looked as if they didn’t stint on the carbs or anything else for that matter. There was a whole lotta jiggling going on. I suppose if you're driving something with no suspension over a dirt track at high speeds, built in padding comes in handy.

After I don’t know how many races, it was time for intermission and they brought out the Ford truck to wet down the track again. 

Even though I would miss the seeing the featured race, I decided that it was time say my goodbyes and beat the traffic--had there been any traffic. I would have stayed longer if there were going to be a fistfight, but alas, it seemed like everyone was on his or her best behavior. 

There’s one more weekend of racing this fall, October 9 and 10. I'm up for a return trip. Shall I save you a seat?

Honk if You're Horny

The other day I sent a link to a Business Insider article to a friend of my late brother Rob. Since Matt works at Amtrak, I thought he’d be interested in the piece about Chinese bullet trains that go from Beijing to Xi’an in 4.5 hours. For those of you unfamiliar with Chinese geography, that’s like going from New York City to Chicago. If you try to do that on an American train, it takes about 22 hours.

Matt thanked me and in the next few keystrokes told me that there would be a “horn honk” that very weekend in Altoona, Pennsylvania, at the site of the World Famous Horseshoe Curve. 

Yes, I know that a “horn honk” sounds like some sort of euphemism straight people would look up on Urban Dictionary and then wish they hadn’t.

But it’s really not anything like that.

A horn honk is a gathering of train horn enthusiasts. Matt is one, and my brother Rob was one.

I’d never been to a horn honk but the thought of a bunch of guys getting together to toot their own horn, so to speak, sounded like something not to miss, and not just in the Urban Dictionary kind of way.

I know what you’re saying: “People collect train horns? WTF!” 

Yes, Virginia, people collect train horns.

If you have to collect something, it sure beats Scottie dog memorabilia. 

When I think of collecting oddball stuff, sooner or later I return to an article by Jane and Michael Stern, published in the September 21, 1987 issue of The New Yorker. I don’t know why this article stuck in my brain, but it’s there, like a piece of gum stuck to the underside of the counter in a diner. The article was about a weekend long swap meet for collectors of Scottie dog memorabilia held in a Ramada Inn in Indiana. Just a wee bit crazy as they might say back on the auld sod. I suppose this is what Americans did in their spare time before someone invented the internet and laced it liberally with porn.  Who knew? Not me, that’s for sure!

I’m not much of a collector. But life as a minimalist is something I aspire to, not my current situation.  While I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only person on eBay who buys Old McNichol’s Stonewall China, I make lots of excuses about that.

1. I use it regularly. OK, I use some of it regularly.

2. I am only trying to complete a set...that no one will want when I'm dead.

3. It’s a chic Russel Wright-ish mid-century design. What do I know about Russel Wright or chic?

4. It’s inexpensive...because I'm the only guy in America who wants it.

OK, I collect more stuff than I care to admit to. But not Scottie dog memorabilia or train horns. That would be crazy.

So, last Saturday, after my sister and I did a lap through the Penn State Master Gardener’s plant sale, my sister said, “Would you like to go to Martin’s Greenhouse?”  I said sure, and by the way, we could also go to a horn honk at the World Famous Horseshoe Curve. I mentioned that Rob’s friend Matt said he would be there.

She said, “When were you going to spring this on me?”

At the last possible moment, obviously.

So, with our plants in the back of her truck, we set out for our first horn honk. At the World Famous Horseshoe Curve, no less.

How famous is something if it incorporates the words World Famous in its title?

The World Famous Horseshoe Curve was built in the middle of the 19th century just outside the city of Altoona by the Pennsylvania Railroad. It’s on the main line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and helps the train ascend the face of the Allegheny Mountains.  Yes, it’s shaped like a horseshoe, a big horseshoe. In fact, Wiki tells us it’s 2,375 feet long and 1,300 feet wide at its widest point. That’s a big horseshoe. During World War II as many as 50 trains a day went around the curve transporting troops and whatnot (guns, ammo, Betty Grable pinups, etc.). Its importance to the war effort was such that the Germans planned to have saboteurs blow it up. Fortunately for us, some of the commandos defected and that was that. The National Park Service declared the curve a National Landmark in 1966.  Makes sense that it’s World Famous, right?

My sister and I hadn’t been there since we were kids. I’m not much of a train buff so unless a train was going by I thought it underwhelming.  When a train went by it was somewhat less underwhelming. As I recalled, in addition to the actual curve, there was a static display of a rusting steam locomotive parked next to the tracks. Its honking days were lone gone.

As we drove up the country road to the site, we heard a train horn. We were definitely going in the right direction. But then a pickup truck, with huge air horns mounted on its roof, passed us going in the opposite direction. Had we missed the goings-on we wondered? I thought Matt said that they’d be there honking all day? 

We needn’t have worried. After a few more turns, and a few more blasts of distant and not so distant air horns, we were at the base of the World Famous Horseshoe Curve. There, in the parking lot of the new (at least to us) visitors’ center and matching picnic pavilion, were perhaps 15 trucks and cars, most of which had giant air horns mounted to their roofs. The long tables in the picnic pavilion were covered with giant air horns, like great cast iron mushrooms sprouting in a lawn after a rain.  I had no idea that there were so many different varieties of air horns.

Carolyn parked and we walked over to the scrum of honkers. Everyone pretty much ignored us.

Obviously, no ticket or secret handshake was required to enter. 

I asked someone if he knew Matt and if so, was Matt there.  This fellow said he hadn’t seen him yet, meaning that we knew exactly zero people there. In other words, not a good place for a shy introvert like me. Shortly afterward, someone came up to me and asked me if I were Doc’s brother. 

Have I mentioned that my brother was Rob to his family but Doc to his friends?

Soon enough we were chatting with two of Rob’s friends. We shared the reminisces someone would share at a viewing, except with a sound track of train horns echoing in the lee of the World Famous Horseshoe Curve, instead of How Great Thou Art done by Tennessee Ernie Ford playing over the sound system of the Koch Funeral Home.

As Rob slash Doc would have told us, the basic premise of a horn honk is that people mount train horns on their vehicles and then drive around blowing them. That’s all there is to it. It’s equal parts loud, crazy, and fun. On this particular Saturday all the principals were guys, though my guess is that the hobby has a certain appeal to women in sensible shoes. If there were any locals there, I didn’t meet them. Horn folks had come from Maryland, Ohio, Michigan, and even California for the event.

Because a train horn requires LOTS of compressed air to make its joyful noise, horns are usually mounted on racks attached to the roofs of full sized trucks that have an air compressor or air tank mounted in their beds. Presumably honkers take the air handling equipment out when they need to tote a full-sized sheet of plywood someplace. A couple of guys had their horns mounted on racks on their crossover SUVs, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

With the horns attached to your vehicle, it’s just a matter of running some big air hoses from the horns to the air tank and adding some controls in the cab to complete your rig. It was pretty simple, really.

Honkers would fill their air tanks, pull out of the parking area and give a few blasts of the horn as they drove down the road a mile or two. Then they’d turn around and give a few blasts on the way back. It was practically the second coming of the Broadway Limited. It was good clean LOUD fun.

How loud was it? It was loud. As loud as a train, really. Since the site was at the base of the World Famous Horseshoe Curve, we were smack dab against a steep mountain so there was an echo.

One of the guys was stationed at a camera mounted on a tripod so that he could record each honking episode, perhaps to share with the guys and women in sensible shoes who could not make it that day.

If that guy had any hearing left, I’d be shocked. 

It’s not just a matter of showing up with your truck and blowing your horns once and calling it a day.  The horns have a universal mounting, so the guys swap out their horns so they can have a go at someone else’s unit, so to speak. There were several picnic tables laden with horns—sized large and even larger—waiting for their big moments. It was a grown up straight guy version of playing with Barbie dolls.

Some little girls want to see how Barbie looks in a wacky hat, headed to a royal wedding, or maybe in a lab coat, since she’s also a famous scientist. Sure, to adults she looks like Barbie, but kids can easily imagine that she's Pippa Middleton on her way into St. George's Chapel, or Marie Curie as portrayed by Stormy Daniels in MILF Nobel Prize Laureate.

I think borrowing someone else’s horns gives the horn aficionado the chance to make believe he’s taking a ride on the Reading or about to stop at a Harvey House on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe.

Alas, to the untutored like Carolyn and me, one set of train horns sounded just like another set of train horns mounted on a pickup truck.

I asked if someone would give me a ride so that I could see what this was all about from the honker’s point of view. One of the senior honkers, Ed, said sure he’d give me a lift. The word at the honk was that he’d called my brother Mr. Know it All, something I’m sure I called Rob slash Doc more than once myself. Ed drove a bright red Chevrolet Avalanche with two air tanks in the its bed.

Before we left, Ed pointed out the workings of the horns under the hood of the truck. He’d installed a starter motor connected to a gonkulator that powered the compressor that filled his tanks. Or was it the other way around? I have all the mechanical aptitude of an oyster and so my understanding of all of this was modest, to say the least. What I did understand was that he was no Ed Come Lately to the honking business. He’d been at the hobby since the earth cooled. In fact, he said that the first time he came to the World Famous Horseshoe Curve, the Pennsylvania Railroad was still using steam locomotives.

In a short time, Ed and I were all powered up and ready to go. He patiently explained how the air hose came from the tanks to the controls mounted on the console between the front seats. Some of the valves were right out of Home Depot but the main lever—dare I call it the joystick?—was something unique to air horning. Men lie about their joysticks all the time (trust me on this one) but there was no overselling this one. It was the real deal.

After lots of horn themed sexual innuendo and with a wave to my sister and our new good buddy Ron (who were already laughing), we were off. Shortly after we pulled out of the parking lot, Ed told me to let ‘er rip. I don’t think those were his exact words, but that was what he meant. I pulled the joy stick back gingerly. It was my first time at this kind of yanking.

Ed explained that you could actually blow the smaller horns in a set of horns separately by pulling the lever back just a little bit, since they required less air than the bigger horns in the group. I got the impression Ed was one of those “in for a penny, in for a pound” kind of guys.  I pulled the lever back with more gusto.

Yowza!

What was it like?

Did you ever see that video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge from 1940 where it vibrates to the point of collapse in a 40 mph wind?  Or have you ever imagined what Magic Fingers, the coin-op gizmo that made motel beds vibrate, would be like if it were powered by a jet engine?

That’s what my ears felt like when I blew those horns at full blast.

And yes, it was pretty darned cool.

In a moment, I was transported to that under-appreciated 1964 Disney film, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, where Don Knotts, playing Henry Limpet, turns into a fish (a fish who wears glasses, actually) and uses his booming voice as a sonic secret weapon to destroy German U-boats in World War II. The Nazis would hear his voice over their sonar sets and in their Colonel Klink accents shout “Das Limpet! Das Limpet” before Don Knotts would send the bad guys to Davy Jones’ Locker.

Blowing that those airhorns, just down the road from the World Famous Horseshoe Curve, I had turned into the land-based Incredible Mr. Limpet, right down to the glasses.

We drove down the road for a mile or two, and turned around, and I gave the horn another couple of blasts on the way back.

Ed was a great teacher and an even more gracious host.  It was a blast, so to speak.

Carolyn and I agreed that we should have brought the box of Rob’s earthly remains along for the trip. I think they’re in a box in her garage. The plan is to scatter them from a train ride on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad one of these days, but we haven’t gotten around to scheduling that yet. I think his friends would have gotten a kick out of seeing him too, even in a box from the Great American Crematorium in Midland, TX.  Were the horn on the other air hose, I’m sure Rob would have toted my cremains along with him---and then accidentally left me in a booth at Dairy Queen.

After my ride, and while we still had at least some hearing, Carolyn and I said our goodbyes and headed home. We were both glad to meet some of Rob’s friends and reminisce a bit. Since Rob was very specific about not wanting a funeral, we didn’t do much of that after he died, so we were overdue. And, since Carolyn and I are both planners, we talked about how the honkers should sell risqué t-shirts and find a food truck and tell the Blair County visitors bureau and maybe introduce the world to their hobby.

Then again, why mess with success? It was a honkin' good time just the way it was.

Miss Cumberland Ag Expo, 2016 Edition

Yesterday I went over some plowed ground when I served as a judge for the Miss Cumberland Ag Expo Pageant.  Regular readers may recall that I was a pageant judge back in 2014…the year the emcee read the wrong name when he was announcing the winner. Oops!

As a pageant vet, I had a good idea of what to expect this year when my friend Lizzie once again asked me to be a judger. Lizzie asked me to recruit another judge, so I asked my friend Pam if she were interested. Pam’s game for most anything and said yes right away.

The Cumberland Ag Expo is in Newville, which is the one of the larger towns in You Can’t Get There from Here County.  Pennsylvania’s mountains run from southwest to northeast and getting to Newville from State College means driving east and then due south. The fields of corn looked great, and we sure passed lots of them when we weren’t driving up and down a mountain or two. Cell signal was spotty so we even used a road map to help navigate. It was almost like being back in the 1980s.

While it’s bigger than it was two years ago, the Cumberland Ag Expo is still pretty small. Even with the displays of new and vintage farm machinery, the occasional cow, I think the whole thing—soup to nuts—would fit in a football field. At best, two.

Pam and I had some time to kill before we were on the clock as judges so we checked out the exhibits building. There were the usual display of wilted flowers and vegetables that probably looked great a couple of days ago when they were picked. I did see the judges taking a measuring tape to a sunflower, and at almost 12 feet, it was plenty tall.

Over a dinner of a soggy hot sausage sandwich and fries (Pam, a vegetarian, wisely skipped the sausage), we met our partner in judging, Rosalie. Rosalie is a number cruncher (aka Specialist, Business Control Plan, Latin America Division) at Volvo Equipment’s huge facility in Shippensburg. She’s originally from Brazil and is here under some sort of Brazilian accountants’ visa.

Close readers of The Washington Post will remember that The Donald is looking to scale back visas for Brazilian accountants in order to expand the visa program for Slovenian models who are interested in in girl-on-girl photo shoots, Pilates, and life as arm candy for short-fingered vulgarians masquerading as Presidential candidates. But that story is for another day.

After we finished eating, the young women in the pageant started dropping by to introduce themselves.  This was an important part of the pageant process, unseen by viewers at home. We were to evaluate their poise, appearance, and general social skills. They all acquitted themselves very well, even the shy ones. Their career goals ranged from “I haven’t decided yet” to teacher to pharmacist. Interestingly enough, the young woman whose favorite subjects were math and science did not want to be an astronaut. Astronauts are yesterday’s news.

None of the contestants said anything totally crazy, so they were immediately all more qualified for the position of the Cumberland Ag Expo queen more than Donald Trump would be.

When it was time—ok, past time—for the pageant to start, Angela, the emcee introduced the visiting royalty—2016’s Miss Shippensburg Fair Queen, Miss Shippensburg Sweetheart, and the Cumberland County Dairy Princess. Their role was to sit on stage and add some pageant gravitas to the event. My view of them was blocked by the podium but since I didn’t hear any whoopee cushions going off in mid-pageant, I am assuming they sat there projecting gravitas the entire time.

Then the emcee introduced the contestants—in casual wear. Audry, Abigail, Lydia, Kelly, Rachel, Kayla, Brittany, Courtney and Samantha did a bit of runway walking (fashion runway as in "Work it gurl", not airport runway as in with the flashlights with the orange ends). The older girls gave two to four minute speeches on the topic of “If you were a candidate in the upcoming presidential election, what qualities or initiatives would you take to promote growth in agriculture?”

Yes, that’s the exact question. I brought the script home.

Fortunately, the younger contestants were spared that bit of word salad.

To a girl, the contestants were in favor of agriculture, since that’s food, you know? Even factoring in the ages of the contestants, there was plenty of room for improvement in the speeches. However, only one of the speeches made me consider putting my head in an oven. So, by my math, that’s a victory.

When the speechifying was done, all of the contestants demonstrated their physical fitness and coordination by performing a group line dance. All of them danced better than me. Every. Single. One.

After the dance number, the contestants went backstage to change into evening wear for the next part of the show. I thought about the old Wendy's commercial about the Russian fashion show and chuckled to myself.  ("Is next. Evening wear.....Very nice.") 

In the meantime, my fellow judges and I were introduced to the audience. Angela referred to me as a “Renaissance man”. I think most of the audience thought that was something like a Fuller Brush Man, but I did not stand up to explain the difference.

Since the judge introductions didn’t take very long, we quickly moved to the next entr’acte of an auction of the baked goods that had been on display in the exhibits building. A stout and somewhat gruff auctioneer who looked somewhat like an unemployed Humpty Dumpty sat on the lip of the stage and auctioned off plates of cookies and brownies, not to mention pies and cakes and the occasional plate of muffins. Each item had a slice out of it, since tasting is an essential part judging a baked goods competition.

Potential customers crowded around the inventory so they wouldn’t miss prize winning pan of apple pandowdy—with one slice gone, of course. A couple of things (“I think it’s mincemeat”) went for a buck or two, but the high demand items were in the twenty dollar range. Emcee Angela showed her colors as a Pennsylvanian by shelling out for a wet bottom shoo fly pie.

By the end of the auction, the contestants had time to put on their faces and whatnot and so were ready for Act 2 of the pageant to start. The girls also had more than enough time to get into an Alexis and Krystle style catfight backstage, but apparently chose not to follow that path.

In the evening wear section of the contest, Angela read a short bio of the contestant as she was escorted to the center of the stage by a gentleman—anyone from a six year old kid in his Sunday best to man in his U.S. Army dress uniform. While the biographies obviously emphasize the high points—prized rabbits, good works, church membership, and career plans, they didn’t gloss over the challenges the kids had met. These included bullying, autism, single parent households, and so on.  In a matter of a few moments, I went from thinking “Where did she get that gown, Bass Pro Shops?” to thinking “You go, girl!"

After the evening gown section, my fellow judges and I completed our score sheets and agreed which three girls would move on as finalists. While it wasn’t an easy decision, we all arrived at the same one independently. The finalists then had to answer an “impromptu question”, which wasn’t really that impromptu since it was right there on the program.

One of the girls got an unexpected snort out of me when she answered the question, “Would you rather live in the past, present, or future?”. She was in favor of living in all three time periods. She noted that one of the interesting things about the past would be black and white television. Oh my. Well, at least she didn’t mention the possibility of dating Elvis.

At this point there were a few claps of thunder and Angela moved to speed the pageant along since the judges and most of the audience were sitting under the stars. Pam and Rosalie and I completed our score sheets, and agreed again that we were all on the same page. Pam completed the prize envelopes—which meant that the emcee could not possibly announce the wrong name-—while the outgoing queen gave a speech, complete with tears that made me glad that the end of her reign was near.

As the winners were announced, they were crowned with tiaras, each one a bit larger than the last. The largest tiara went to the 2016 Cumberland Ag Expo Queen, Brittany Graham.

Soon enough the stage was filled with photographers, families, and friends as they congratulated the winners and consoled those who didn’t get a tiara. After a few pictures, Pam and I decided to head out before it started raining. It was a fun evening—I only wish I’d bought an apple pandowdy to enjoy on the ride home.

My (Non) Exciting Life.

Even though my life has been completely uneventful lately, I decided that if I didn't throw up some content on the old blog soon that I was going to have to start telling people that I used to write a blog rather than saying yeah, I write a blog.

So what have I been up to since the Penn State Homecoming parade?

Based on the photos on my phone, I apparently made the mistake of going to the State Store (now called the infinitely more upscale name of Fine Wine and Good Spirits) on a football weekend. If memory serves me correctly—and if it doesn’t please remember that the Bryant family motto is “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”—I was the only one in the store over 24 who didn’t work there.

And I was probably the only one buying something other than a handle of Cap’n Crunch flavored vodka or some other artificially sweetened swill. When I was a college boy, I didn’t wait in line at the ABC Store, I bought beer at the A&P.  I bought pot from my roommate, the barefoot Mao-ist econ major with a serious but endearing stammer. It was much more convenient than the A&P, if much less legal.

No, I did not take advantage of the chance to save $5 on a bottle of Dom Perignon.

Then in the late fall, my friend Judy took me on a tour of the Penn State football building with the Penn State Quarterback Club. The Quarterback Club is a lunch club of mostly retired to elderly through post-elderly Penn State football boosters. Do not go to one of their meetings wearing anything other than blue and white. It's just not done.

The football facility was eye-opening even if the docent-ing wasn't up to the NFL caliber of say, Monticello. I shouldn’t have been that surprised that the football building is the glitzy-est building on the Penn State campus. Everything is new and shiny and about ten minutes old.

The first stop on the tour was the Brag Wall consisting of photos of Penn State’s All-American players. Penn State’s first was William Thomas “Mother” Dunn, the first All-American who played at a non-Ivy school. Walter Camp selected him for his All-American Team in 1906.

The photo of Dunn reminded me of an J. C. Leyendecker illustration. I didn't share this amazing art historical insight with any of my buddies on the tour,  though some of them probably knew J. C. Leyendecker personally.

After the brag all, we came to the the well-hung mannequin. As your the more erudite travel writers say, WTF?

We were herded (slowly, the Quarterback Club-ers are not a speedy bunch) into the auditorium where Penn State Head Football Coach James Franklin spoke to us briefly and pointed out the actual chair that Christian Hackenberg sat in for team meetings. We were then treated to a super secret recruiting film that though it was nice, didn’t make me want to play football for Penn State. (Hey, I have eligibility remaining!) It was, however, better than The Red Balloon, French “featurette” which holds the distinction of being the world’s longest four-minute film. Anyone who sees it can tell you that thing lasts for hours.

We got to see some trophies in cases. They're apparently usually displayed with the reverence reserved for pieces of the True Cross, but when we were they, they were in a bit of a jumble since they were remodeling the building to make it more glitzy.  College football recruits are big on glitz.

We also saw the terrace where the Athletic Department holds extra special al fresco events, the kind of al fresco events that Donald Trump would be attend, as long as he didn't have to sit next to a Syrian refugee or Rosie O'Donnell.

After the terrace, it was on to the weight room, where everything that could be branded Penn State was branded Penn State and then some.

There were huge inspirational banners hung from the walls urging us to have a POSITIVE ATTITUDE and WORK ETHIC and COMPETE and SACRIFICE.

Apparently they’re supposed to be coaching is all about, but they mostly reminded me of posters for Joseph Stalin’s Five Year Plan written by someone who never learned about parallel construction in English class.

The last stop on the tour was the indoor practice field. It’s big. And no one was practicing. Once you got used to its size the experience was sort of underwhelming. We've all been there before, right? (Sigh.)

Fortunately, this was the last stop on the tour and none of our fellow tourists had to be carted off to Koch Funeral Home…which could have happened had it lasted much longer. It was great, albeit slow, fun. However, I was left wondering if this is what college football facilities look like, what do NFL facilities look like?

Then in November came the non-shocking news that I was once again passed over for People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. Presumably this is what Shakespeare was talking about when he had Hamlet yammer on and on about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

In early December it was time for the Lewistown Festival of Ice.  First Night State College has worked with the folks in Lewistown to help produce the Festival for some time. Even though it has some fantastic 19th century buildings, Lewistown's central business district is, as we say in the historic preservation circles, going down the razor blade of life. The marquee of the Embassy Theatre is one of the town's bright spots--literally!
 

Lewistown has a fantastic local model railroad club and it's worth the trip to Lewistown just to see the club's display. There are two rooms each with a large and elaborate train layout, on which, at least when I was there, several trains were running.

It’s light years beyond the Lionel train that my brother and I enjoyed when we were kids.

The layouts include bridges, tunnels, buildings and little plastic people.  One vignette of daily life shows a perp standing against his car as he’s being frisked by a policeman. Of all the little bits of mundane life that they could immortalize in plastic...they chose this? When I return again, I will expect to see bunch of equally tiny protesters blocking the highway and holding up signs that say "Polystyrene Lives Matter."

After the Ice Festival, it's time to head to Stone Harbor to close up the house for the winter. That chore coincides with the Maurice River Township Fire Department Antique Show.

 It's a treasure trove of kitsch and wacky stuff. 

 

It’s refreshing to see that in the age of eBay and 1stDibs that an antique show can survive and—judging by full the parking lot— thrive.

 And yes, they even had Sir Walter Raleigh in a can.

Fortunately for my social calendar, the West Cape May Christmas Parade is the same weekend as the antique show. This year the parade, usually a highlight of my holiday season, turned out to be a huge disappointment. It wasn’t quite as badly run as the Avalon Clamshell Toss, but it’s getting there.

Someone has had the bright idea of getting every unit in the parade to stop in front of the reviewing stand to perform for the judges and dignitaries. I suppose dignitaries expect that sort of Downton-esque treatment. The requisite to-ing and fro-ing involved to get the Cape May County Lil’ Mini Petite Cutie Tooties into place for their star turn in front of the reviewing stand and then back to marching (or waddling, as the case may be) down the street is pure torture. It creates a parade with more, as we would say in the art business, “negative space” than holiday cheer.

So, while some of the units were great—it’s hard not to like Mummers imported from Philadelphia for the occasion—there was a way too much, to use Gertrude Stein’s expression, no there there.

In lieu of waiting for the next unit in the parade to come by--frankly, I thought not only Godot, but Jesus would appear first--my chums and I tried to go to the bar at the Congress Hall for our traditional after the parade drink. Alas and alack,  everyone else in Cape May had the same idea. The hotel was a madhouse, right down to the line for the men's room in the basement. It might have been possible to get waited upon by Christmas, but I wouldn’t have bet on it. We left Cape May and headed back to Stone Harbor and Fred’s Tavern for our restorative beverages.

On the way back, like the Magi, we followed a bright light in the distance. It led us to the Wildwood Boardwalk, which, in December, still retains its creepy Diane Arbus quality.

The lights we saw on turned out to be a Ferris Wheel lit up like Santa.

And that was OK, because if it had been a virgin birth, or someone explaining the secret of Donald Trump's hair, I'd have been woefully unprepared. I hadn't brought any gold, frankincense, or myrrh. Everyone knows that you need to take a gift to an occasion like that. 

After that weekend at the shore, there were a few weeks of fretting about holiday shopping but not doing it, followed by Christmas and time spent in the bosom of my family.

Christmas at my grandparents' really did look like this, right down to the celery on the table. However, my grandmother would have taken off her apron prior to bringing the turkey to the dining table. My grandfather, at the head of the table and always dressed in a dark suit, did the honors with the carving set.

At my sister's house, this year, it looked like this:

Not only do we look all au courant, we also tell WAY more fart jokes than we did at my grandparents' house.

And once Christmas is done, it’s time for First Night State College.

This means not only making the Burning Man with my sister but setting him on fire...once he lets go of the little red-headed kid.

After First Night…the Pennsylvania Farm Show is upon us. This was the 100th Farm Show, so I think the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture put a little extra zip into it.

This year, I went twice. The first trip was for the VIP reception where the Governor and the Secretary of Agriculture made brief remarks. The gist of the speeches was that they’re in favor of Pennsylvania agriculture.

After the reception, I met a potato—the variety is American Kabuki—and its stunt double. The potato is on the left. I’m not sure why Spud is wearing a camo cap, but my guess is that it was an effort to gain some rural cred. Trust me, you can't be too underdressed for the Farm Show.

I heard that they opened the food court a day early. Seriously! The line for the potato donuts was crazy...and this was on the day when the rest of the farm show wasn't open!

Of course, no one wanted soups and salads.

On the second trip to the Farm Show, I got to see lots more than the Governor and the back of the line for potato donuts. It's fascinating and even educational. Seriously! There's crazy stuff too, starting with the famous butter sculpture. Who knew that there was a historical marker for the man who invented the individually wrapped cheese slice?

 

Or that someone made a model--at really nice model, at that--of Pennsylvania's famous--at least to people who drive by on Route 283--Star Barn? The barn is being moved to a new site so that it can be used as a wedding venue. I'm not sure if that's progress, but at least it's not being demolished.  Unfortunately, the booth babes (and I use the term in a non gender-specific manner) didn't know much about the barn, though they knew plenty about catering weddings.

Or that there was a Miss Mushroom?

Or that the Mushroom-Industrial Complex owns an inflatable mushroom, creatively called the MushRoom? The mushroom guy told me that I could probably rate a historical marker of my own if I could produce morels commercially.

 

Fortunately I had the chance to meet Miss Teen Rodeo New Jersey and Miss Rodeo New Jersey...visiting from The Garden State. These are actual women and not drag performers. At least I’m pretty sure about that. Don’t quote me. They weren’t that impressed when I told them that, in true New Jersey fashion, that as a very part time resident of New Jersey I was Exit 10 on the Parkway. They put in a plug for Cowtown Rodeo in Salem County, which I actually knew about, though I’d never stopped. Hmmm...a future blog post, perhaps?

This was my first time at the Farm Show’s Celebrity Grape Stomping Contest.  As you can see, the audience was on the collective edge of its seats. Alas, there was not a Kardashian or Trump in sight, but the Penn State Nittany Lion, and Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Agriculture did their part as celebrities. I helped my friend Judy, a celebrity stomper, train by sending her a clip of the “I Love Lucy” episode where Lucy stomps grapes--the bit is one of Lucy's best. The contest started on time and moved right along...unlike  the West Cape May Christmas parade.

I recuperated from the Farm Show by spending part of Winter Storm Jonas giving a talk at the Bedford Springs Hotel to a leadership institute and trying to ignore the grim weather reports from Stone Harbor. I highly recommend  it as a place in which to get almost snowed in, though paying four bucks for a tube of Chapstick in the hotel's gift and sundry shoppe almost killed me. Fortunately drinks in the bar were reasonably priced--not that I'm a price shopper when it comes to my nightcap.

The hotel was in the midst of getting 31 inches of snow when I headed back to Happy Valley on Saturday morning. There wasn't much traffic...actually for the first twenty miles there wasn't any traffic. As in, I saw three cars between Bedford and Altoona.  As if common sense were taking a holiday, the Governor had banned motorcycles from the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 99 during the storm. It was snowing like mad, who knows when a plow went by last, and the Governor thought that people would be out on motorcycles?! Truly, driving was a bit of an adventure. For me, sometimes a bit of an adventure is just enough.