Annual Bluegrass

It is hard for me to go a full year without at least one day at a bluegrass or old-time festival of some kind, but we had for the past couple, so today I took advantage of the annual labor day festival up in Kendallville to hear some live banjar. When you are not around a banjo, the idea of a banjo is funny. But when there is a banjo near you and it is ringing, you realize that is is not funny at all: it is, I don't know, not funny. It's cool.

A lot of the bands that played were full of young'ns. My favorite of the night, Midnight Ramblers, looked just old enough to drive their van from their home in Virginia--after they changed out of their awesome big white hats and matching pink shirts (really, they looked awesome--I wish I could pull that look off sometimes) they had this quasi-Abercrombie & Fitch look to them. It was a jarring change.

The crowd at these things often skews old, though; I don't know where the young fans are. B isn't one yet. He just wanted to go find dogs to pet.

The highlight of this festival is always the one or two groups that get up there and play some great clawhammer or at least something old, maybe something Ralph Stanley played. And then there are always the hats that you get to see, and you get to watch people eating a lot. A lot of people eating a lot.

A skatepark fundraiser bake sale. How fantastic is that! I stood around this booth for awhile thinking maybe that all the local skaters might ride through and raid the place, doing ollies or whatever on the pies, and how funny that would be, but they never came.

Don't even ask me what B ate for dinner. I'm too ashamed. But when you're around people eating the way these people were, your idea of what is normal gets warped quickly.