'Tis the Season for Festivals

‘Tis the Season for Festivals. H.o.p. missed music at the Dogwood Festival a couple weekends ago as the weather was nasty, but he had fun playing around on the kiddo installations. Made up for it today with an earful at the Inman Park Festival. Saw Gwen Hughes and the Swimming Pool Q’s and some of Ike Stubblefield and Bruce Hampton. He met Gwen and all the guys in her band. A little conversation with Jeff Calder and Tom Gray (who was singing his “Money Changes Everything” with the Q’s and hadn’t seen H.o.p. since he was small). He had fun hunting for souvenirs at the different stalls and brought home a rusty horse shoe for which he paid a dollar and a lovely frog percussion instrument…and a handful of melted candy from the festival parade which he won’t eat but it’s a souvenir!

He likes souvenirs. He brought home a magnolia leaf from the zoo yesterday as a souvenir. Actually, he brought home two magnolia leaves. One was given him by a little cousin and was only half a magnolia leaf and pretty decrepit but since his cousin gave it to him it was a must-have keeper. Now it is on the table and will remain in our possession for the next ten years.

So do we hang the horseshoe? Do the ends point up or down?

At one stall a woman was breaking down old Cracker Jack boxes for the prizes within, selling them as separate pieces. A festival goer was rather offended by this, arguing that this was history and she ought not to be selling the pieces separately. She said well if he paid such-and-such cents for an unbroken box he would be preserving history but this remark passed him by and he continued on about how really really she ought not to be defiling Cracker Jack in this manner.

H.o.p. enjoyed the music this time as one was able to sit and listen. He was fine with the old hippie contingent but towards the end when the old hippie/yuppie crowd (J. Crew) piled in for the Hampton show he wasn’t so comfortable with them and decided it was time to pack it in. And he didn’t care for the smell of stale beer. He never has been comfortable around drunk people.