In each of our towns...there are events that "outsiders" would look at with a questioning glance...not knowing the local history and the "Evansville Fall Festival" is one of those events.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE FOOD!

This was the 88 year of the festival having served the first pronto pup to a hungry teen in 1921 during the Roaring 20's. As of this year there were about 126 food booths with about 99% serving up something deep fried! If my arteries could communicate...they were begging me to leave the festival last week. On one day, I ate 6 strips of bacon (3 chocolate covered and 3 chicken fried bacon strips), a bowl of rib meat Gumbo, a monster ear (a glob of dough about 1 foot in diameter...deep fried and coated with a box of powdered sugar, 4 pieces of homemade peanut butter fudge, a couple bites of Zach's Stromboli, fried pickles, pronto pup and for dessert...a powdered sugar coated Belgian waffle. Oh my gosh...I have turned into a human Fry Daddy! This is a feat I am not extremely proud of! And that didn't even scratch the surface of the choices available.

There were chocolate covered...scorpions, bacon, pigs knuckles, bananas, strawberries and there were deep fried....Twinkies, Oreos, bison, ostrich, pickles, zucchini and BRAIN SANDWICHES...well too many others to list. There were even Peanut butter sandwiches on powdered sugar laden toast with slices of bacon???

After gorging on the food...there is nothing better than hopping on the tilt a whirl for a while. There was another event last week as well at the Festival...A large number of folks dressed as Zombies that descended on the Brain Sandwich booth and proceeded to order and eat the Brain Sandwiches...they set a Guinness World Record for the "Most people to eat a Brain Sandwich at one time". At night there is also the mandatory parade...a parade that lasted about 2 hours.

The Festival is now ranked as the 2nd largest Street Festival in the U.S. only being outdone by the Mardi Gras. The Wikipedia article is actually wrong..it states it's origin in 1924...it began in 1921. All the school children in Evansville are even let out of school on the Friday of Festival week so they can attend.

Yes, this is one crazy Festival...but it is part of the Evansville lore and tradition. This has been your dose of "strange but true" for the day. Back to a bit of normalcy tomorrow!

Dan