It’s a big weekend here in our little town (or, more precisely, down in the Village). Yep, Olde Home Days are here again – a tradition that’s been going on since, well, I have no idea since when. Our town was founded in 1794 but the village is a newcomer, not incorporated until 1853 when they presumably decided town taxes weren’t high enough so they should add village taxes as well. Anyhow, suffice it to say, it’s been goign on for quite a while. In fact, in the olden days, Olde Home Days were called Old Home Days, but I reckon at some point “old” didn’t seem old enough so they went the universally accepted convention of adding an ‘e’ on the end to make it seem even older.

Anyhow, the weekend will be filled with bands, food, amusement rides, fireworks, a car and motorcycle show, tons-o-crap for sale, a parade, all, of course, culminating in the big Duck Race. All of which means there will be an ungodly amount of traffic in the Village – with cars at times no doubt backed up four or five deep at the traffic light. This means I’ll need to avoid the area between now (last night, actually) and Monday morning, which wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t need to get both diesel and beer (and drop a shitload of electronics-type shit off at the Town’s electronics shit dumping pile).

Now, you might think that it’s a bit too close to Memorial Day to be having yet another paradin’ type of event, but you have to understand that here in these parts, summer is all too short and every town needs to jump in there with what we (and I assume y’all do, too) call “Field Days” before Labor Day week (‘cuz you can’t compete with the State Fair, after all). So I guess our village said, “fuck it, let’s get ours out of the way first,” and even as it is, we conflict with the vaunted St. Sophia’s Greek Festival and the “Taste of Syracuse” (used to have a conflict with the Balloon Festival, too, until they realized they had a chance of better weather if they pushed it back to the end of June/beginning of July).

I reckon I can head to the next town over to get beer later on today, but I’ll be needing that diesel to cut the grass and I’m getting tired of the old electronics sitting in my garage, so I guess I’d better make a quick trip over there now before the crowds show up.

Have an A-One day.