Fall Festival is billed as the biggest street fair outside of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Right here is southern Indiana.

This year the weather was perfect; warm days and cool evenings. Each year dozens of not-for-profit organizations set up booths along the street and sell every imaginable form of fried food each competing with the next for uniqueness.

This year, for the first time, fried Kool-aid was offered, along with fried brain sandwiches (a perennial favorite), fried apples, fried grasshoppers, fried...well, you get the idea. Bacon was also featured this year, thanks to a national chain restaurant that advertised its own baconalia festival. Our Fall Festival featured bacon brownies. Next year I expect to find fried bacon brownies on the menu. It is no wonder then to anyone that this city in southern Indiana boasts being number one in the whole nation for obesity. One can counter that this festival only happens once a year but the proof is in the pudding, the fried pudding apparently.

Another event took place at a friend's home. I mention this to remind you what living in the rural south is really like. It was an all-men gathering; a celebration of the home owner's newly acquired band saw. The group of invited men, young and old, stood on the porch, gathered in hushed reverence as the saw was switched on. Amid oohs and aahs, they turned their ears to listen to the quiet hum of the new motor. On and off, the switch was operated by all of them as they marveled at their friend's acquisition. After a fitting time when everyone had listened and switched, they all went inside the home for cider and a discussion of all the different types of Indiana hardwood.

These are my current musings from living here. Sometimes I just plain miss the city. And that's what I think about it.

Vacation

Back from Great Smoky Mountain National Park in beautiful East Tennessee. We started at Milligan College where we saw the lady buffs (as in Buffaloes) beat Union College 6-2 in soccer. Grand daughter Taylor played well.

In a suite at the Doubletree Inn in Johnson City Taylor and I studied while Jim worked on the computer. At one time the three of us had three computers up and running. Church on Sunday found us with 300 others. We were the oldest by 40 years but were warmly welcomed, perhaps as an oddity or because we were with Taylor or perhaps because these are friendly southerners who genuinely like people.

A hike planned for later in the day was thwarted by the sign you see here. Need I say more?

After three days with Tay-bug (family name) we drove to the Smoky Mountains. Trying to stay away from the commercial areas of Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sieverville, Jim had procured a hotel on the edge of town. Our balcony overlooked a mountain and short though it was provided a beautiful morning view. The sun rose behind the hotel and hit the top of the mountain across the street. Little by little, as the sun rose, you could see the sun line moving down the mountain until the valley was fully lit for the day. I never tired of the predictability of the sunrise.

The picture of me was taken on our way to Cherokee, NC, which is not a good way to spend an afternoon unless you love to gamble. What we loved was looking at ridge after ridge of hills that make up this group of the oldest mountains in the country. I did purchase two books on local history, one the life of a mountain woman. The second consists of diary entries from Cherokees both who were removed from the area over the Trail of Tears and those who refused to leave and whose descendants remain in the area to this day. The Trail of Tears is one of those embarrassing events in the history of this country.

And that's what I think about it.